Monday 20 September 2021
Sunday 29 August 2021
The New Order Begins
THE NEW ORDER BEGINS.
This was the reset button that Bainimarama and his colleagues had been preparing for as their façade of legitimacy became more and more difficult to sustain by the start of2009. For the majority of Fiji’s citizens, the change ushered in an unfamiliar world of media censorship and junta dominance but, for older citizens, it brought forth memories of the dark
days that followed Rabuka’s own reset on 25 September 1987, although with one substantial difference. Whereas Rabuka quickly accommodated those he opposed after his second coup, this time there could be no
accommodation and hence no foreseeable end to the drama. Coup 4.5, as some on social media referred to it, had two agendas: to complete the weakening of once powerful institutions such as the GCC and Methodist
Church, and to hasten Fiji’s transformation without distraction from political parties and courts. But, even with the military as the only
institution standing intact, the path forward proved difficult. Old issues did not drop away and past behaviours continued to distract.
Most importantly the reset did not come with a new operating system to download. That had yet to be assembled.Nonetheless, Bainimarama fronted the nation two days after the abrogation with confidence: ‘We must rid ourselves of our past prejudices, our past negative influences; we must be focused on building a better Fiji.’ And he outlined the tasks ahead: the introduction of modern governance systems,
a liberalised economy, better roads and water supply, the eradication of systemic corruption, the integration of land as a benefit for indigenous Fijians with national economic growth, and the removal of politics from
government decision-making. ‘We cannot be beholden to petty politics, communal politics, provincial politics and religious politics,’ he argued.
The Appeal Court had tried to force Fiji to an early election under the old system, but the majority of people wanted electoral change first he claimed. Hence the abrogation of the Constitution to make way for
reforms and the introduction of Public Emergency Regulations (PER) to prevent opposition from stalling reforms. Freedom of speech had caused problems in the past; now government alone would make decisions.158
Later, at a pre-budget consultation, he declared, ‘We need to change people if they don’t think the way we want them to think’. Until an elected government returned, ‘we need to keep people in line’.And it did. Over the course of 2009 and subsequent years a long series of decrees and government pronouncements began to reshape governance and the basis on which Fiji’s citizens interacted with each other. Courts were forbidden to entertain anychallenge to the abrogation of the Constitution or to any decree issued after 5 December 2006.
Some lawyers and judges in Suva and Lautoka – on the recommendation of the Fiji Law Society (FLS) President, Dorsami Naidu, turned up to the courts on the first working day after the Constitution had been abrogated. Police prevented them entering and detained Naidu. Almost immediately the FLS lost its power to issue practising certificates to lawyers or to investigate complaints. A new chief registrar, Major Ana Rokomokoti, fulfilled that role. She and six government officers raided the FLS office to obtain complaint files against FLS members. Police also seized files relating to military personnel held at the DPP’s offices. The DPP, Josaia Naigulevu, and his assistant were dismissed. Shortly after, a new Office of Accountability and Transparency came into being to administer code of conduct and freedom of information decrees and, by the end of the year, an independent Legal Services Commissioner oversaw the performance of
lawyers. There were other significant changes also. The legal age became 18 years, a change that placed women and men on the same footing for the first time and removed parental approval for those under 21 seeking to marry. Civil servants, with few exceptions, had now no choice but to retire at 55 years.
Dual citizenship, again with full future voting rights,
also became possible for the first time.
The abrogation of the Constitution and the dismissal of all judges effectively closed down the justice system until new judges and magistrates could be appointed. For six weeks no chief justice existed until Gates resumed the position. Meanwhile, the public lost all legal protection against human rights violations. The police and military continued to detain and intimidate human rights activists and known critics.
Driti made clear what they might now expect:
There are only a few people who I could term as adversaries – but I would discourage them from doing anything … otherwise they will be in for something really hard in terms of how we will treat them this year.
Lawyer Imrana Jalal had been threatened with rape immediately after
the 2006 coup by a mystery phone caller she suspected was military. She
believed that the same military lawyer who had orchestrated the call was
using FICAC to persecute her and her husband, Ratu Sakiusa Tuisolia, an economist and former deputy CEO of Rabuka’s prime ministerial
office in the mid-1990s. Tuisolia had been dismissed as CEO of Airports Fiji Ltd after the 2006 coup, the Nadi airport business he transformed from a loss-making venture in 2003 into a profitable operation. Facing
unemployment, Tuisolia established a restaurant business in Suva – the
Hook and Chook – with his wife as a partner. Immediately FICAC pounced. The couple had briefly operated their restaurant prior to
receiving a licence. Normally only a $20 council fine, the infringement suddenly became a major issue for the corruption body. When in late
2009 a magistrate pointed out the inappropriate use of resources being devoted to a case she believed outside FICAC’s jurisdiction, she – like other magistrates who opposed FICAC submissions – had her contract
terminated. In 2010, the High Court finally exposed the futility of its pursuit of Tuisolia but, of course, FICAC did not really seek judicial resolution; rather it sought to wear perceived opponents down. At the start of 2010 a new decree provided a different weapon to use against critics of the regime – the removal of pension rights. Rabuka became one
of the first affected.
