by Tan Copsey
Copyright scoop.co.nz
In my self-appointed role of pacific-affairs correspondent, thought y’all (no-one in the pacific says y’all outside of homies in South Auckland) might like to know that yet another military coup has happened in Fiji. As Selwyn Manning of scoop.co.nz reports:
‘Fiji's army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama has appointed himself as Fiji's president and has sacked elected prime minister Laisenia Qarase and president Ratu Josefa Iloilo’.
As you may remember this was basically predicted in these pages by Jon Frankel last week in his article on the state of democracy around the pacific.
Whilst my immediate reaction to this is to despair at Fiji’s democracy yet again being thrown into turmoil, this situation is this time a little more complicated than when George Speight and his nasty band of opportunists overthrew the government of Mahendra Chaudhry in 2000 (happily Speight is now imprisoned on a deserted island surrounded by tiger sharks – no I’m not making this up). Ousted Prime-Minister Laisenia Qarase was attempting to pardon some of those involved in the previous coup and was trying to pass legislation overtly favouring ethnic Fijians, however to solve this with yet another coup seems contorted logic indeed.
In the short term Fiji will now face threats including expulsion from the commonwealth and flight bans on key government officials in New Zealand and likely Australia. Further the tourism industry on which the country heavily relies will yet again be thrown into turmoil. So it would seem yet another bad day in the pacific.
