Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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Canadian Legal Eagles Should Think Thrice about Fiji
Fiji is short of judges, but any Canadian legal eagles who fancy a secondment in a South Pacific tropical paradise and get the call should think once, twice, thrice and then say "no."
Seven Sri Lankan judges recently said "yes" when they were asked to fill vacancies on the Fijian bench, but even their journey to the archipelago of 322 islands and 522 islets caused a massive diplomatic furor.
As a result the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners -- ambassadors among Commonwealth countries -- have been expelled and likewise Suva's man in Canberra.
It seems that some helpful Australian visa officers suggested to the Sri Lankan judges it would not be a good idea to take up their posts in Fiji, which has suffered under a succession of military coups and rebellions since 1987, when it had two in the same year.
The Sri Lankans were warned that because of all these coups and the military regime in power, the independence and integrity of the Fijian bench is in doubt and the country under all kinds of Commonwealth and Pacific Forum sanctions that include travel bans for judges.
As a result of Australia's intervention, Fiji's military strongman, Frank Bainimarama, got mightily irritated and gave Australia's James Batley and New Zealand's Todd Cleaver 24 hours to get on the plane out.
Bainimarama's gripe with Cleaver involved the New Zealand government's refusal to give a visa to Fijian family court judge Anjala Wati who wanted to take her daughter to New Zealand for medical treatment.
According to foreigners on the scene, the army has tightened its grip amid all this upheaval. There is now little prospect that Bainimarama, who is both prime minister and military commander, will hold elections in 2014 as he promised in April when the constitution was abrogated.
The constitution was junked and most judges fired after the Court of Appeal ruled that the December 2006 coup that brought Bainimarama to power was illegal. Hence his need for new judges, and especially ones willing to work with a military junta.
Australia and New Zealand have always kept a paternal watching brief over Fiji, as they do over many of Britain's former South Pacific colonies. This has regularly brought Canberra and Wellington into conflict with the Fijian strongman of the moment.
Indeed, Bainimarama for one has made the expulsion of New Zealand and Australian diplomats and other ex-pats something of a personal speciality.
In June 2007 New Zealand's High Commissioner, Michael Green, was chucked out for overshadowing the military leader by appearing as the chief guest at a rugby match.
Green's successor, Caroline McDonald, was ordered to go home after her embassy, abiding by the sanctions in place, refused a visa for the son of a senior official.
Bainimarama also has a thing against Australian journalists.
In January Fiji Times publisher Rex Gardner was expelled after the paper printed a letter critical of a lower court decision, subsequently overruled, that Bainimarama's coup was legal.
Gardner's predecessor, Evan Hannah, had been expelled in May last year, just a few weeks after Russell Hunter, publisher of the Fiji Sun, was put on the plane home.
The basic flaw in Fijian society is unresolved antipathy between the islands' 54.3 per cent native Melanesian majority and the Indo-Fijian descendants of contract labourers brought to the islands by the British in the 19th century.
The Indo-Fijians are a 38-per-cent minority, but they control the economy. Most of the coups in and since 1987 have been in one way or another attempts by the Melanesian Fijians, who dominate the military, to maintain political control in the face of their economic impotence.
After independence from Britain in 1970 it was the perceived domination of government by Indo-Fijians, then close to a majority of the population, that led to the first coup in 1987 and the second some months later when Fiji was made into a republic with a non-executive president.
Civil unrest and persecution of Indo-Fijians led to many leaving the country and the Melanesians establishing their current majority.
Throughout the 1990s there were efforts to produce a new and reasonably democratic constitution. This was finally achieved in 1997, but the subsequent elections led to an Indo-Fijian, Mahendra Chaudhry, becoming prime minister.
In 2000 George Speight led a military coup which, through various turmoils, led to Commodore Bainimarama taking executive power.
Democracy was restored in 2001, but it didn't last long. The new government attempted to pass a bill giving compensation to victims of the 2000 coup -- mostly Indo-Fijians of course -- and amnesty for the perpetrators -- almost all Melanesians.
Bainimarama, the military commander, was violently opposed to the legislation. In December 2006 he gave the prime minister an ultimatum to shelve the bill or resign.
When the prime minister refused to do either Bainimarama pressured the then president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, to dissolve parliament. Iloilo then took the no doubt sensible course of appointing Bainimarama prime minister.
Vancouver Sun per Jonathan Manthorpe 11-09-09
It really seems sensible when an imbecile appoints a moron high school dropout to be our illegal PM.
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