Sometimes intimidation brought physically damaging consequences, as Iliesa Duvuloco and five nationalists discovered when they were arrested on 17 April for distributing pamphlets and severely beaten. George
Speight’s brother, Samisoni Tikoinasau, met a similar fate for distributing anti-government DVDs in early 2011. Other former politicians, like Mere Samisoni, were harassed. At the end of 2011 she and four former politicians were detained for four days and charged with inciting political violence. Trade unionists were also an easy target, although many union leaders had quietly supported the coup. But with Chaudhry’s departure from government, a falling-out began which escalated in mid-2011 when
news leaked of government proposals for an Essential National Industries Decree designed to depoliticise and curtail union activities in banking, telecommunications, utilities, broadcasting and aviation industries.
At the urging of the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC), unable to directly challenge the decree, the Australian Transport Workers Union
briefly threatened industrial action, while the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) urged Australian businesses to stop importing Fiji-made garments. Both actions endangered two crucial industries. Exports in the garment sector were already down 25 per cent since 2009. A similar call for the United States to end preferential access for Fiji goods also
threatened Pacific Fisheries Company’s (PAFCO) tuna and Fiji Water’s exports. Consequently the government moved quickly. Police broke up a FTUC meeting in August 2011 and banned further union meetings,
even social events. It regularly arrested and detained union leaders like
Felix Anthony and Daniel Urai, who did not always help their cause by appearing with anti-government coalitions in Australia that called for the government’s dismissal. Towards the end of 2011, the government reinforced its anger by turning back a five-member ACTU delegation.
In September 2012, it asked an International Labour Organization (ILO) delegation to leave Fiji.The government had long viewed the human rights community as a thorn
in its side because of its incessant public commentary. For example, in May 2011, FWCC director Shamima Ali claimed that it was all very well to issue decrees prohibiting violence against women, but she wanted to
see the law actually implemented. Two months later, in a similar vein, the FWRM executive director, Buadromo, urged police to implement
a gender sensitisation program before beginning campaigns against sexual
offending. The government welcomed neither input.
The Commissioner of Police, Brigadier General Ioane Naivalurua, told Buadromo to come
into the ring and not talk from the outside: ‘If she has nothing to offer, then she should shut up’. When she did not, they dragged her from an internal FWRM planning meeting and closed it down. But Buadromo was not easily cowed.
For high-profile dissidents such as Methodist officials, harassment did not usually arrive with direct violence. In February 2010, 15 ministers
were detained after disregarding an order to prevent known Taukeist church ministers, like Manasa Lasaro and Tomasi Kanailagi,attending its planned annual conference, the Bose Ko Viti, in August. General Secretary Rev. Tuikilakila Waqairatu warned Bainimarama of bloodshed should the conference not go ahead at Lomanikoro in Rewa, the home of Ro Teimumu Kepa, Marama Roko Tui Dreketi and head of the Burebasaga confederacy and a former SDL Education Minister. That action resulted in seven additional ministers and Kepa being detained and charged with contravening the Public Order Act, breaching PER and inciting public disorder.
For some Fijians, Kepa’s arrest demonstrated the risks inherent
in using Church affairs to advance political agendas. Bainimarama told the Church to refrain from politics and practice being peacemakers and nation-builders instead. When they continued to resist conditions
placed on future meetings, he banned the Church from holding its annual conference, in all likelihood – he said – for the next five years.
Shortly after Bainimarama dealt a similarly decisive blow to another rebellious Fijian institution, the GCC; with the abrogation of the Constitution, he declared, it no longer existed. He also announced Iloilo’s retirement as
president. In a further snub to the defunct GCC, he replaced Iloilo with the candidate the GCC had refused to endorse as his deputy, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau.There were, of course, other political issues left hanging by the
Constitution’s sudden abrogation, but the government was in no mood to be rushed. It announced a new National Dialogue Forum to replace the aborted PPDF in February 2010, stating that this time political parties or
communally based organisations could not be represented. Additionally, participants would have to accept the charter, keep focused on the future, and have no criminal record or be facing criminal charges. To make his intentions clear, Bainimarama announced that he would step down in 2014. Consultations for a new constitution would not begin for another three years, however, but once developed the Constitution would mandate racial equality, incorporate the provisions of the People’s Charter, and provide for a common name for all citizens to build social cohesion.
To that end a new office for a Strategic Framework for Change began implementing the Charter, amending the criteria for scholarships and directing that all race-based names of schools be changed. In September 2009, the Fiji School of Nursing announced that, henceforth, entry would be determined only by grades and geographical criteria, not race.
A decree in 2010 officially changed the term used to describe indigenous Fijians to iTaukei. Henceforth all Fiji’s citizens were Fijians. But, on the constitution itself, there was little movement. The National People’s Charter Advisory Council urged Bainimarama in May 2011 to fast-track constitutional development and to that end recommended the establishment of a Constitution Commission.
At the Attorney-General’s conference in December, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum outlined the overriding principle behind future elections: one person, one vote, one value. Voter
registration for national and municipal elections would be centralised.
Electronic voting might be considered, but there would be no more
ethnic voting.When Bainimarama introduced the Strategic Framework for Change on television in July 2009, he specifically focused on non-political issues, in particular land and government reform. The National People’s Charter Advisory Committee would establish a monitoring centre to grade the progress of reform in all ministries and departments. A year later, Bainimarama announced that the military would align its corporate plan
with the People’s Charter and hold regular meetings with the Strategic Framework for Change Committee. It is difficult to determine exactly how transformative these decisions were.
