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A strange sort of coup in Fiji

By Mark Hayes - posted Thursday, 21 December 2006


It's an odd sort of coup Fiji military commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, has pulled.

According to The Book of Coups - yes; there is one: Coup d'état by Edward Luttwak with additions on more recent coup plotters, such as Augusto Pinochet and even Commodore Frank's predecessor, Sitiveni Rabuka - a coup meister must seize and control the mass media promptly as part of the initial, tactical stage of their takeover of power. Telecommunications and major thoroughfares must also be shut down or rigorously controlled.

Another tactic The Book of Coups suggests is that actual, probable and even possible opponents of the coup must be promptly rounded up and detained, partly to negate their own resistance potential, and also to terrorise the wider population into submission. Resistance must be seen to be futile, even fatal.

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Commodore Frank didn't exactly plot a secret ambush. He telegraphed his probable moves months in advance, giving his target, the nationalist, democratically elected, Qarase Government, and its majority party, the SDLV, plenty of time to prepare for resistance.

I have elsewhere called his strategy The Bainimarama Screw, as in applying steadily escalating psychological coercion upon the Qarase Government to capitulate to his demands, or resign. There were at least two earlier moments when it looked like he was going to make his move, in January, 2006, and in November, 2006, but both times he deliberately stepped back from the brink.

Timing of a coup is crucial. The best times for coups are when the country and target regime least expects one, Easter and the Christmas breaks being ideal. Commodore Frank pulled his coup in early December when Fiji's summer heat and especially humidity tend to make locals lethargic, and, with Christmas looming, political resistance was hardly on many people's minds. He allowed enough time for much of the consolidation phase before Christmas effectively shuts Fiji down.

Coup plotters are usually fronts for dissident interests who want to get their hands on power, reap benefits for themselves and their associates, and also exact revenge upon their opponents. All sorts of rationalisations are advanced to justify a coup, promolgated through the tightly controlled mass media.

On available evidence, Commodore Frank actually appears serious about not wanting power for himself and or a shadowy clique, but seems genuine in his desire to “clean up” Fijian governance, removing the smelly residues of the Speight-fronted extreme nationalist Fijian putsch of 2000 still tainting politics, administration and even business.

The Fiji media has been threatened but, with one exception, has faced the military down to retain significant freedom to report and publish. Telecommunications have remained fully operational within and outside Fiji, enabling local and foreign journalists to file their stories, which have then been re-broadcast back into Fiji via outlets such as Radio Australia and Australia Network satellite television, both freely available via local transmitters.

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The Internet has also been a major news source too, with some locals reporting they're getting more information about what's happening in other parts of Suva via overseas on-line sources than from the local media.

Checkpoints have been set up and armed soldiers are watching traffic closely, but no areas of Fiji have been sealed off. Soldiers have also been stationed in villages where resistance to the coup was possible from pro-Qarase locals.

Despite some intimidation, Fiji's civil society has been largely left alone, with no protracted detentions or continuing harassing raids on activists or premises.

Looking closely at the tsunami of reportage out of Fiji during the first ten days of the coup, Commodore Frank has added some interesting sections to the loose leaf edition of The Book of Coups.

Soon after Commodore Frank announced he was taking power on Tuesday evening, December 5, soldiers turned up at local newsrooms demanding no news from the Qarase Government or its members be published or broadcast.

The next day's edition of the News Corporation-owned The Fiji Times was in production, but senior management told the military they were not going to publish under military censorship. They promptly announced their position on the Times'  website.

That night's late edition of Fiji TV News was also pulled, for the same reason, and this was also announced on air.

The next day, several Fiji media executives met with the military, put their position in very clear terms, and were assured their reportage would not be circumscribed provided they did not incite resistance to the coup (whatever that means in routine, responsible, ethical reporting). Following the mayhem of 2000, the Fiji media has long since put crisis reporting guidelines and procedures in place against possible future need. These have been implemented.

Of course, the military had earlier threatened the pro-Qarase Government. The Fiji Daily Post, which had suspended its print editions, continued to update its website.

International press freedom organisations, and even the News Corporation, moved quickly to criticise the threat to media freedom the military coup posed.

