DOING YOUR DUTY (even if your duty does you)
This is a summary review of my years (2005-2010) at the helm of the Fiji Daily Post [FDP] newspaper; it took the form of a presentation made at Avondale College in 2013[1]:
'A free press can be good or bad, but, almost certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad’ [Albert Camus]
A brief background history of the FDP is on Wikipedia. I refer you to it, suffice to note here that it began in October 1987 in a weekly news-magazine format. Two years later, September 1989, the first daily ‘Fiji Daily Post’ newspaper (Volume 1, No. 1) appeared.
Into the early ‘90s, the newspaper was training some of Fiji’s top journalists and writers. Readership was booming. I also began ghost-writing/editing for a number of feature contributors at that time. There was no third newspaper back then and advertising revenue - the oxygen of publication - was up. Circulation, the bonus of the business, was up.
By the late ‘90s, the newspaper was looking decidedly tired against Rupert Murdoch’s very profitable Fiji Times – Fiji’s oldest newspaper (1869) and a national institution. FDP circulation was falling; its print quality deteriorating due to already aging second-hand machinery was in decline. Worse, the company management was internally conflicted and the Rabuka government was circling to buy into the paper.
In February 1999 – some three months before the election held under the principles of Fiji’s 1997 Constitution - Finance Minister, Jim (now Sir James) Ah Koy, persuaded the Rabuka government to purchase FDP shares as an election strategy, to help its campaign by presenting the government’s undiluted explanation and dissemination of its policies. In short, to become its propaganda tool.
The government promised, if re-elected, to upgrade the newspaper’s material resources and production facilities. This reciprocation fell through however because Fiji’s 1987 coup leader and PM, Rabuka, did not get back into office. In the May 1999 election, he was swept from office by Mahendra Chaudhry’s Fiji Labour Party. Chaudhry’s win lasted a year before the infamous fringe Adventist, George Speight, turned up on 19 May 2000 and seized power for 56-days. But power for whom? - 46 of those days were in collaboration with military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. That is, ten days after Speight coup seized power, FB himself seized power, abrogated the constitution, and deposed President Mara.
Fortunately for the Fiji Daily Post, the first post-2000 coup government of Laisenia Qarase was persuaded to make good on the Rabuka government’s original promise and with about a million Fijian dollars, a management group was brought in to revive the ailing paper. But despite this, coupled with the usual economic downturn and constitutional-political woes that ensued, the FDP continued to register mounting losses.
Which is where my story begins. About ten years back, two of the FDP’s private shareholders – Colonial Bank and Unit Trust – were seeking to offload their combined 46% interest in the newspaper. The FDP’s news editors at the time, my father-in-law, Mesake Koroi, approached for help to find an Australian who might be interested in taking up the shares. It took a year, but I did, and friend, Alan Hickling, acquired a 46% share in the FDP in late 2004 - on condition that I assist him (I was still at university lecturing at the time), and on condition that due diligence follow as promised by the FDP Board[2]. Due diligence was carried out by three Australian forensic accountants who soon found that the measures undertaken by the previous management group which had been commissioned to oversee the paper’s debt-reduction, were curious to say the least. This matter became, and still is, the subject of Court action and a criminal investigation[3].
In January 2005, while on leave from Monash, I found myself as an unpaid acting-editor-in-chief, acting general manager, and acting publisher, while FDP management staff were being reorganised by Hickling. After a month of this, my sabbatical was up, and this option presented itself: go back to Monash and tenured teaching, or take on a newspaper in crisis. It was obvious which of these burdens got the heart beating. The challenge of inheriting debts, liabilities, administrative woes, and wider political turmoil won hands down!
Immediately, we reset the operation to halt money-out exceeding the money-in. After two years, we managed a $1.6 million turnover and 2006 was looking good for the future - we still ran a small loss in 2006, but it was a mere one-fifteenth of the previous year. I encouraged staff that our primary commitment was ideally – to provide a robust third voice to Fiji’s political print; to aim for mature and balanced reporting of political views; and to be outspoken about our commitment to fundamental democratic values, especially the right to a free press and freedom of expression.