With land, however, there were
more than just progress reports. The Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Act
(ALTA) disappeared under a new land-reform program, replaced by the
Native Land Trust Act with leases up to 99 years possible. Bainimarama promised to make the distribution of lease monies to landowners more equitable, and to make more land available for productive use, especially idle land. A land use bank would see to that. He repeated his stand when foreshadowing land reforms in December 2009. He would protect
Taukei land ownership and tenant security, but he would also ensure the fair distribution of rental income. When the Commissioner Western addressed the Ba Provincial Council a year later with firmer details, the chiefs – principal beneficiaries of existing laws – were clearly unimpressed.
The goose still laid golden eggs but no longer for them. Bainimarama wanted rural Taukei integrated into the modern economy, not serving the demands of the chiefly system. The chiefs lost access to 30 per cent of lease monies. Except for the 15 per cent that went to the NLTB, later reduced to 10 per cent, all lease monies were now distributed to mataqali members equally.
A Land Use Decree in 2010 enabled unused native and crown land to be put into a land bank that the government could use to attract new investors. Sixty per cent of mataqali members had to agree, but the bait lay in their potential to earn 100 per cent of lease monies.
Communications also formed part of his strategy, in particular its management. In December 2009, he formed a Central Agency for Roads, which merged the 13 different organisations previously responsible for
overseeing Fiji’s 9,000 kilometres of roads.186 For Bainimarama, after three years of politicking, such changes in direction assumed new importance.
The economy had to be kickstarted; constitutional change came a poor
second in terms of priorities. He had told the media as much in the month before the Constitution’s abrogation. Few understood his intent at the time.
There were obvious reasons for Bainimarama’s focus. His coup had robbed
Fiji of any prospect of growth. The economy contracted sharply in 2007 and again in 2010, in part because of rising food and fuel costs.
The global recession also impacted on tourism, although Australian markets were
shielded and Fiji became more attractive as a tourist destination for cash-strapped New Zealanders. Cane farmers continued to experience declining returns (down 36 per cent since 2006), their predicament worsened by
the loss of EU aid for sugar reforms. Over 3,000 growers abandoned the industry between 2006 and 2009, precipitating a 45 per cent collapse
in sugar production by 2011.188 In September 2009, the government scrapped the farmer-funded Sugar Cane Growers Council in a bid to reduce the influence of rival cane-grower bodies at a time when increased
road charges bit into farmer pockets.189 The Sugar Marketing Board also disappeared as part of a savings drive. Remittances were now the only bright spot in the economy, helping to keep the country afloat.
Tight foreign exchange controls (which remained in place until late 2011) and a currency devaluation of 20 per cent swiftly followed the launch of the ‘new legal order’ in April, pushing inflation to over 9 per cent and shrinking economic growth to negative 1.4 per cent in 2009; hence the perceived importance for civil servants to retire early.
Compulsory retirement forced nearly 2,500 civil servants out by mid-2009. By planning to reduce civil service numbers from 26,000 to 20,000, the government hoped to lower salary costs by 20 per cent. Ending the provision of housing for many public servants also cut costs.
In addition, it planned to turn government departments, such as those dealing with water and government supplies, into statutory bodies in order to
raise productivity. Here too were shades of Rabuka’s ‘New Fijian’ privatisation programs after 1987. Necessity drove uncomfortable similarities. A 3 per cent increase in bus fares pushed ECREA to collect 20,000 signatures demanding reduced fares for school children. Stung, Bainimarama granted free bus travel for school children and included in the budget for 2010 a new food voucher program for the elderly and disabled, adding bus concessions for them also in 2011.
Additionally, squatter assistance and relocation programs, housing-rehabilitation loans, improved family assistance, free text books and caps on school fees projected government resolve to assist the poor. A new low-cost housing project for nearly 2,000 families began with Chinese support at Tacirua East in Suva.193 It would never be enough.
By early 2010 new estimates placed 45 per cent of the population in poverty and the government applied for an IMF loan of $1 billion to pay for all its proposed civil
service, public enterprise, FNPF, land and agricultural reforms. By the close of the year, government debt and liabilities comprised 92 per cent of GDP, far above the 60 per cent level recommended by economists.
To compensate, the government increased VAT from 12.5 to 15 per cent, but lifted its imposition on basic food items. The end result could only be less growth and more pain.
The state of the economy demonstrated the dangers facing the new legal order. With emergency regulations extended every month and imposing indefinite censorship, with critics once more arrested, detained, prevented from leaving the country or forbidden to speak at conferences, it was hard to see how the government truly believed that it enabled a ‘stable socio-political platform conducive for nation-building initiatives’.
No news is not always good news, and silence is not necessarily golden; certainly not for investors pondering the potential Fiji offered. If anything PER weakened confidence and provided the diverse opposition a platform on
which they could agree. At the forefront of this contest lay the media and foreign governments. Neither survived their exchanges well.
Lex Vula
source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/641064213154167/permalink/909626949631224/
Monday 23 August 2021
2000
Part 4
THE GOVERNMENT THE SECURITY AND THE PEOPLE OF FIJI
Many senior officers concurred. The military’s sudden takeover did not prevent hundreds of supporters continuing to stream into parliament or members of the rebel vanua committing random acts of violence with impunity.
Nor did Bainimarama’s promise to include rebels in an interim government win Speight’s endorsement. He wanted his own Taukei civilian government in power instead. In desperation Bainimarama sent a large army delegation to parliament buildings on 31 May to explain his intentions. But the very next day, when he met Speight for the first time, he compromised. The GCC would decide if the government should be a military one or Speight’s.
When Bainimarama told his officers what he had done, they objected. They were not prepared to place the country’s future in the hands of an institution already tainted by close links with Speight. They would not surrender the military’s role as guardian of the nation and they would not give in to a terrorist. ‘What is now happening to us is a moral recession,’ Tarakinikini told the nation that evening, ‘the very core of our existence is being challenged.’
