Fiji 50 Years On

Modern Fiji is 50 years old, having regained its independence from the British on October 10, 1970. Fiji was not conquered by Britain, but became a British colony via an agreement called a Deed of Cession. In a related development, this little piece of decolonization in the South Pacific did not resemble its counterparts elsewhere, when the lowering of the colonial flag constituted victory for a nationalist movement. In Fiji, by contrast, there was strong sentiment among the indigenous population to remain under British protection.

The reason for reticence on the part of the indigenous Fijians went to the heart of Fiji’s central and overriding demographic and political facts: the population was divided between the indigenous people, who could claim occupation of their land going back 3,000 years, and Fijians of Indian heritage, who were mostly the descendants of plantation laborers introduced between 1879 and 1916 to work the great sugar estates of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. As for the differences between these two communities, they were described in 1960 by a British undersecretary at the Colonial Office, Julian Amery, in this way:

The Fijians and Indians are more distinct as communities than Jews and Arabs in Palestine, Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, or Europeans and Bantu in South and Central Africa. Intermarriage, business associations, even personal friendships are rare.

This description probably overstated the case, but there was no doubt that Fiji was the polar opposite of Hawaii, where generations of inter-marriage produced a general tolerance. Fiji was split along lines of racial identity and that divergence lay at the center of the country’s tortured politics.

The fundamental question that has faced the people of Fiji since independence is: Who should hold power?

In a democratic, parliamentary polity, which Fiji has been, on and off, for half a century, the answer to that question lies in parliamentary and governmental representation, an issue which the British had struggled with since the 1930s. The formula for representation in colonial times was one in which race played the key role. In constructing the Legislative Council, for example, the British and the indigenous Fijians thought in terms of representing communities rather than representing individuals, with a certain number of seats for the indigenous Fijians, a certain number for people of Indian descent, one seat for the Muslims and so on. The criterion was race, not numbers.

The opposite system, championed by generations of Fiji Indian politicians, was the “common roll.” Common roll, where voters and seats were not divided by race, was characteristic of all truly democratic electoral systems, and Fiji Indian leaders such as A.D. Patel never tired of reminding everyone of this fact. But, at a time when Fiji Indians were a majority in Fiji’s population, common roll, if adopted, would not have hurt their electoral prospects either.

Fiji’s obsession with forms of representation determined the way voting worked in Fiji’s independence constitution of 1970. Indeed, communal (as opposed to common) roll was a feature of every Fiji constitution from 1970 to 2013. In the 1990 constitution every single parliamentary seat was to be filled by a process of race-based voting, indigenous Fijians voting for their own kind, Fiji Indians for Fiji Indians, and so on.

Parliamentary democracy, however, was only one part of Fiji’s post-independence story. The other part was the sudden interruptions in the form of coups: in 1987, in 2000, and in 2006. The military forces took over so completely in 2006 that Fiji was under military rule for the next eight years before a return to democracy under a new constitution and a new election in 2014. The most recent election was in 2018.

The simple truth was that Fijian democracy could not take the strain of deep racial division in a situation where the indigenous Fijians were determined not to surrender control of the government. It was too easy for politicians to arouse support along racial lines and appeal to fears of what the other community might do. A common election appeal to indigenous Fijians, for example, was that a government led by Fiji Indians would take their land.

The justifications offered for the first two coups – in 1987 and 2000 – were that they were needed to save the indigenous people of Fiji from domination by the Indians. Against the background of a multi-racial government being elected in 1987, Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka seized power in the name of the rights of the original occupiers of the land before handing the country back to President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, who then appointed as prime minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the man who had governed Fiji since independence. What was maintained in this unusual coup – in which the coup leader stood aside in favor of his chief – was unbroken indigenous rule.

The coup of 2000 followed an election in 1999 that led to the appointment of Fiji’s first Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry. A year to the day after Chaudhry became prime minister, an indigenous Fijian called George Speight conducted his own civilian coup, assisted by a few soldiers, detaining parliamentary members in the parliament for 56 days, and finally surrendering to the military forces. Speight, too, claimed to have acted in the interests of the indigenous Fijians lest they lose everything to the Fiji Indians.

The Royal, later Republic of Fiji, Military Forces (RFMF) played the key roles in engineering these coups. As one coup succeeded another, the ambitions of its leaders grew, no more so than in the case of the military leader Frank Bainimarama, who has exercised an extraordinary degree of control over the country for the last 20 years. Having tasted power in two coups, the RFMF was loath to surrender it, even when the country was technically under parliamentary government. The point was made in 2004, when the democratically elected government of the day sought to replace Bainimarama as head of the military. Bainimarama refused to relinquish his position, which the government was then compelled to renew, demonstrating the fact that the military forces were no longer under civilian control. From then on it was only a matter of time before another coup, and that came after the 2006 elections.

The 2006 coup, while damaging Fiji, did not initially constitute an assault on its key institutions, and unlike its predecessors, was carried out in the name of a multi-racial Fiji. The military intimidated the media, but freedom of speech largely remained, the judiciary was independent and the legal profession operated without government direction. The Methodist Church, a critic of the coup, was tolerated.

