Fiji Military Research Articles

Fiji's 2022 Election: The Defeat of the Politics of Fear

An election held under semi-authoritarian conditions in Fiji in December 2022 saw a narrow defeat for coup leader Frank Bainimarama's incumbent FijiFirst Party. This paper looks at the political parties, the campaign issues, and the results. It argues that fear of yet another coup, as occurred in 1987, 2000, and 2006, was a critical factor determining election outcomes in 2014 and 2018, but a credible rejection of that option by the Republic of Fiji Military Forces in 2022 and an opposition campaign that could no longer be depicted as ethno-nationalist paved the way for regime change in Fiji.

Elections and the chain of democratic choice

This special issue of The Journal of Pacific Studies covers the 2018 general elections in the Republic of Fiji Islands and the 2019 general elections in Solomon Islands. In 2000, the two countries experienced the overthrow of democratically elected governments. On 19th May 2000, nine armed soldiers of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces led by failed business executive George Speight entered the Fiji parliament and held the Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage. A little over two weeks later on 5th June, Andrew Nori and the Malaita Eagle Force, a faction in the armed conflict in the Solomon Islands held elected Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa’alo hostage at gunpoint, and forced him to resign. These martial acts ruptured the constitutional rule of law and impaired democratic institutions and mechanisms in both countries.

Ethnocracy and Post-Ethnocracy in Fiji

Fiji’s history is interspersed with ethnic conflict, military coups, new constitutions and democratic elections. Ethnic tensions started to increase in the 1960s and reached its peak with violent indigenous Fijian ethnic assertion in the form of military coups in 1987. Following the coup, the constitution adopted at independence was abrogated and a constitution that provided indigenous political hegemony was promulgated in 1990. However, by 1993, there were serious and irreparable divisions within the indigenous Fijian community, forcing coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka to spearhead a constitution review. The result of the review was the multiracial 1997 Constitution which failed to resolve deep seated ethnic tensions, resulting in another nationalist coup in 2000 and a mutiny at the military barracks in December of that year. Following the failed mutiny, the Commander of the Republic of the Fiji Military Forces, Voreqe Bainimarama, publicly criticised nationalist policies of the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, culminating in another military coup in 2006. The new military government started plans to de-ethnise the Fijian state and promulgated a constitution that promoted ethnic equality.Post independence Fiji is characterised by these conflicts over ethnocracy. The ethnic hegemony of indigenous Fijian chiefs is set against inter-ethnic counter hegemony. While democratic politics encourages inter-ethic alliance-building, the ethnic hegemony of the chiefs has been asserted by force. Latterly, the fragmentation of the ethnic hegemony has reconfigured inter-ethnic alliances, and the military has emerged as a vehicle for de-ethnicisation. The article analyses this cyclical pattern of ethnic hegemony and multiethnic counter hegemony as a struggle over (and against) Fijian ethnocracy.