Within months of setting the new tone and face of the newspaper (i.e. in early 2005), our switchboard and letterbox were hot with congratulations and complaints, death threats, bomb threats, lock-outs, summits, and summonses. One anonymous fellow rang and asked ‘Are you the one who says whatever you like?’ ‘Yep’. Phone slams down in my ear. Fiji’s Vice-President, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, felt moved to write saying he didn’t always agree with the newspaper’s point of view, but was glad a new voice was being heard. The Human Rights Commissioner at the time simply turned up and sat in our board room until I could attend to her. Introducing herself, Dr Shaista Shameem (a liberal Muslim with a PhD in sociology), gave the newspaper a lecture on what ‘freedom of speech’ meant in Fiji. Our media rivals, who had tried but failed to buy government shares when they were offered, editorialised bitterly about our successful tender over theirs. The Fiji Labour Party Opposition made us a parliamentary scapegoat. Honourable Poseci Bune referred to us as that ‘bloody newspaper’ that ‘no one reads’ during the parliamentary debate on our accession to print. (Our subscriptions, feedback and street sales told us otherwise).
After reporting the Danish Muslim cartoon issues, the Malaysian High Commissioner summoned FDP senior staff and myself to her embassy for an extended sumptuous lunch as well as a pointed lecture about ensuring that the FDP not inflame Muslim ‘activism’ in Fiji. She later felt she had overdone it and after releasing us, sent two bottles of top label whisky to the office with a short apologetic letter. The GM and his cousin (PM Qarase) got the whisky; I kept the letter. Meanwhile the PM went on TV and radio with a prepared statement condemning the FDP for its reporting of the Danish Muslim cartoon issue.
Along with government’s antipathy to our exercise of press freedom, a matter that especially elicited prejudice from many quarters and alienated us from Fiji’s military leaders was our commitment to the principle of political reconciliation. During 2005/6 we were singularly unambiguous in editorially supporting the government’s proposed ‘reconciliation, truth and amnesty [RATU] bill’. Our support for it was derived from four principles: (1) the pursuit of reconciliation, goodwill and social harmony is a Biblical injunction; (2) reconciliation is an indigenous value at the heart of customs of respect and reciprocity; (3) reconciliation was the expressed will of the Fijian people through their provincial councils, their Great Council of Chiefs, and their elected representatives in government; and (4), the FDP believed that reconciliation was the best way forward for a racially differentiated population attempting to recover from a collective wounded past.
For this unapologetic stance, which ran contrary to the outspoken military commander’s opposition, our FDP reporters were barred from military public events. On one occasion in 2005, our reporters were ejected from the Australian High Commission in the presence of Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer by FB. It prompted an editorial ‘Grow Up Frank’ – one of more than 60 penned that year warning the military to keep out of democratic politics. More than one editorial a week, in fact, during the years 2005 and 2006. Consistent with this practice and ethos, at the end of 2005, one year before Fiji’s fourth coup, I editorialised as follows:
The Qarase government has an uphill battle in the forthcoming 2006 poll. If the apparent bias against the [reconciliation] bill given by our rivals the Fiji Sun and the Fiji Times is coupled with revived opposition to the bill by our military commander, the ongoing boycott of the FLP, and the hostility of various NGOs, the SDL will face an anti-reconciliation media barrage on a scale that will probably topple the government.
Some in the government thought I was being unduly alarmist at the time.
After the May 2006 elections, which we monitored closely, and which received a ‘free and fair’ validation by the Pacific Islands Forum, by Commonwealth observers, by EU observers, and by UN observers, we were invited to a review with the EU ambassador. He asked whether I thought Fiji would now settle after the successful re-election of the Qarase SDL government in May 2006. ‘No, there’ll be a coup’ I assured him. He was incredulous, ‘Why?’ ‘Because the wrong party won’ I responded. That is, despite a campaign undertaken by soldiers in support of a newly launched military-oriented party led by a former military commander, the military party won no seats. They will be very angry, I told the EU ambassador.