But when the Fiji Court of Appeal ruled in 2009 that the 2006 coup was illegal, Bainimarama abrogated the constitution, declared a state of emergency, extended direct control over the judiciary and legal profession, released soldiers found guilty of coup-related crimes including murder, and dismissed the widely-respected governor of the Reserve Bank. A 20 percent devaluation of the Fiji dollar soon followed. The regime prohibited the annual conference of the Methodist Church in Suva, a central event in the lives of many village Fijians yet feared by the regime for its potential for fostering organized opposition. Fiji came under a “new legal order,” which took the form of a succession of arbitrary military decrees against which no appeal was possible.

The justification offered for the 2006 coup was not an appeal to the rights of the indigenous people, as was the case in earlier coups. Coup leader Bainimarama instead emphasized the need for the military to clean up the mess of corruption and mismanagement left by the democratically elected government, and to work toward a multi-racial Fiji. For this reason Bainimarama enjoyed enormous support from the Indian-descended part of the population. Nor was Bainimarama in a hurry to return to democracy, despite pressure from Australia and New Zealand to do so. While critics clamored for elections, Bainimarama declared a state of emergency and ruled by decree for years on everything from land leases to the use of mobile phones and where people could surf.

The obvious question raised by this account of events is about the military forces. How could they regularly and confidently take power in Fiji?

The answer lies in the post-independence history of the RFMF, which was a ceremonial force 200-strong in 1970, only to be later transformed into an experienced and sophisticated force of with a normal strength of at least 3,500. The instrument of that transformation was participation in overseas peacekeeping, U.N. and non-U.N., which has occupied the force since the late 1970s. Fatefully, the Fiji government agreed in 1978 to provide a light battalion of 500 soldiers to the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Lebanon, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. They stayed for 22 years. The commitment of Fiji forces to the Multinational Forces and Observers in the Sinai dates from 1982, and continues to this day. Fijian peacekeepers were also posted to regional destinations such as Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands. In 2020 Fiji has fewer peacekeepers overseas than it has for many years, with a total of just under 500 in seven missions: Syria (meaning the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights), Sudan, Sinai, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Yemen.

As former RFMF Land Forces Commander Jone Baledrokadroka has pointed out, participation in peacekeeping has required a larger force than would otherwise have been needed for Fiji. In his estimation, Fiji has unwittingly built itself a mechanism for coups in the form of a peacekeeping military force.

Fiji returned to democracy under a new constitution in 2014. The key innovation in the 2013 constitution is the voting system, which is an open proportional system in which the whole of Fiji is one constituency, and parliamentary representation precisely reflects people’s ballot choices. Bainimarama formed his own party, Fiji First, which won 32 of the 50 seats, while SODELPA, the Social Democratic Liberal Party, a successor to earlier indigenous parties, won 15 and the National Federation Party three. As the 2014 election approached, Bainimarama ensured that the road to success for other parties was littered with regulatory obstacles and during the campaign he recommended himself on the grounds that voting for him would guarantee there would not be another coup.

By the time of the 2018 elections, both major party leaders were former coup leaders – Sitiveni Rabuka for SODELPA and Bainimarama for Fiji First – who engaged in polite debates on television. In many ways the 2018 election seemed to represent a more mature democracy, with Fiji First offering an extension of maternity leave, a baby bonus, homeowners’ grants, and cheaper fruit and vegetables. Bainimarama’s Fiji First won again but with fewer seats at 27 while SODELPA, which attracted more votes from indigenous Fijians, gained more seats at 21.

Like much of the rest of the world, Fiji now faces the problem of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Fiji government has managed the pandemic well, with only 32 cases by mid-September 2020[1] . The difficulty is not the disease itself, but the damage it has done to the tourism industry, which was decimated overnight. There was talk of reconstituting tourism with a “bubble” between New Zealand, and perhaps Australia, and Fiji – three countries with very low pandemic numbers that might share air travel – but the idea faded when New Zealand and the Australian state of Victoria experienced new waves of infections. Given Fiji’s dependence on tourism, COVID-19 is proving ruinous for the economy and for government finances.

Fiji is effectively governed by two men, Frank Bainimarama (now the prime minister) and Aiyez Sayed-Khaiyum, who is the attorney general and holds other portfolios as well. For the moment this duumvirate is secure and has brought a mildly repressive stability to Fiji. The fate of the nation hangs, above all, on Bainimarama, who has dominated the country for decades and who has no obvious successor. The question remains: Will instability return once he is gone?

Looking forward, we need to remember that the 2013 Fiji constitution gives a nation-saving role to the RFMF, providing that “It shall be the overall responsibility of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces to ensure at all times the security, defense and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians.” Given the strains that afflict the body politic in Fiji, it is not too much to interpret this section of the constitution as giving the military the right to intervene while claiming the intervention is constitutional.