Political Legitimacy and the Post-colonial State in the Pacific: Reflections on Some Common Threads in the Fiji and Solomon Islands Coups (original) (raw)
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Coup: Reflections on the political crisis in Fiji
2008
In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx remarks that history repeats itself, so to speak, twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The events in Fiji of May-July 2000 would tend to exemplify this dictum. One coup is bad enough, but three in thirteen years staggers the imagination. This collection is not an academic analysis of these events, their origins, processes and impacts. Rather, the contributors to this volume simply reflect, often in the heat of the moment, on what the coup meant to them. The contributors are Fijians of all stripes as well as others who take an interest in the country. They express themselves in statements, speeches, essays and laments. Many overseas people familiar with Fiji are dismayed and disillusioned with the events in that country. Many contribute pieces to newspapers or the internet. The majority are critical, praying for an early resolution of the crisis. They are moving in their sincerity, eloquent and anguished in their tone. This volume of essays contains a sample, but only a small sample, of these responses. They were written when the Fiji crisis was in full swing. The hostages were still in the parliamentary complex, and George Speight was a regular sight on our television screens. Since then, academic analyses have appeared, focusing on the larger political and electoral issues that underpinned the crisis. More will assuredly come as the dust settles and people attempt to make sense of the madness that so dramatically engulfed their lives. Editors inspect what they get, not get what they expect, a colleague reminded us as we grappled with the balance of perspective reflected in this collection. As it happens, the overwhelming bulk of the published commentary on the Fijian crisis was critical of the events. Our effort ix x to solicit contrary perspectives was not as fruitful as we would have liked. This is regrettable, but that is the way things are. There is enough here to give the reader a fair sense of the issues on all sides of the political divide. The strength of this collection lies in its contemporaneity, catching unprocessed voices as the events were unfolding in Fiji. Many pieces are straight from the heart, expressing bewilderment, frustration, anger and anguish. They are partial, in both senses of the word. As they have to be. Nonetheless, they will form an indispensable building block of a future interpretative edifice. The collection is offered to the readers in that spirit.
History Compass, 2008
Manasseh Sogavare was Prime Minister of Solomon Islands from 4 May 2006 until 20 December 2007. Several times since independence, Solomon Islands has been at crossroads where its leaders have made deliberate choices that altered the direction of the nation. This occurred again under the leadership of Sogavare. The national political process has always revolved around strong leadership from prime ministers who combine traditional Melanesian bigman styles with control of a modern parliamentary system in which many members are Independents. Even MPs in political parties have few ideological allegiances and tend to focus on undisciplined self-promotion. Nonetheless, the nation has always been guided by its national Constitution, the rudder of the ship of state. Solomon Islands underwent 'crisis years', 1998-2003, when militia from two neighbouring islands were involved in conflict based on unequal economic development. Then in mid-2003 the Pacific Islands Forum sent a Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands to restore order and restructure and strengthen governance. The article surveys the earlier changes of direction and then concentrates on the Second Sogavare Government. Under Sogavare, there were signs that the Constitution was being flouted more frequently and that the nation was moving into uncharted waters. A comparison is drawn with Fiji, where four coups d'état since 1987 have irrevocably altered the post-independence status quo, and there is analysis of the increasingly poor relations between Australia and Solomon Islands under Sogavare. It appears that a creeping coup took place in Solomon Islands, as an increasingly strong leader slowly altered the political system.
Speight of Violence Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup
Speight of Violence, 2005
There are certain events in our lives that are etched in our consciousness. They affect forever how we think, how we feel and how we see the world. Until these events leave our memory, they continue to grate and fester and, like a young life in an embryo, they seek full expression through their own existence in the world. But like all births, these events or stories have their own timing and also require an appropriate environment for their full appreciation. The three authors have had their lives affected by Fiji 's 2000 coup. They have carried that experience in their consciousness while longing and waiting for an opportunity to share it with others. This book provides that opportunity and it is by coincidence that we were able to come together through a meeting with a Reed Publishing representative.
Restoring Democracy: Australian Responses to Military Coups in Fiji
Journal of International Studies, 2014
This article examines Australian responses to successive military coups in Fiji as well as the 2014 Fijian election. In each of Fiji's three military coups, Australia failed to strike an appropriate balance between simultaneously condemning these military takeovers and taking positive steps toward restoring Fiji to normal democratic processes. Accordingly, this article argues that Australia has habitually viewed Fiji's military coups through a broader strategic lens which has done little to encourage political change in Suva. Recent positive steps by the Abbott government to normalise relations and assist with Fiji's 2014 election inspired some degree of confidence about the future of Fiji and its relationship with Australia. Nevertheless, for Australia to find long-term stability in Fiji, the Abbott government must learn from past mistakes, tread cautiously, and encourage stronger dialogue between the two countries.
REVIEW: Coups, globalisation and Fiji’s reset ‘democracy’ paradigm
Pacific Journalism Review, 2018
The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, by Robbie Robertson. Canberra: Australian National University. 2017. 366 pages. ISBN 9781760461270 When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth ‘coup to end all coups’ on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians. A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of ‘democracy’ – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coat-tails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000. Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.
Hegemony, anti-hegemony and counter-hegemony : control, resistance and coups in Fiji
2008
The thesis argues that the colonial state in Fiji was founded upon ethno-cultural divisions, which continued in the post-colonial period with the establishment of indigenous chiefly political hegemony. By using a neo-Gramscian analytical framework based on the centrality of the role of ethnicity and culture in the study of colonial and post-colonial societies, the thesis develops three inter-related themes for the analysis of Fiji’s political history: the role of colonial culture, the importance of ethno-cultural divisions, and the changing role of the military in hegemony, anti- hegemony and counter-hegemony. The thesis proposes a dynamic model of de- colonisation that conceptualises Fiji’s post-colonial political history in terms of hegemonic cycles that sees indigenous chiefly hegemony subside into factionalisation of the indigenous polity, inter-ethnic alliances and coercive indigenous assertion. These cycles operate as a product of conflict between hegemonic, anti-hegemonic and...
STIFLING OPPOSITION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE APPROACH OF THE FIJI GOVERNMENT AFTER THE 2006 COUP
A day after the military takeover of the Fiji government on 5 December 2006, Commodore Bainimarama proclaimed a nationwide state of emergency that gave wide-ranging powers to the military to enforce the new regime’s agenda. These repressive powers were entrenched in the Public Emergency Regulations (PER) imposed after the 10 April 2009 abrogation of the 1997 Constitution. Early promises of elections by 2009 were not kept; instead, successive decrees were promulgated to restrict human rights, suppress freedom of expression and clip the wings of the judiciary and indigenous Fijian institutions. They were aimed at stifling the capacity and will of the people to demand a return to democracy, and at entrenching the position of Bainimarama’s unelected government.1 The allocation of key government ministries and departments to military officers, and the winning over of specific indigenous communities by the provision of infrastructure projects have strengthened this position. All of these actions, combined with a strategy of sidelining any political or military leader capable of replacing Bainimarama as PM or military commander, suggest that the post-April 2009 authoritarian military regime has become what Geddes terms a ‘personalist’ regime, (in contrast to military or single-party regimes) even if this was not an original aim of the coup. In personalist regimes ‘access to office and the fruits of office depends much more on the discretion of an individual leader’ (Geddes 1999:121). But, despite the high levels of repression, the fragility of Fiji’s economy poses a threat to the current government, adding to the threat imposed by those few still voicing opposition.