Populist anti-corruption and military coups: the clean-up campaign in Fiji 2006–07

Abstract

The literature on corruption and development identifies a ‘populist’ type of anti-corruption campaign characterized by purges of civil servants, public humiliations and executions, quasi-official tribunals, and Moral Rearmament campaigns that aim to produce ‘new citizens’ (Riley 1998, Theobald 1990). The populist approach was particularly attractive to leaders of military coups in Africa (Riley 1998: 133; Mbaku 2007). Gillespie and Okruhlik (1991) have analysed the politics of ‘corruption cleanups’ in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s and found six of their 25 cases involving coup leaders undertaking cleanups ‘to discredit prior leaders and lend legitimacy themselves’ (1991: 84-86). Gillespie and Okruhlik were writing before the explosion of internationalinterest in corruption and they characterized the literature on cleanups as ‘tangential’ to the larger body of work on the phenomenon of corruption itself (Gillespie and Okruhlik 1991: 77). The chapters in this book represent new work along this tangent, and it is worth going back to see if the concepts devised in this earlier period are still relevant in our more internationalized, NGO-influenced world. Ideas about populism, for example, appear in critiques of anti-corruption campaigns in Eastern Europe by scholars such as Krastev (2004) and Smilov (in this book). Transparency International (TI) is now often criticized for elitism – the opposite of populism – but its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a nice example of international ‘populism’, as defined above, that combines ‘public humiliation’ (of low-ranked governments) with a ‘quasi-official tribunal’ of business journalists and ratings agencies who make the assessment. This chapter focuses on Fiji, where the military coup that took place inDecember 2006 was the fourth since the country became independent in 1970. Leaders of the earlier coups said they were acting in defence of indigenous rights threatened by democratically elected governments. By 2006, however, demographic changes had given indigenous Fijians a clear majority in the country (57 per cent of a total population of 828,000, Fiji Government 2007a). Prime Minister Qarase’s government had won two elections by energetically promoted indigenous Fijian interests. Instead, the leader of the 2006 coup, Commodore Frank Bainimarama – himself an indigenousFijian – promised a ‘cleanup campaign’ against the corruption of the Qarase government. Bainimarama had his own personal scores to settle, but his forward-looking,anti-racist, and anti-corruption rhetoric attracted sympathy from some people who had been opposed to coups in the past. These included parts of the NGO community and parts of the tourist industry worried about proposed changes to land law that would favour indigenous rights. Non-indigenous citizens – particularly descendants of settlers from India, who now constituted 38 per cent of the population – had felt that their rights were under threat from indigenous majorities. The most unlikely supporter was, perhaps, the director of Fiji’s Human Rights Commission who became a vigorous apologist for the coup, and scourge of its opponents (Shameem 2007). The coup also attracted sympathetic coverage from some of the international media (e.g. Time 5 February 2007). Aid donors and development banks have become increasingly vocal aboutcorruption among governments in the South Pacific region (Larmour 2007). While he borrowed their rhetoric of ‘good governance’, Bainimarama got no support from the Australian and New Zealand governments, or from the EU on whom Fiji relied for concessionary access for its sugar exports. Australia and New Zealand put travel bans on the coup leaders and their relatives, and the EU refused to renew concessions on sugar until the promised date for new elections was brought forward. This chapter first considers popular perceptions of corruption in Fijibefore the coup. The second part analyses the cleanup campaign: the purges, complaints, and investigations which culminated in the promulgation of an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The third considers the reactions to the coup of NGOs, particularly Transparency International’s Fiji chapter. The final part draws some conclusions about the populist character of the campaign against corruption. I will be using the word ‘populism’ to mean ‘the claim to represent or act in the name of the people, understood as ordinary or common people, the majority, or the masses, as opposed to elites, privileged or special-interest groups, the establishment, or the power bloc’ (Collier 2001). That often includes distrust of politicians and the perception that ‘they are all corrupt’ (Meny 1998).