The FDP was loud, but not alone in its bell-ringing for democracy - the retired former head of the Methodist Church in Fiji, Reverend Josateki Koroi, who had once served 15 years as senior chaplain (at the rank of major) to the Fiji military, was also deeply anxious about the rising vocal military threats to democracy. He lobbied privately and publicly throughout the closing months of 2006 to turn events around, but the nagging unfinished business of the May 2000 coup and subsequent military mutiny was determined to play itself out. Such that, by October 2006, the Qarase government had decided that it had had enough, but clumsily and vainly attempted to replace the military commander. Had the Attorney-General acted swiftly and courageously at that time, the military leaders would have faced charges of: Disobedience to a lawful order by the Minister of Home Affairs, the Prime Minister's office and the office of the President; Sedition in publicly threatening to remove the Minister of Home Affairs and the Prime Minister; Treason in openly plotting to overthrow the Government; Unlawfully aborting a Commission of Inquiry; Illegally removing the President in 2000; Murder of CRW soldiers in 2000 (specifically ordering the deaths of Selesitano Kalounivale, Jone Davui, Epineri Bainimoli and Lagani Rokowaqa); and finally, Abuse of office.
Too little, too late. With the intervening years of grandstanding and encouraging military macho pride, along with muted public dissent and even overt support from the ‘scribbling classes’, military leaders staged the December 2006 coup thereby saving themselves from being charged with treason. Bainimarama led Fiji’s fourth coup in its short 36 year post-colonial history of what we now call ‘coup culture’ – a culture resulting in the militarisation of public administration and accompanied by the flight abroad of Fiji’s professional and credentialed middle class[4].
We went to press on Saturday, 2 December 2006 edition declaring that Monday, 4 December would be coup day. In our 3 December, Sunday Post, we extensively covered the failed Wellington summit a few days earlier between the PM and the military commander that had been hosted by the NZ government[5]. We also outlined what we purported would be the Fiji military’s blueprint for executing their coup. We were a day out! On Tuesday 5 December, while 60 soldiers surrounded the PM’s residence and other military ran around seizing government vehicles and rounding cabinet members, life looked surreally ‘normal’ for Suva. FDP News Editor, Mithleshni Gurdayal, reported for our 6 December edition:
Nine miles away from the city, armed soldiers took over the Police Tactical Response unit in Makoi for the second time in three days, as they made attempts to take the Acting Police Commissioner Moses Driver and Assistant Police Commissioner, Crime, Kevueli Bulamainavalu. The armed soldiers finally succeeded and escorted the two senior police top-brass to the military Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Delainabua. Another batch of armed soldiers also forcibly entered a meeting venue in Suva where Government chief executives officers were meeting with Fiji’s Solicitor-General Nainendra Nand. The soldiers stormed in and stopped the meeting, ordering them to leave for QEB where the commander was waiting to meet with them. Deposed Prime Minister’s CEO, Jioji Kotobalavu, was also picked up by armed soldiers and taken to the barracks. Soldiers also took over the Parliamentary complex ... in the middle of the Senate debate on the Qarase Government’s 2007 national budget. Armed soldiers walked up to the doors of the House [but] could barely enter when the Secretary to Parliament, Mary Chapman, warned them to back off. Armed soldiers were seen moving in and out of Suva, setting more check points in the area.
To immediately succeed, coupsters need lawyers, guns and money – and a compliant media. In this regard, the military leadership had the support of key members of the judiciary (evident in the sacking of C.J. Fatiaki and his replacement with J. Gates) as well as vocal support of Human Rights Commissioner; they had guns (as well as those illegally seized from the wharf); and they had the backing of the local business elite as well wealthy entrepreneurs in the crucial tourism sector. Correspondingly, the besieged Qarase government was faced with an incompetent and paralysed Attorney-General; no guns (only prayers); the desertion of support from the business and banking sector, from key NGOs, and from key Asian diplomats; and, critically, Australian acquiescence. Australian PM John Howard’s shamefully weak diplomatic statements coupled with the understandable retreat of Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes back to Australia in the face of death threats to his family made the coup inevitable in the FDP view. Add into the equation the support of the Catholic Church leadership, all of Fiji’s non-governing political parties, as well as some Australian academics and Australian journalists who openly supported the military – and still do – and it was all but over for the Qarase government. Amazingly, Fiji’s Human Rights Commissioner, also supported the coup in principle and even justified the coup’s methodology.