The rebels ‘will threaten and they will try and destabilise and fragment our community so that we become vulnerable, and we will play into their hands if we succumb to tactics of fear’Intervention by the colonels, however, did not produce the certainty they craved.
If anything it confirmed to the rebels the success of their tactics. After increasingly violent vanua attacks on both the military and civilians in early June, and with IndoFijian refugees fleeing marauding gangs roaming across Tailevu and Naitasiri, former intelligence boss, Metuisela Mua, warned that they had plans to target the military across the country if it did not cave in. Support for the rebels seemed to be building; the President of the Methodist church even assured them of a divine pardon.
A desperate and disillusioned military now accepted an offer by Ratu Josefa Iloilo, the Tui Vuda and Mara’s former Vice President, to host talks between the rebels and the military at his Muanikau suburban residence. But the talks dragged on, with the rebels constantly changing their demands. An initial agreement collapsed when they demanded they keep their weapons for future protection. Not surprisingly, the army wearied but, short of launching an attack on parliament, could do little.
‘The paucity of leadership in the country is staggering,’ the Australian journalist Christopher Dore observed. Mara had vanished,Rabuka sulked in his office, and Bainimarama had not spoken publically for two weeks. His Military Council, dominated by two former commanders (Rabuka and Ganilau) had ‘never emerged from the shadows’. Even the GCC seemed to have vanished from sight, its liaison committee mired in conspiracies with the rebels. And, in the parliament, the scheming continued, with rebel leaders bickering over ‘whose coup it really is’.
‘No-one in Fiji,’ Dore wrote, ‘has the slightest clue about how to end the political crisis.
But all was not as it seemed. Behind the scenes Bainimarama attempted to regain the confidence of his officers. On Tuesday 4 July, he announced the formation of a new interim government headed by the former senator,
CEO of the Fiji Development Bank and managing director of the
Merchant Bank, the 59-year-old Lauan Laisenia Qarase. He and a new
18-member, all-male cabinet would introduce a new constitution together
with a new deal for Fijians, amend land leases along lines favoured by the NLTB, and return Fiji to elections within two years. The message to
the rebels was clear; the Fijian bureaucratic establishment was once more in charge. It was a message they read, however, as a declaration of war.
These people never ‘fought for the cause of the takeover’, Ligairi declared.
They had failed Fiji in the past and would do so again. ‘We didn’t carry out the coup to provide an opportunity for the military to come in and run the government,’ Speight pronounced: ‘[T]hat’s not the objective
of the coup and they don’t seem to accept that.’
As if to drive home their point, 80 rebel soldiers under the command of Ligairi’s grandson, Lt Rupeni Vosayaco, and 500 supporters seized control of the Sukanaivalu
Barracks outside Labasa, the capital of Vanua Levu. Two hours later in Suva, 200 rebels and soldiers clashed outside parliament. One rebel died.
The next day, when the army responded by finally imposing an exclusion zone around the parliamentary complex, Speight taunted its leadership.
Chiefs will call on Fijians to leave the military and ‘As that takes place over the next few days, I’m sure Commander Bainimarama will find
himself in command of an army that has no men’.These were not idle words. On Thursday 6 July, some 400 Naitasiri villagers marched on the military barracks at Nabua amid rumours of an uprising. In the Naitasiri highlands, rebels drugged soldiers guarding the Monasavu power station and cut power to Suva. The soldiers were taken hostage. Macuata chiefs
in Vanua Levu demanded Bainimarama step down, and the paramount chief of Naitasiri – Ratu Inoke Takiveikata – demanded a president elected by the GCC who would choose his own interim administration.
The military caved in, finally signing the Muanikau Accord on Sunday 9 July at Iloilo’s residence in front of 500 hymn-chanting rebel supporters and a despondent Bainimarama. ‘We don’t want to shed blood amongst ourselves,’ the Naitasiri-born Tarakinikini conceded.Despite promising to ‘surrender’ and release their hostages, the amnestied
rebels were in no mood to end their campaign of civil disobedience.
But they had now to convince the country’s chiefs that Fiji’s future lay in their hands. Roadblocks sprang up around Fiji. One hundred and fifty rebels led by one CRWU soldier seized Korovou in Tailevu.
Villagers took over the Savusavu and Seaqaqa police stations in Vanua
Levu, and Labasa came under attack; so too the Nadi and Vanuabalavu airports, the army base in Lautoka, the police station and fish cannery
in Levuka on Ovalau, tourist resorts on Turtle and Laucala islands, and a mineral water plant in Rakiraki. Fiji Telecom workers went on strike.
Landowners and disgruntled employees occupied Road Transport offices in Suva and Lautoka, and prisoners rioted at Naboro prison. The former journalist and now rebel Jo Nata bragged, ‘Suva is almost under siege;
the whole nation is in chaos … is that what you call holding a gun to the chiefs’ heads?’
But not all chiefs required convincing. The deputy chair of the GCC, Adi Litia Cakobau, called a special meeting of 200 district and provincial chiefs (Bose ni Turaga) prior to the GCC’s deliberations, and her sister, Adi Samanunu Cakobau, Fiji’s ambassador to Malaysia, flew back to chair it. Designed to increase pressure on the GCC, the meeting
recommended that Iloilo be president, the rebel ‘President’ Ratu Jope Seniloli his vice president, and the leader of the GCC negotiating team
– Ratu Epeli Kanaimawi – prime minister of a new 22-member cabinet containing at least 11 rebels.