The Fiji-based media, at time of writing, remains in a “business as usual” but in wary mode.

Something else extremely interesting was also underway.

In Boston, US, Ms Jamila Raqib, a staffer with a non-violence think-tank, The Albert Einstein Institution, founded by the West's leading scholar of non-violence, Dr Gene Sharp, was e-mailing copies of the institution's 72-page The Anti-Coup Handbook to every email address she could find in Fiji.

"Individuals whom we were able to actually reach (I am excluding a number of emails that were returned to me as ‘undeliverable’) included a diverse group of more than 200 human rights organisations, government bodies, civil society groups, business councils, religious associations, as well as radio, television, newspaper, and web media networks to bring their attention to our publication," Ms Raqib told me in an email last week.

Fiji has an extremely diverse civil society which is very experienced in non-violent protest and associated organising and communications strategies and tactics. Receiving The Anti-Coup Handbook was extremely encouraging for such groups, reminding them that they were not isolated or forgotten.

A related phenomenon they needed to understand is called Backfire, in which repression can be calculated to rebound against the repressor in many ways.

This coup places pro-democracy activists in a severe dilemma. Many were as opposed to the Qarase Government's nationalist policies for Indigenous Fijian development, and its plans for qualified amnesty for 2,000 putsch plotters, as was Commodore Frank. They have rallied around the slogan, “It's the Principle - Just Peace and Democracy”, their support for the rule of law and the constitution navigating them through their dilemma of opposing both Qarase's policies and Bainimarama's coup.

Of course, some activists were threatened, a pro-democracy shrine set up at a house just west of Suva on the main road to Nadi was raided, apparently by soldiers in civilian dress, and some more vocal opponents of the coup have been detained, taken for verbal interrogation to the military HQ, and a purge is underway throughout the Fiji civil service to remove Qarase Government appointees. All the foregoing has been well reported by the Fiji media.

On Thursday lunchtime, December 14, a small group of pro-democracy activists met in inner city Suva's Sukuna Park, and walked up the hill to the Anglican Cathedral for a prayer vigil. Supporters were also lighting candles in their windows, wearing a blue ribbon - blue being the most prominent colour in Fiji's flag - and wearing black to symbolise the death of democracy. Soldiers were, apparently, nowhere to be seen as the activists conducted their protest.

Late last week, it emerged that the SDLV Party had been preparing for non-violent resistance to a coup as early as October, drawing up strategy documents for mass civil disobedience. The documents were leaked to the military, enabling them to prepare for such resistance, which has not eventuated.

In reaction to the coup, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer several times called on Fijians to passively resist the military, but did not suggest how they might do so effectively without getting themselves killed. Passive resistance is a long obsolete and completely inaccurate term to describe non-violent resistance. Local civil society activists were way ahead of him with their planning anyway.

But there have been no reports of the Australian High Commission, located on a hill about half way between Suva city and the military HQ in a northern suburb, handing out copies of The Anti-Coup Handbook, in line with the foreign minister's policy encouraging non-violent resistance to the coup. This would be helpful, as some Fiji NGOs cannot even afford to print the 72-page booklet.

The Bainimarama coup still has a long way to go, and its usurpation of legitimate power still needs considerable consolidation if it is not to go the way of the Rabuka coups, and contribute to an endemic coup culture in the country.

Much depends on how the peak Indigenous Fijian institution, the Great Council of Chiefs, itself seriously compromised by the events of 2000, responds to Commodore Frank's removal and internal exiling of Laisenea Qarase, whose SDLV Party attracted as much as 80 per cent of the Indigenous vote in the 2006 elections, his placing of the president and commander-in-chief, the ailing Ratu Josefa Ililo, under all but house arrest in Government House, and his removal of the universally respected vice-president, Commodore Frank's High Chief, the Roko Tui Bau, former jurist Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, from office.

All in all, a very strange kind of coup going on in Fiji.

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About the Author

Dr Mark Hayes is a lecturer in the journalism program at the University of Queensland where he specialises in Pacific media and journalism contexts and practices. He still wishes he was back in Suva teaching journalism at the University of the South Pacific.

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