To finally succeed coups also require justifying causes - these (‘Nine Demands’ as they were variously put) amounted to the need to - clean up corruption; avert political instability; end indigenous ethno-nationalism; introduce real multiculturalism; and introduce real democracy and good governance. By way of complement, ultimate coup success also depends on offering an alternative vision. In Bainimarama’s 2006 coup, this was an oddly edited manifesto called ‘The People’s Charter’.
In selling these justifying causes of the coup and the alternative ‘new’ vision, the FDP was anything but compliant and our problems escalated as a result. Advertising revenue fled as did some FDP staff who supported the coup; other staff were intimidated, another bomb threat was received, and our property repeatedly vandalized and stolen by unknown citizens - the FDP digital archives remain at large to this day.
We handled it all the best way we could – we did our own investigating, we poked fun at our enemies and laughed ourselves, we reported things to the hapless police, and at times we published literally on the run. When a military raid was rumoured, news-staff took home their computers, gathered their news and wrote their stories, then emailed them in to a central location where we were able to layout, print off the galleys, get the pages to our production staff (for negatives and plating) and put to press a limited circulation (1000-2000 print run). As a result, we were the only newspaper on the streets the day after the coup (Wednesday, 6 December) – the other newspapers choosing to shut down voluntarily for a day. We were sold out by mid-morning.
Within days, our General Manager, Mesake Koroi, was taken to the military barracks for a ‘compulsory re-education tutorial’ (as I call it), whereupon he understandably fled with his cousin, the Prime Minister, to their home island in Fiji’s Lau province. He was there for three months, the PM for nine. But no sooner was our GM back at work than he was taken another three times up to the military camp for another ‘re-education seminar’[6]. Our home was raided twice by soldiers; our local shopkeeper was threatened; family friends were cautioned not to entertain us. Advertisers were warned not to run with us. Subscriptions dried up. I was advised not to run certain feature writers and weekly columnists in our pages. (My dear sister was told by a naval officer not to have us around or risk being targeted and stigmatised herself). Meanwhile the newspaper carried on with help from brave staff and the stubborn leadership of FDP legal officer, Api Mataitoga, our News Editor, Mithleshni Gurdayal, and my wife, Lupe.
At the end of the week following the coup, Lupe and I were returning from our afternoon-tea break, when a panicked, tearful staff member came hurrying down the street begging us not to go back to the office as the military was there. I consoled her, but ignored her warning and proceeded to our offices to challenge the invasion of our workspace[7]. As you can imagine, within minutes, all the media, local and international (who were still in the country), print and visual, were in our offices getting the story. And within the hour I too was taken up to the military camp for an obligatory re-education tutorial. The media followed and after a one-sided argument between a colonel and myself, I was told I’d be deported the following day and my passport was confiscated[8]. ‘Fiji doesn’t need people like you!’ the colonel shouted. Ouch[9]. That colonel, Mara, is now in exile in Tonga accused of plotting against the Bainimarama regime.
While awaiting a deportation order, I worked on believing the coup was un-set jelly - that while the situation looked hopeless, it was still fluid and could be reset before things got worse. On the eve of a Great Council of Chiefs/Bose Levu Vakaturaga meeting the week before Christmas 2006, I appealed to the GCC Chairman to intervene. I had that year been one of seven ‘Friends of the Chair’, a group of supposedly confidential advisers to GCC chairman, Ratu Ovini Bokini[10].