When the GCC met on 14 July it accepted the first two demands but left it to Ratu Iloilo to determine the makeup of the new cabinet. Satisfied, the rebels released their remaining hostages. But when Iloilo announced the next day that Qarase’s administration would remain intact, Ligairi unleashed his ‘dogs of war’ for another round of destruction. Iloilo did not turn up to swear in his new cabinet on 19 July.
Ligairi and Speight took their rebels out of the shattered parliamentary complex that had been their home for the past 62 days and moved to the Kalabu Fijian School, 12 kilometres from Suva in Naitasiri territory, looting on their way. From this base they would fight for lasting influence and power.
Ligairi and Takiveikata now pressured Iloilo to accept a new set of demands
that included replacing Qarase with Adi Samanunu as prime minister.
Her support for the rebels can be seen as another chapter in the long
struggle between the Cakobau and Mara families and between Kubuna and Tovata for ascendancy within Fiji, a struggle that introduced a useful dynamic for the rebels in the already fractious relationship between Fijian provinces and between old centres of power. Iloilo agreed to include more rebels in the cabinet but, when he met with the rebels, Speight threatened further instability if he failed to deliver.
With the rebels out of parliament and their hostages released, Bainimarama now had more room to manoeuvre. Another initiative of
the colonels (in particular Tuatoko, Tarakinikini and Baledrokadroka) assisted also. They had established a special Force Reserve Unit (FRU) or Task Force Group in late June to directly confront the rebel vanua. Comprising 3rd Battalion soldiers stationed in Nadi and Lautoka, as well as Suva’s Engineers, it made the Engineers HQ at the QEB its base.
Securing Naboro prison, where prisoners had taken wardens hostage under instruction from the rebels, became its first successful operation on 17 July. Thus, a much more confident Bainimarama moved to frustrate
the Speight group’s political manoeuvres.
On 26 July, he rushed to the Presidential Palace and told Iloilo to ‘get a prime minister of our choice or else lose the army’. That same evening, the FRU quietly arrested Speight en route to Kalabu. At 6 am the next morning, Day 70 of the crisis, the FRU took the rebels at Kalabu by surprise and rounded them up. Sporadic outbreaks of violence occurred in retaliation around the country, mainly in Vanua Levu, and by the time the FRU recaptured Labasa’s Sukanaivalu Barracks at the start of August and swept through the Viti Levu highlands around Monasavu, an uneasy calm had descended over the country, punctuated only by distrust, fear and loathing. ‘No one is the winner here,’ Raduva told the board of inquiry a month or so later, ‘we are all losers.’
Nearly 500 rebels and their supporters across the country were arrested, many of them resentful at the beatings they received from their captors.
Most civilian rebels were charged only with minor offences and were quickly released on lenient bail terms, but key perpetrators like Duvuloco, Speight and Ligairi were quarantined on the small Nukulau Island near Suva. Investigations were also begun into the activities of hundreds of citizens during the crisis, among them the Police Commissioner, who was forced to stand aside pending an investigation by the Chief Justice, himself under public scrutiny for advising the military on its seizure of power. Tarakinikini lost his post as army spokesperson and soon left, disillusioned, to a UN peacekeeping post in New York. Bainimarama also found himself under attack when he admonished chiefs for instigating division and hate among Fijians, and the High Court declared the Muanikau amnesty he had negotiated invalid. Stung, Bainimarama hit back when President Iloilo left for medical treatment in Sydney. He would never accept the rebel Seniloli as acting president and threatened a new military takeover. In the uproar that followed, Rabuka offered to serve as president and the target of loathing shifted again.
At the QEB, the CRWU soldiers smarted at their treatment. They felt ostracised; they did not take to their new commanding officer and were convinced that the army planned to disband the CRWU, despite the fact that most of those remaining (the majority) had stayed away from
parliament, unlike their intelligence operatives and raw recruits. They were now placed within the 3rd Battalion, but were permitted to continue using CRWU offices and barracks. The rebels among them shared similar feelings. ‘We felt betrayed by Bainimarama,’ Serupepeli Dakai declared.
Bainimarama claimed to forgive them, but they were still being arrested and charged.The return of weapons created considerable angst, in part because RFMF records were hopelessly inaccurate but also because, when soldiers did return weapons, they were promptly charged. Yet, in many respects given the enormity of what had happened, the RFMF treated them leniently. At a special ceremony on 26 October, Captain Shane Stevens – now the CRWU’s second in command – formally sought the military’s forgiveness. Bainimarama accepted the request, and agreed to release the rebel soldiers into the custody of their families until the law took its course. A board of inquiry would be held. He even praised them for securing the safety of their hostages and containing ‘the rowdy and abusive’ vanua. But he also confirmed the demise of the CRWU.
The soldiers were stunned. Revenge became the new order of the day. They hid weapons in preparation. Stevens had already been sought out twice by Takiveikata, the Naitasiri chief who wanted Bainimaramaremoved for dumping the Muanikau Accord and for the military’s treatment of civilian rebels at Kalabu,Monasavu and on Vanua Levu.
Now Stevens had grounds for action. Bainimarama later reflected:I never thought they would be swayed with the lie that the RFMF had lost the trust of the vanua and that the vanua only trusted the CRWU because of what they stood for in May 2000. And so if the CRWU wanted the trust of the vanua to be returned to the RFMF, then they should take
leadership of the army. Only then would the vanua be there for them.
