Runaway colonel puts Fiji in focus

Mara was on bail when picked up by a Tongan Navy vessel and taken to Tonga where he is being housed by the King under guard. Tonga does not allow extradition for offences relating to sedition, so the stand-off could continue.

What is intriguing is that, although a key figure in the 2006 coup, Mara is now a critic of the "brutal leadership" of the Bainimarama regime and wants Australia and New Zealand to "use more force to bring this regime down".

The brother-in-law of Fiji's President and the son of Fiji's first prime minister Mara is also related to Tongan royalty.

Mara says Fiji's dictator is a "coward" and a "puppet" of the whims of his attorney-general, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Mara said he could "not understand why Australia doesn't do more to stop them".

It looks as though promised elections for September 2014 are yet another bluff, for Mara says the "real talk" within the ranks is that they will not happen.

"Khaiyum certainly doesn't want them, and he makes all the decisions." Bainimarama initially promised elections by May 2009, but then publicly repudiated that assurance in mid-2008, clearly aware his regime lacked popular support. He abrogated Fiji's constitution in April 2009, and soon afterwards said elections would not be held until 2014, while saying that he will not allow any of Fiji's major political parties to contest the elections.

Mara wants Australia to cut aid to Fiji and to seriously consider telling tourists not to holiday there.

Australia and New Zealand had not done enough with sanctions, he said. "They need to show themselves to be regional powers and use more force to bring this regime down."

He called on Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to cut all aid to Fiji and "seriously consider" telling Australians not to holiday at the popular resort destination as "tourists just keep feeding the regime".

A row between Fiji and Tonga over ownership of a mineral-rich reef has now deepened because of Mara's decision to flee to Tonga.

Bainimarama, who clearly has no sense of irony, called Mara's move "an act of a despicable nature" and talked of Tonga's "illegal extraction". Fiji's coup leader now doubles as military supremo and Prime Minister, while senior officers are positioned across the top echelons of the civil service. Parliament, the Great Council of Chiefs and the elected municipal councils have all been dissolved.

The economy has been in the doldrums for nearly five years. The sugar industry - once Fiji's staple exporter - is near collapse and relies on annual bailouts from an increasingly debt-saddled government