Democracy ... must be restored by already apparent means that have served and concretised it. In our case, by the fair election of the SDL Qarase government in May. As one who has been a committed ‘Friend of the Chair’ I urge you and the Great Council to resist pragmatic and compromised positions that may be proposed ‘to take Fiji forward’ (as the rationalisation goes). Only justice can take us forward to reconciliation. I therefore beg that you distance yourselves utterly from positions which come cloaked with decency, but which are utterly false in their premise, and which will bear bitter fruit in their consequence. I make my view plain because I fully endorse and admire the principled and courageous position you have taken as Chairman in countering the coup. I share your struggle and vision to bring a peaceful, lawful and rational resolution to the crisis that is afflicting our beloved nation.
Though often a house divided, the GCC on that occasion spoke with one voice and declared its ongoing recognition and support for the nation’s deposed President Iloilo, for Vice-President Madraiwiwi, and for the Qarase government. For this, the council was immediately banned from meeting further, prorogued (dissolved) indefinitely four months later, and then finally abolished in 2012[11].
In the immediate post-coup weeks, with the deposed PM having fled to his village, our lawyer friend and colleague, Tevita Fa, set about preparing a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the coup to place before the High Court before things got too far removed from democracy. For his outspoken opposition to the coup, Fa, like the FDP had also suffered threats, round-the-clock surveillance, and vandalisation of property. Trusted FDP staff typed up affidavits and documents which were secreted past roadblocks and checkpoints to Mr Fa for checking. They were then couriered by plane across to the deposed PM for his consideration and signature in the handbags of women. Slowly the process of legal challenge took shape this way with the eventual result being an initial defeat at the hands of Fiji’s High Court where Justice Gates and his coup-sympathetic colleagues found for the coupsters. The case eventually went to the Court of Appeal which found for Qarase - Bainimarama then sacked the entire judiciary. (Fa died in 2011).
Meanwhile, the FDP kept publishing – monitored, not just by the coup government, but, thankfully, by the International Press Institute, a global watchdog for press freedom and persecution of journalists. Having been warned not to talk to the international media, I found other ways of communicating with the outside world. But the surveillance was unrelenting. Security personnel were parked continually outside our home and work place. I would be walking along a street when a person would catch my eye and simply make the sign of zipping their mouths. Soldiers at checkpoints would call out my name. While using a deserted ATM late one night, a car full of soldiers appeared out nowhere and made a hush sign before speeding off. We came home one evening to find a truckload of soldiers waiting in our driveway for permission (!) to search the house.
Beginning Christmas Eve 2006, a familiar but un-reportable series of obligatory ‘re-education tutorials’ commenced at Queen Elizabeth Barracks and continued well after the coup. Pro-democracy letter-writers (such Laisa Vulakoro); lawyers (such as Richard Naidu, Tupou Draunidalo, Janet Mason); feminist protesters (such as Virisila Buadromo); youth workers (like John Ryder, Laisa Digitaki); trade unionists (for example, Tevita Koroi, Taniela Tabu); church leaders (mostly Methodist such as Ame Tugaue, Tuikilakila, Tomasi Kanailagi, Manasa Lasaro, Patiliai Leqa); media persons (Netani Rika, Samisoni Kakaivalu, Imraz Iqbal and many others); and outspoken deposed government, SDL Party, members (such as Mere Samisoni, Peceli Kinivuwai, Ted Young, Sam Speight, Mataiasi Ragigia, Pita Waqavonovono) - all were all taken up to the military camp and/or regularly harassed. Raids in the middle of the night[12], beatings, obligatory road-runs under soldier supervision, all-day tortuous parades under a hot sun[13], a pregnant woman was punched and sat on, a barrister terrorised, houses and businesses were burnt to the ground, and some who spoke up lost their lives.
Meanwhile the abusers and murderers were shielded by public fear, a muzzled press, and a defiant, unapologetic PM and his regime[14]. The military happily boasts that more than a thousand citizens have been taken in for their re-education tutorials in just the first three years of the 2006 coup. Perhaps the most brutal tutorials in the 2000-2010 period were those resulting in the deaths of civilians Nimilote Verebasaga (a surveyor who was beaten so badly his clothes had to be changed before his unrecognisable body could be returned to his grieving family), Sakiusa Rabaka, and Tevita Malasebe. None of these cases have been satisfactorily presented in the news because of coup government decrees restricting media freedom – decrees which have resulted in resulting in self-censorship (out of fear); government intervention (taken up to the military camp); and foreign diplomatic interference[15].
