Two military coups in Fiji

Abstract

The first Fiji coup of 14 May 1987 sought to reinstall a feudal aristocracy which had been severely threatened by a narrow defeat in the elections of the previous month. The coup reaffirmed the aristocracy's control over both polity and economy at a time when the newly elected government had been attempting to divide the two realms by creating a stronger, nonethnic state and an economy which was based upon principles which were rational, rather than ethnic and feudal. The aristocrats or chiefs tried to mobilize indigenous Fijian fears of Indian domination to justify the coup. However, conflicts within the indigenous Fijian community were at least as important in the events leading to the coup. Specifically, the new government elevated well-educated commoners over aristocrats, and these commoners (including Prime Minister Bavadra) were disproportionately from western Fiji, an area which has been subjected to the internal colonialism of eastern aristocrats for over one hundred years. This paper sees the origins of the first coup in class conflict and associated internal colonialism. It concludes with some speculations about the future, suggesting that Fiji is entering a new stage of ethnic relations roughly comparable to that of Malaysia, a society to which it is frequently compared, and that this process has been accelerated by the second coup of 25 September 1987.