One week later, on Thursday, 2 November, the CRWU mutinied.
It was a bloody and confused affair.140 Led by the once loyal Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated,141 seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama.
In the process they executed three unarmed loyal soldiers. Again their planning was meagre; the whole operation was designed simply as
a repeat of 19 May, this time at the QEB on a day when many soldiers were out training and at a time when Bainimarama would be lunching in the Officers Mess. An unsigned fax ordered Vodafone to shut down army mobiles. A coded message over Radio Fiji told Naitasiri, Tailevu
and Rewa provincial organisers to get as many human shields into the
camp as possible. Two hundred men gathered at Takiveikata’s Wailase farm
in preparation. The rebels planned to negotiate for the release of their colleagues on Nukulau, establish a Taukei civilian government, and replace Bainimarama.
Friday 20 August 2021
1987
Part 2
The Government,The Security and the People.
In May 1987, Rabuka had launched his coup to remove ‘an Indian
dominated’ Labour government that had won office from the long-
serving Ratu Mara just one month before. Mara rushed immediately to
Rabuka’s side and was restored – eventually – to the prime ministership.
Fijian paramountcy returned and with it the dominance of an eastern
chiefly elite. Thirteen years on, the 80-year-old Mara was halfway
through his second five-year term as president. Rabuka, the commoner
who had succeeded him as prime minister for seven years until defeated
by Chaudhry, now headed the GCC, ostensibly in order to maintain
control.
This supreme Fijian institution had also rushed to endorse
Rabuka’s coups in 1987, bestowing on the commoner life membership
of the chiefly council. In return a new Constitution in 1990 bestowed on
the GCC the power to appoint members of the Senate and to choose Fiji’s
president. Later it was rewarded with a secretariat of its own.
In addition,
the Council’s main investment company, Fijian Holdings Ltd, profited
greatly from Rabuka’s affirmative action policies, as did many of its
individual shareholders.
Rabuka’s own former institution, the military, also benefited from the
coups. Its official size had nearly doubled since 1987 and, during
most of the 1990s, the country’s leaders turned a blind eye to successive
blowouts in the annual military budget. Now members of one of its
more highly politicised units were holed up in parliament with over
43 hostages. Thus compromised, the military found it difficult to resolve
the situation decisively. It did not storm parliament; nor did it cordon
parliament off. ‘Let us not use the universal template of the army coming
in to restore order,’ Rabuka advised: ‘There are friends and relatives in
there.
The army would think twice about going in.’ Draunidalo warned
the officers’ think tank advising the Commander that even setting up
checkpoints around the parliament could endanger life. That its officers
may not have supported either the Chaudhry government or Speight
counted for little when there was no one prepared to take control and
end the situation.This generated an ‘atmosphere of distrust’ in which many soldiers found it useful ‘to hedge their bets’, as Tarakinikini put it.
Thus officers who proposed action were often viewed with suspicion, an
outcome not lost on the rebels holed up in parliament. They constantly
rang them at the QEB, offering inducements for their support or threats
if it failed to be forthcoming. And they sought to divide the military.
Tarakinikini (a founding officer of the CRWU) and Col Ulaiasi Vatu
(Strategic HQ) – both supportive of the cause but not the method –
were publically promoted as new heads of the RFMF by the rebels and
found their loyalties suspected as a consequence. In the long term, their
military careers suffered. Lt Col Jone Baledrokadroka, chief staff officer
Operations at Land Force Command, believed that, had Speight alone
headed the coup, there might have been less contention and military
uncertainty. He was seen as a nobody, a part-European businessperson
and beneficiary of Rabuka’s cronyism. But the military had no such doubts
about Ligairi and, if alleged backers such as Draunidalo had actually come
forward, the coup would have gained much more credibility.
A kind of psychological warfare now began, its goal to divide and paralyse
the RFMF, and its effects on trust between officers would be long-lasting.
The ambitious and frustrated Tarakinikini became an easy target. His
efforts to promote the reorganisation of the RFMF in the 1990s had
achieved little. Bainimarama had denied him leadership of the CRWU
in 1999 and of security for the ACP conference in 2000. He was on leave
and sitting an MBA exam at the University of the South Pacific (USP)
when the coup took place, but quickly volunteered to act as a negotiator.
‘I could see through these guys,’ Tarakinikini told the board of inquiry,
‘I could see the lies they were spinning in the name of the indigenous
Fijian cause and especially George Speight when he came on, I could see
the line he was coming on, I had to match him … if I did not step in …
the situation was going to deteriorate not by design but by inactions.’
As a spokesperson for the RFMF, the highly personable and articulate Tarakinikini proved effective. Although his goal was to establish rapport
with the rebels in order to prevent bloodshed, he also became dangerously
effective as an official counter to Speight: ‘I knew all along what they
were trying to do, they were really trying to undermine me and when
they knew that it was not going to work then they came out and started
accusing me of being with them … in order to … pull the rug under my
feet.’ Once the rebels knew that the army would not support them, ‘their
tactics then was to try and put in the Trojan horse inside the RFMF to
try and break us from within’.
To some extent it worked. Bainimarama
allegedly told Tuatoko not to trust Tarakinikini and Raduva.
