In what New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has described as sending “a strong message” Pacific Forum leaders have voted to suspend Fiji from the Forum unless the interim government sets an election date before May 1. The suspension will mean Fiji cannot attend meetings between forum leaders, ministers or officials, it will also be excluded from benefiting from any regional initiatives run under the forum. Both Mr Key and forum chairman Toke Talagi said the decision was made by consensus, a surprising result given smaller Pacific nations were expected to vote against suspension, with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stating in his speech “I am of the strong view that adopting an isolationist approach would be unhelpful.”
Its not much of a stretch of imagination to suspect Australia and New Zealand used their influence as metropolitan powers in the region to sway the votes of other forum members. New Zealand governments -both the current National led government and the previous Labour led one- have taken a strong stance against Fiji’s interm government, which came to power after a military take over in December 2006. New Zealand’s line has commonly been that Fiji should “Return to democracy” this phrase can be seen in government media releases, or editorials in the mainstream media, but what “democracy” does Fiji have to return too?
Fiji has since colonial times had a racially segregated voting system, 46 of the 71 seats in parliament are ‘communal’ electorates in which voters vote according to their ethnicity. The electorates are based on provinces not population distribution, leading to further inequality of representation. As Crosbie Walsh wrote of the 2006 election;
[T]here were on average only 9,437 registered voters in [ethnic] Fijian, 4,607 in General Voter, and 5,373 in Rotuman communal electorates. This compared with 16,065 for Urban Fijan electorates and 11,014 for Indo-Fijians. Urban Fijians and Indo-Fijians were grossly under-represented
Walsh goes on to note that the over-represented electorates are among the least “developed” making voters prone to influence by chiefs and church ministers.
In contrast, the latter under-represented electorates produced two multi-ethnic Fijian parliamentary leaders ousted by racist-driven coups: Dr Timoci Bavadra, Fiji’s first Labour Party leader (ousted by the “Rabuka” coup in 1987) and Adi Teimumu Vuikaba Speed, Deputy PM in the Mahendra Chaudhry Labour-led government (ousted by the “Speight” 2000 coup).
New Zealand’s attitude toward Fiji after these coups was remarkably different from their stance toward the current regime. After the 1987 coup New Zealand engaged with the government for 5 years following the removal of Bavadra and the 1970 Constitution, it also engaged with the government installed after the 2000 coup, despite it being ruled illegal by Fiji’s high court (unlike the current interim government). The difference seems to be that the previous coups both represented the overthrow of governments led by a party formed along class lines rather than ethnic ones, with a strong union movement as its base, by racially motivated leaders pledging to protect native Fijian interests (in reality meaning the interests of Fiji’s elite).
The current interim government however, is pledging to hold elections once there has been electoral reform, disestablishing the racially segregated voting system and instituting one person one vote. This may yet be shown to be empty rhetoric, indeed some of the actions of the interim government seem rather undemocratic and should be of concern, but New Zealand’s stance doesn’t seem to be based on democracy. Could it be that New Zealand took a soft attitude to the governments installed after previous coups because it does not want to see a left-leaning government in Fiji influencing other countries in the region, not to mention the large Pacific diaspora in New Zealand?
