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.