Articulation and Concordance: A Dialogue on Civil–Military Relations in Fiji

Articulation and Concordance: A Dialogue on Civil–Military Relations in Fiji

Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2015

Melanesia in Review:Issues and Events, 2015 Jon Fraenkel (bio) New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Papua, and Solomon Islands are not reviewed in this issue. Fiji For the most part, 2015 was a good year for the government led by Josaia Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama. With 59 percent of the 2014 national vote at the September 2014 election, and 32 of the 50 seats in Parliament, the governing FijiFirst Party had a strong mandate. In view of the disarray of the Opposition, FijiFirst had good prospects of winning the next election, scheduled for 2018. Robust economic growth continued for a third successive year in 2015, and the government sustained its modernizing agenda with extensive infrastructure spending as well as legal and educational reforms. Nevertheless, stability remains elusive. Sections of the indigenous community are deeply hostile to the FijiFirst administration. The Republic of Fiji Military Forces (rfmf) remains determined to clamp down firmly on any potential or perceived threat. Efforts by Police Commissioner Ben Groenewald, an expatriate South African, to bring to justice members of the security forces for human-rights abuses were frustrated by rfmf intervention. In November, Groenewald resigned, more in despair than protest. The Fiji economy is growing strongly. Two sluggish years (2.7% gross domestic product [gdp] growth in 2011, 1.8% in 2012) have been followed by three years of more rapid expansion: 4.6 percent in 2013, 3.8 percent in 2014, and an expected 4.3 percent in 2015 (adb 2015a; imf 2015). Despite this, Fiji’s gdp per capita remains below the level reached in 2006 (Chand 2015, 204). Tourism and remittance earnings have been the main drivers of growth, while sugar has continued to stagnate with many farmers exiting the industry and a contraction of the land area under cane cultivation. Visitor arrivals over 2015 were substantially above 2012–2014 levels, and capital investment during 2013–2015 has been sustained above 25 percent of gdp—driven upward by heavy public spending on roads and bridges (rbf 2015). In May, Standard & Poor’s raised Fiji’s sovereign credit rating from b to b+. In September, the Fiji government was able to roll over its 2016 maturing loan, with a fresh f$200 million bond at 6.6 percent interest (f$1.00 is equivalent to around us$0.46). Public debt has fallen from 55 percent of gdp in 2010 to 49.5 percent in 2015 (adb 2015b, 5), excluding the liabilities of state-owned corporations (entailing approximately an additional 30% of gdp). The sugar industry remains deeply troubled, despite some improvement over 2011–2014. The Fiji Sugar Corporation (fsc) was suspended from the Suva stock exchange owing to severe financial difficulties in October 2009 and was officially delisted in 2010. It reported negative earnings of f$36.8 million in 2009 and f$179.1 million in 2010, but thereafter showed [End Page 449] some signs of recovery with operating losses claimed to be diminishing from f$32 million in 2011 to f$14 million in 2012, f$10 million in 2013, and f$5 million in 2014 (Fiji Times, 14 May 2015; Narsey 2015a). According to the official figures, the government paid f$175 million in 2010 and f$36.5 million in 2012 to cover fsc deficits (Fiji Times, 13 Feb 2015). The fsc reported assets of f$227 million in 2014, but its liabilities amounted to f$374 million (fsc 2014). According to National Federation Party (nfp) leader Biman Prasad, the number of sugarcane growers has fallen from 18,000 to 13,000 over 2007–2015 (Fiji Times, 13 Feb 2015). Many of those “farmers” who remain now cultivate diminished plots solely to pay their Taukei Land Trust Board (tltb) rents but rely on ancillary incomes for other basic needs. Farmers report increasing difficulty recruiting cane cutters at harvesting time. Partial stabilization over 2012–2014 occurred with assistance from US-owned refiner Tate & Lyle, which continues to purchase the bulk of Fiji sugar for European markets. The relief is likely to be temporary. Fiji sugar prices had widely been expected to decrease over 2009–2015 in tandem with the 36 percent phased decline in the European Union’s officially...

The origins of military autonomy in Fiji: a tale of three coups

Alongside Thailand and Pakistan, Fiji has gained a reputation as the most coup-prone state in the Asia-Pacific region. Following a succession of coups, Fiji's military eventually established a longer-term authoritarian administration, inviting comparisons with Burma and Indonesia under Suharto, where military rulers also saw themselves as playing an overarching guardian role transcending ethnic cleavages. Yet, unlike Burma and Indonesia, Fiji's military has no heroic history of involvement in a national liberation struggle and faces no serious threat to territorial integrity. This article examines the dynamics of Fiji's three coups and the accompanying shifts in military orientation. During the initial coups, the military served principally as an instrument of the country's ethnic Fijian chiefly elite. Since the third coup, in December 2006, it has not only confronted key institutions of Fijian power, including the Great Council of Chiefs and the Methodist Church, but also dismantled core bases of Fiji Indian politics, including sugar cane farmers’ organisations and municipal councils. International focus on the electoral timetable has distracted attention from these deeper-seated changes. Fiji has reached the end of a long era of bicommunal ethnic politics, with schisms amongst indigenous Fijian factions likely to dominate the country's politics in the future.

