Fiji’s democracy 2022, a complex situation

During a July 2022 visit to a Fiji resort on its Coral Coast, I observed the tough life for many Fijians along with various tensions between indigenous and ethnic Indian Fijians over economic and cultural issues.     

These tensions have been evident since Fiji gained independence in 1970 when the new constitution designated 22 seats each for Indigenous Fijians and Indo‐Fijians with everyone voting for the remaining seats, a situation that led to a military coup after the election of a multi-ethnic Fiji Labour-National Federation Party coalition in 1987 ended indigenous rule.

After Fiji became a British colony in 1874, over 60,000 Indians arrived in Fiji by 1916 as agricultural workers as part of indentured emigration through contracts which required them to work for five years.

While they were free to return to India after 5 years at their own expense, many stayed for a number of reasons: government encouragement to help Fiji’s sugar industry, new kinship ties, and enhanced economic and social opportunity through farming.

Although indentured emigration ended in 1916, the British established a number of policies that were intended to appease indigenous concerns but ultimately helped fuel the economic and cultural division evident today.   

This included a law that gave 83 per cent of the total land to indigenous Fijians, although indigenous lands could be leased to other groups.

The creation of the Great Council of Chiefs to meet annually to advise the governor on native Fijian affairs and to assist him in formulating native regulations, albeit indigenous Fijians were encouraged to stay in the villages and grow subsistence crops to maintain traditional life.

Indigenous Fijians, increasingly adhering to Christianity, benefited from many schools established by 1900 while the Indians suffered most from the segregated education system which lasted for around four decades.

From the 1940s, while Indian farmers eventually surpassed the Europeans in the amount and value of cane they produced, they were unable to purchase the land they leased from indigenous Fijians.  

With the Indian community beginning to educate themselves by establishing schools without the help of the government for the most part, this led them to fill the junior ranks of civil service while many also entered the workforce as lawyers, doctors, nurses, and accountants.

While the 1987 coup led many ethnic Indians (mainly professionals and skilled production workers) to flee Fiji to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, thus ending their status as the largest ethnic group by population, Fijians of Indian ethnicity have remained crucial to the development of the Fijian economy.

However, by 2010, with growing disparity of income seeing the emergence of squatter settlements in Suva (around 100,000 people) that included many Indo-Fijians who were forced to move after agricultural licenses were not renewed from the 1990s onwards, it was estimated that Fiji had around 42 per cent of its people living on or below the poverty line at a time when indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians made up 57.3 per cent and 37.6 per cent of the 860,000 total population.

It was within this climate that the 2006 coup occurred, led by Bainimarama (then head of the military forces and now prime minister) who believed “this country is going to go to the dogs” with further inaction.

As of 2010, while Australia and New Zealand urged the restoration of democracy, Bainimarama expelled Australia’s Acting High Commissioner in retaliation for alleged Australian sabotage of a Melanesian countries’ meeting in Fiji, and organised an 'Engaging the Pacific' meeting with ten island countries supporting Bainimarama at a time when some island leaders had their own runs-ins with Australia and New Zealand.

At a time of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, Fiji continued to enjoy ties with countries like India, Korea and China with the latter providing increasing aid leading Bainimarama to laud China as a “true friend”.

Yet, while Bainimarama stated after the 2006 coup that he acted to remove a “corrupt, racist” government in order to rebuild “a non-racial, culturally vibrant, truly democratic nation”, this remains a difficult task given the immense cultural and economic differences.

A 2016 study, comparing intermarriage in the US and Fiji, found that Fijian culture placed “a huge emphasis on the ability to belong to a social group and making almost all of one’s social connections through that group”, and that an indigenous‐Indo‐Fijian marriage leads to greater strain through disapproval by family and friends to a greater extent given language and religious differences.

immense cultural differences remain given that most indigenous Fijians (iTaukei) speak Fijian as their first or second language along with English and are Christian, while most Indo-Fijians speak Fijian Hindi with around 76 per cent of Indo-Fijians being Hindu, 16 per cent Muslim, and around 6 per cent Christian.

Hence, the 2016 study also notes generalisations that have emerged from such cultural and economic division which includes ethnic Indians being portrayed as hard working with many overcoming their hard lives in the fields, while indigenous Fijians can be perceived as lazy who enjoy an easy life, want the goods that Indians produced, do not know how to spend or save, and revert to theft when without cash.

Yet, indigenous Fijians have a totally different culture, with most giving their money to their extended families in line with the importance of kin relationships within Fijian culture.

While it has been estimated that the poverty rate had improved to 28 per cent in 2017, potential turmoil again emerged in the immediate months before Fiji again reopened its borders to tourism in September 2021 after the long shutdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak. 

During June 2021, at a time when the COVID-19 outbreak had shrunk Fiji’s economy by 19 per cent, many Fijians were angered by stay-at-home orders and wanted more government support, with tensions also evident in the villages as unemployed workers wanted to plant cassava but did not have any land.  