Complicating matters also were divisions between serving officers and
reservists. The presence of many reserve officers, particularly Rabuka,
created discomfort among some serving officers. But this discomfort
paled in comparison with the army’s physical inability to act. Despite
Rabuka’s largesse while in office, the RFMF lacked equipment, weapons
and vehicles to support domestic operations. Even the weapons it
possessed were poorly managed. The CRWU kept its own armoury but
the RFMF possessed no master register. What records it did keep were
woefully inadequate. When the police belatedly requested its assistance
to deal with the rioting and looting that broke out in downtown Suva at
1 pm following the NVTLP march, the military lacked sufficient vehicles
to send its soldiers into the city. It tried to hire buses, but most of the city’s
buses were busy taking children from their rapidly closing schools. Hence
soldiers did not arrive on Suva’s streets until 6 pm, three hours after the
initial request and well past the time when they could be most effective.
If the intention of the riot had been to stretch Fiji’s forces during the
coup, the rebels did not have to try too hard.
That both the Commander and chief operations officer were overseas
probably did not assist the RFMF either, but without contingency
planning and training to deal with a national crisis, it is doubtful that
their presence could have made much difference. Of course many officers had long been aware of the RFMF’s deficiencies but felt constrained by
the vision of their leaders. Plans to reorganise the institution had lain
dormant for years with the result that its many parts such as HQ FMF, HQ
Land Force and Strategic HQ were disconnected, although restructuring
in late 1998 brought these together as Strategic HQ and Land Forces
HQ. Additionally, too many rapid promotions in the past conspired to
create tensions over how the institution was run, and much of this came
to the fore after 19 May and focused on the Commander himself.
Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama had served with the Fiji Naval
Squadron since its inception in 1975 and replaced Ratu Epeli Ganilau
as commander in March 1999, when the latter left – unsuccessfully – to
enter politics as part of Mara’s VLV challenge to the SVT. Many senior
officers, perhaps feeling that they were more deserving, resented that
their commander was a naval officer; moreover an officer who lacked
the combat experience and Sandhurst training of the colonels. One even
argued, ‘That is where the whole thing starts’. Bainimarama had not
taken kindly to this reception and posted perceived dissidents to the
military’s Strategic Headquarters in Suva, away from the QEB in Nabua
suburb. ‘We now operate [more] like a gang than a military force,’
Tarakinikini told the board of inquiry.
Rent by internal division and constrained by its ethnic identity, the
RFMF dithered as the coup evolved. Many of its officers refused to
commit, leaving their troops confused.79 Fijians confronted Fijians as
never before. Their leaders no longer acted as a united political force.
Mara and Rabuka had never trusted each other and their differences now resurfaced. Given how quickly events unfolded, Mara possibly
believed that the military’s slow reaction meant that it was colluding with
the coup-makers. Certainly, many provincial chiefs saw the attempted
coup as an opportunity to redress long-perceived inequalities within the
community; others saw it as a chance to consolidate a new and more
radicalised Fijian leadership. Ligairi played to all these divisions.
Hundreds of supporters flocked to the parliament to act as human shields
in case the military decided to attack. Ligairi organised them into fighting
units. By threatening to stir the rumblings of commoners, Ligairi sent
a strong message to all chiefs: commoners would take over if necessary.
Ligairi’s transformation of the forces within the parliamentary complex,
however, created tensions that he found difficult to control, although this
was not always obvious to outsiders at the time. He headed the military
wing, which – with the addition of more CRWU soldiers and reservists
– soon comprised over 56 soldiers. By the end of May he had established
an intelligence and operations centre, a logistics cell, as well as duty and
weapons rosters.
Speight headed the political wing, a fluid group that grew strongly due to
the army’s failure to blockade the parliament. Politicians, former soldiers,
public servants, Methodist ministers and chiefs assembled at the
parliament, ostensibly to find out what was happening but in many cases
to participate in what they undoubtedly viewed as a transformative event.
The former intelligence chief, Metuisela Mua, provides a useful example.
He went into parliament within hours of the coup, joined in an early meeting, and eventually became part of Speight’s team. Negotiations
were a key activity for this wing and a special negotiating room was
established alongside the ops room, symbolically located above where the
bulk of hostages were held.
But the key innovation remained the vanua wing; its formation was
a direct result of military inaction, in particular its failure to storm
parliament during the first weekend of the crisis. That failure enabled the
rebels to encourage hundreds of ordinary Fijians to flock to parliament
and organise them loosely into provincial groups that provided a veneer
of traditional legitimacy. Such groups were publicly marched around
the parliamentary complex and sometimes sent out to attack police or
soldiers.
Ligairi bragged that his new soldiers would soon be better than
the military. They got one opportunity to prove themselves on Sunday
28 May. Led by CRWU soldiers, over 500 rebels slipped into Suva,
firing at the Presidential Palace en route. There they trashed the offices
of Fiji TV, which had aired a program ridiculing the rebels, in particular
Speight and Duvuloco. During the rampage, a ricocheting bullet killed
a police officer. A security officer also died from heart failure. Both deaths
destroyed the notion that the rebels opposed confrontation. Indeed, they
secretly plotted to escalate violence by destroying both the Presidential
Palace and Suva in order ‘to show Ratu Mara that even though he was the
head of government and in total command of the Army, Police and Civil
Service … the vanua was much stronger than him’.
A group of hymn-
singing women would lead the vanua and rebel soldiers on a destructive
march to the capital. However, rain thwarted their plans. But the events
of 27 May were not the first foray outside parliament.
Early Sunday morning, 21 May, CRWU personnel in two vehicles
journeyed across Viti Levu on the Queens Road to snatch Bainimarama
as he returned from Norway. Alert to their intentions, Seruvakula sent
30 troops to meet their commander and they prevented the would-be
kidnappers gaining access to Nadi airport, quickly spiriting Bainimarama
along the longer northern and eastern Kings Road route to Suva instead.