Modern Life, Primitive Thoughts

Teresa Teaiwa has been teaching in the Pacific Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington since 2000, and prior to this taught in the History/Politics department at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. She has published on a variety of issues confronting the Pacific and Pacific people, in a wide range of academic and literary venues. At the moment she is working on a book manuscript which explores the experiences of Fiji women who have served in the Fiji Military and British Army. She is currently a co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

The Military Coups in Fiji: Reactive and Transformative Tendencies

Since 1987 there have been six coups altogether in Fiji. The article examines the reactive and transformative nature of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, hereafter referred to as Fiji military, and coups and their impact on the small multi-cultural country of 850,000 people. The coups in Fiji have to be seen in the light of the two separate but related developments, namely the historical dynamic interplay between politics and ethnicity and secondly, how the military itself has evolved as a state institution and how it perceived its role in the modern state system. Although the military is modelled along the lines of a praetorian institution, its perceived role has often shifted from being guardian of indigenous Fijian interests to protector of the multi-ethnic state. The interventionist tendency of the military was largely in response to the way in which the interplay between politics and ethnicity had played a part in creating discord and tension. All the six coups in Fiji were linked and need to be understood in relation to each other. The 2006 coup was the most politically transformative as some of the most powerful institutions were weakened and reconfigured and a new order created under the guise of a ‘clean-up campaign’.

Constitutionalism and Governance in Fiji

The President of Fiji abrogated the 1997 Constitution in April 2009 and the country was suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum and the Commonwealth, despite Fiji disclosing a potential time line for general elections by 2014 under a new open-list proportional voting system. The European Union subsidy for Fiji's sugar industry was also frozen following accusations that Fiji had breached the 2007 revised Cotonou Agreement, where it promised to hold elections by 2009. This article charts the tensions between the post-2006 coup Fiji government and the 1997 Constitution caused by the legal action from the deposed government, and differences with the Fiji Military Forces Commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama over a quick return to democracy push from the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth and the European Union. Continued diplomatic pressure from Forum members, Australia and New Zealand increased tensions as Fiji deported the High Commissioners of these two countries in November 2009 and imposed Public Emergency Regulations that curbed freedom of expression of local critics. In what could be seen as a deepening of military rule, Bainimarama clarified in early 2010 that the military would continue to monitor the elected government after the proposed 2014 election and barred mainstream political parties from participating in any future political forum or general elections.