During July 2021, dissent also emerged after a government bill was introduced to amend the iTaukei Land Trust Act which prohibits the sub-lease or raising of mortgages on leased land without the consent of its board at a time when 87 per cent of the land in Fiji remained owned by Indigenous people.

With the proposed amendment to remove the requirement to obtain the board’s consent and prevent land owners from going to court to dispute land use, Bainimarama (chair of the board) indicated that the bill would remove bureaucratic obstacles to minor activities such as arranging electricity or water supply as the board takes too long to provide consent which constrains economic development.

Amongst the critics arrested, which included the National Federation Party leader (Biman Prasad) and two former prime ministers (Mahendra Chaudhry and Sitivini Rabuka), the Opposition MP Lynda Tabuya was accused of a “malicious act” after she posted a “Say no to iTaukei Land Trust Bill” cover picture on Facebook and argued that this was a human rights issue.

The Fiji Times, which had published an opinion piece that argued that the bill was poorly drafted  and failed to consult, would also back down after the arrests with its July 28 page one story only citing supporters of the bill in line with Fijian journalism operating under a constitutional provision which limits rights and freedoms “in the interests of national security, public safety, public order, public morality, public health or the orderly conduct of elections”.

The legislation passed on 30 July 2021 despite the opposition presenting a petition signed by more than 30,000 people (out of a population of just short of 1 million) to parliament the previous week.

While Bainimarama stated that the new law will not ‘steal the decision-making power’ of Indigenous landowners, police erected several security checkpoints around the country to thwart any civil  unrest with the defence minister (Inia Seruiratu) telling parliament of the need to avoid the past as “We don’t want Suva to be burnt again”.

As of August 2022, in the leadup to the next Fijian election, the two frontrunners are two former military strongmen who were involved in past coups (Voreqe Bainimarama 2006 and Sitiveni Rabuka 1987).  

While Bainimarama won elections leading the Fiji First (FF) party in 2014 and 2018, which received 71 per cent of Indo-Fijian votes in 2014, many of the FF leaders were part of the post-coup interim government that created the 2013 constitution that eliminated seats reserved for specific ethnicities.

In a single national electoral roll where each of the eight competing parties need five per cent of the vote to win one of the 55 seats, the popularity of single candidates is crucial given that Bainimarama individually garnered 69 per cent of FF’s total votes in 2014 and 73.81 per cent in 2018 while the party won 59.14 per cent and 50.02 of the total vote for the same elections.

Rabuka, when leader of the major Indigenous Fijian party, the Social Democratic Liberal Party, attracted 42.55 per cent of that party’s total 2018 vote.

Now heading the People’s Alliance Party, a June 2022 poll had Rabuka leading with 30 to 40 per cent of the projected vote compared to Bainimarama’s FF party running second with 20 to 30 per cent,  which means that a coalition of parties may be needed to form government.

But, with section 131(2) of the 2013 Fijian constitution stating that “it shall be the overall responsibility of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians”, it remains to be seen just how events play out.

For example, while PM Bainimarama maintains a positive relationship with China, despite urging China in 2022 to take more action on climate change, Rabuka attributes widespread complaints of police brutality in Fiji in recent years as reflecting a Chinese-style “disciplinarian” approach given joint police training and cooperation arrangements.

With the government also borrowing heavily during the period when COVID-19 put 115,000 Fijians out of work while the ‘debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 48 per cent to over 80 per cent by March due to the pandemic, opposition parties argue that poverty levels are higher than the reported 24.1 per cent in April 2022 at a time of rising inflation (4.7 per cent by April  2022).

During my week visit in July 2022, most of the indigenous Fijians working at the resort I spoke to expressed dissatisfaction with recent developments.

Most wanted a new government, several expressed concerns that recent economic development favoured Chinese interests who were consumed by profits with little regard to local concerns, some wanted the village chiefs to have more influence, and all noted that their wages were not keeping pace with rampant inflation.

Indeed, after a gym attendant indicated that his rather old running shoes were donated by a tourist because he could not afford them, my visit to a local city of Sigatoka observed how little basic food and goods could be bought by the hotel’s hospitality workers (mostly indigenous) who earn just over $5 Fijian per hour, hardly in line with the pretty high restaurant and facility prices that the resort charges.  

For example, my partner had a $130 massage, yet the worker only received about $5 Fijian.    

While I spoke to a couple of Fijians of Indian ethnicity, with one noting that Fijians were discouraged from talking about politics, they were more satisfied with the current government and the status quo, although one declared that the politicians looks after themselves and needed to do more to help poorer Fijians.

It remains to be seen how events play out after the next election in Fiji given that major cultural and economic differences persist between the indigenous and Indian ethnicities of Fiji.