On Friday 26 May, Speight and 20 armed men strode out of parliament
and confronted troops who had replaced police outside the parliamentary
complex. The next day 200 rebels and supporters challenged 10 soldiers
in a shootout at a checkpoint that injured three soldiers, one rebel and
a British journalist.
The rebels’ descent into violence and death made many CRWU soldiers
uneasy; some even contemplated returning to their barracks. But the
vanua felt emboldened. They demanded their own weapons and swore
at Ligairi when he refused. Leadership of the vanua now became
difficult. Speight and Duvuloco clashed over who should head it; Speight
wanted only chiefs in such a role, Duvuloco believed he was best suited.
Difficulties over vanua leadership, Silatolu claimed, ‘distracted us from
resolving the issue with the military’. Those difficulties, however, went
far beyond leadership. The vanua was unruly. Looting, drunken parties,
gang rapes and orgies conflicted with the disciplined order Ligairi wished
to project. But it had its uses also; across Fiji, isolated IndoFijian
communities were terrorised or their homes looted and razed. The military
‘won’t rise up against its own people’, Speight taunted.
Speight played his part, too, holding court in the parliamentary complex
with his supporters and engaging with international and local media.
Unlike most politicians in Fiji and the rarely seen Commander, he was
articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according
to some journalists. They felt that their presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone.
Many Fijian leaders who flocked to parliament were concerned to promote
their particular Fijian brand; none wished victory to accrue solely to the
political outsider.
Thursday 12 August 2021
PC ROKOLEBA, Victim of Bombing
1987 BOMBINGS IN FIJI. MORE REVELATIONS. VIEW ALL PICTURES
It is 3 October 1987......a Saturday..... Police Constable Sairusi Rokoleka....seen below in his official Police attire is on duty at the Nadi Police Station and this Saturday afternoon and early evening is proving to be quite hectic as Nadi has just doused a spirited Suva attack for the Fairbrother Sullivan Trophy. Constable Rokoleka stops his official vehicle beside the Nadi volleyball courts as he beacons to his family at the Police quarters above to get him $20 for kava and cigarettes as he was about to commence night shift at the Nadi Police Station.
Eldest son Setoki is sent by Mom to hand over a $20 bill to Constable Rokoleka and with it a message that close friend Marika who works at the FEA in Nadi town was awaiting Constable Rokoleka's night shift start for a tanoa of yaqona to reflect on Suva's spirited challenge. Constable Rokoleka drives into town... bought kava and cigarettes and he immediately turned left on the road leading to the Police Station. Enroute to the station CR is stunned by a speeding red station wagon dashing towards town and away from the Police Station. Constable Rokoleka swerved left to avoid the speeding car.
Meanwhile, Army Commander Major General Sitiveni Ligamamada Rabuka is said to be heading towards the police station for kava after watching the recently concluded Fairbrother Challenge match. The family of police constable Rokoleka had seen the speeding red car drop off a small army like duffle bag at the Police Station verandah and had hurriedly sped away towards town.
SR parks his official vehicle at the designated area and walked towards the police station only to be aroused both in attention and interest to the duffle bag at the entrance to the PS verandah.....unnoticed and unattended by anyone. Unzipping the bag....SR discovers a metallic object the size of a large square bread with two flicking lights at the top left corner...one red and the other green. In the seconds....minutes....hours...then days after..... Constable Rokoleka was fighting for his life at the ICU at both Nadi and Lautoka Hospitals...as a result of a bomb blast that almost claimed his life.
The rest....was a bit of history which the current Attorney General....Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum would not want to be made a public knowledge for Fiji....as he was alleged to have been one of the four....who upon dropping off the home made bomb at the entrance made a speedy getaway out of the vicinity of the Nadi Police Station and Barracks. This was a terrorist attack initially aimed at coup maker Rabuka....but as its now common knowledge....Constable Rokoleka had to bear the brunt of a devious and terrorist attack masterminded by Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum. The pictures below are now a fitting evidence and proof that the current Attorney General is a murderer and a terrorist.
Police Constable Sairusi Rokoleka passed away in 2009....his wounds....sign of being truthfull to his oath of duty....was buried with him....a lost left eye ball.....dismembered four left fingures and his left chick bone torn apart by the blast to the point that you can physically see his throat and down his adams apple.
I was glad to have spent three months with PC Rokoleka upon my return from Southern Lebanon in December 1987. My question to the Prime Minister....Commander RFMF and COMPOL is simple....When will bombmaker and terrorist Attorney General...Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum be finally bought to justice?
Seremaia Tuiteci
Wednesday 11 August 2021
20210811 - Naupoto to cancel contacts for > 55
2021
Apenisa Rokobaro
Day of Shame for Naupoto
"PM Frank today Tuesday 8 Aug 21 sent his PSO Maj Tagivakatini up to HQ RFMF ordering that all Contracts signed by Naupoto with senior officers and other members of the RFMF extending their service beyond 55 yrs, all such contracts are to be revoked
And Naupoto must not approve anymore contracts beyond 55yrs.
A few senior officers are affected - a number of LTCOLs and Majors will now be looking for jobs.
Let’s see if Aziz who is well over 55 will be shown the door or the main-gate also.
And Colonel Litea Seruiratu wife of Minister Inia Seruiratu, she turned 55 last week, and contract has been extended! Isa ko Viti!"
Below is the monkey that actually did it