Fiji

Fiji Jon Fraenkel (bio) Fiji in 2007 was marked by cycles of conciliation and repression that echoed like seismic aftershocks from the December 2006 coup. Steps were taken by the new military-backed government to reconfigure the established order, by purges at the top of the public service and throughout the boards of the state-owned corporations; by reconstruction of the Great Council of Chiefs; and by reform of the Fijian Affairs Board, the Native Land Trust Board, and the Fiji Development Bank. Although there was diplomatic disapproval for the overthrow of Fiji’s elected government, the new regime’s reformist credentials, as well as its anticorruption and antiracist platform, won it a fair number of overseas admirers and some domestic supporters. But the authoritarian aspect of the coup—that it flew in the face of majority ethnic Fijian opinion—prevented any lasting consolidation. Efforts to build legitimacy thus tended to generate mounting controversy, while phases when criticisms grew brought a furious but realpolitik-driven response. On 4 January 2007, Republic of Fiji Military Forces (rfmf) Commander Frank Bainimarama relinquished his temporary position as president, and reappointed Ratu Josefa Iloilo as head of state. A month earlier, Ratu Josefa had been removed from that office because he had disassociated himself from the coup, on the advice of Roko Tui Bau and Vice President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi. Bainimarama had, at that time, said he was only temporarily “stepping into the shoes of the President” (Bainimarama 2006). Now restored to office, the eighty-six-year-old president lamented that cultural reasons had prevented him from “fully performing [his] duties” on 5 December 2006, referring to the anti-coup pressure from his sacked high-ranking deputy. But he said that he “would have done exactly what the Commander of the rfmf, Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama did since it was necessary to do so at the time” (Iloilo 2007). Read from a script prepared by military officers who had, over the previous month, kept him virtually secluded from public contact, the speech was carefully contrived to fit the anticipated “doctrine of necessity” defense of the coup before the courts. Yet it constituted a gross abdication of the president’s constitutional responsibilities. The normally obsequious Methodist Church, doubting that the president was in full possession of his faculties, suggested that he be “medically boarded, and if necessary, retired with dignity and respect” (Methodist Church 2007; see also Fraenkel 2007). The next day, Bainimarama was formally appointed prime minister, [End Page 450] ending the month-long tenure of that post by the army camp medical practitioner, Dr Jona Senilagakali. “Extra-constitutional steps,” Bainimarama insisted, had been “necessary to preserve the Constitution,” claiming that legal precedents existed for such usage of “reserve powers” (Bainimarama 2007a). These arguments strongly resembled those put forward by Fiji Human Rights Commission Director Shaista Shameem (2007a, 2007b), but they found little support among Fiji’s senior lawyers (Ali 2007a, 2008). Ostensibly to facilitate an inquiry into the activities of the judiciary at the time of the 2000 coup, Chief Justice Daniel Fatiaki and Chief Magistrate Naomi Matanitobua were sent on leave a day before the presidential handover. At the instigation of the attorney general, a hastily convened meeting of the Judicial Services Commission, chaired by Judge Nazhat Shameem (Shaista Shameem’s sister), appointed Justice Anthony Gates as acting chief justice. That appointment was defended by the attorney general, but it was deemed unconstitutional by most legal scholars (Crawford 2007; Cox 2007; Leung 2007). It signaled the start of a wholesale restructuring of the judiciary, resulting in the August resignation of most of Fiji’s Court of Appeal judges. On 6 January, Bainimarama, now figuring as prime minister, outlined the “President’s mandate” that was intended to guide his interim administration. The new government would provide amnesty for the soldiers who had carried out the coup; it would validate the decrees, suspensions, dismissals, and appointments of the past month; and it would set out to eradicate corruption. The sixteen-member interim lineup included two former rfmf commanders, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau as foreign minister, and Ratu Epeli Ganilau as minister of Fijian affairs. Both men have close links to the family of deceased former...

The case for using electronic technology in Fiji’s general elections

On 5 December 2006, the Commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, announced he had assumed executive power: he dismissed the elected government and declared a State of Emergency. One month later, on 4 January 2007, Bainimarama was appointed interim prime minister by the President of the Fiji Islands and set out the broad objectives of his interim government, which included a commitment to electoral reform. On 20 February 2007, the interim Cabinet approved a ‘road map’, which committed Fiji to a general election and full restoration of parliamentary democracy by 2010. The announcement included the provision for a population census to be carried out by the Bureau of Statistics in 2007 and the consequent determination by the Boundaries Commission of new geographical constituencies. In addition, the Elections Office will be expected to examine a new system of ‘polling, voting, vote counting and declaration of results’. This article argues that, as planning for the road map progresses, the Fiji Elections Office should give serious consideration to the expanded use of the ‘new’ technologies -the internet, the worldwide web and mobile telephones - when considering changes to the voting system. Attempts were made, primarily by the Elections Office and some political parties, to use the new technologies to inform citizens about their voting options during the 2006 election campaign but the available technology was not used to its fullest. Electronic technology is widely available throughout Fiji and creative ways need to be developed by all political actors to reach citizens, especially young people.

‘Anxiety, uncertainty, and fear in our land’:1 fiji's road to military coup, 2006

On 5 December 2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama, head of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, staged Fiji's fourth coup since its first in May 1987. The flashpoint came after a long drawn out confrontation between the military, overwhelmingly indigenous Fijian, against a predominantly Fijian-led government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. The military accused the government of breach of faith and of giving succour to politicians who had been variously implicated in the George Speight-led coup of 2000, rewarding them with ministerial portfolios. The introduction of controversial bills, promising amnesty to coup convicts, and the government's curious unwillingness to take the military's threats seriously, compounded the problem. The coup deposed a democratically elected government but it also in the process dealt a severe blow to the influence of some of the most important institutions of Fijian society. A military-appointed interim administration, with Bainimarama as prime minister and Labour leader and former coup victim Mahendra Chaudhry as finance minister, has been installed and has promised to hold Fiji's next general elections in 2010.