At my wits end, in 2008, I requested an interview with the government’s chief censor, Major Neumi Leweni, to protest and beg for a cessation of intimidation rituals of FDP staff and property. Together with FDP publisher, Alan Hickling, it was agreed to meet at the Holiday Inn in Suva. Leweni brought well-known enforcer, Colonel Driti, with him. ‘My professional enemy’, Driti smiled as we shook hands. ‘Professional I hope, enemies, I hope not’, I retorted. At the conclusion of our discussion, Driti surprisingly extended his hand and offered a heartfelt handshake apology for the treatment that had been dished out to us hitherto. He proffered his card and assurance that if any more thuggery was experienced by the FDP he would like to hear about it. I shook hands with him gladly and we parted as friends not enemies I believe[16]. Driti is now in jail serving time for plotting a counter-coup.
On 10 April 2009, censors physically arrived to oversee the production and presentation of FDP news. This made objectivity and balance impossible. Every evening prior to going to press, a number of stories would get a metaphorical red pen through them thereby slowing down the entire operation until we could find replacement stories. When censors failed to materialise on two occasions, I gave the go-ahead to publish anyway and received written threats from government to close the paper for doing so. When I was given documents that related to a government minister’s investments and bank accounts in Australia, we were raided, a staff reporter was taken to camp and threatened in order to hand over the documents. Because of this attitude, government classified revenue that was once promised to the FDP went to our rivals. We didn’t toe the line, we lost the income. It should be noted that censorship was only minorly about ensuring no anti-government line was publicised in the newspaper, but was majorly about control, about letting media know who was boss[17]. The most anomalous decision was when censors demanded we remove a story that came from the censors themselves (i.e. the Ministry for Information)! When we pointed out that the chief censor himself had sent it to us by email, our newsroom censors, after a quick phone call, naturally relented.
Despite a faithful subscriber and readership-base, and the lobbying of sympathetic officials and professionals in government, and despite having clearly survived its toughest financial and political times, the decision was taken to close the newspaper in March 2010, to suspend publication, until further notice. Until democracy returns. The burden of unresolved court cases, the placement of censors in the newsroom, the government’s withdrawal of its subscriptions and classified advertising impacted on an already falling circulation, loss of sales and advertising revenue, declining staff morale, and inability to pay our rent made the decision to suspend publication inevitable. Our last Friday of work was with a staff of 25, and for a final edition of just 16 pages.
Nearly all FDP news staff have with my encouragement, permission, and blessing, taken up positions at other media. It’s a win-win (if I may be immodest), they have employment and I get to hear the inside news that doesn’t get published. In the meantime, since the end of 2009, I keep myself busy ghost-writing, marking post-graduate theses, launching books, producing music for others, giving advice to our church, keeping the democratic faith with deposed political parties and their leaders, representing the Australian Football League in Fiji, and editing a New Fijian Translation Bible.
AS TO THE FUTURE:
As a print media, the FDP has gone the way of the GCC, the SDL government, the ‘Fijian’ people – and very soon, the Fiji flag. Into the annals of history in its old form and with a future only in some remodelled form (such as this online edition). The opinion of a rival newspaper editor is that as far as the military was concerned, we were ‘beyond the pale’. As far as the media are concerned, the straight-forward words of long-time journalist Samisoni Pareti from 2009 are still fitting, he said: ‘There are many scared journalists and reporters in the country ... [and] hardly a whisper is heard when a journalist is taken in by the military’. The future of free media in Fiji probably lies only with bloggers and blogsites.
Meanwhile, predictably enough, Bainimarama’s democratic Fiji sputters on – fleshed out by yet another militarised regime, propped up by investors, encouraged by international acquiescence, media censorship imposed by fear and compliance from a public doped by confusion and propaganda. Poverty is up and faith in the police and justice system struggles. Ultimately, I believe that God rules, and politicians merely serve, but justice is our common calling. In this, the deaths of civilians Nimilote Verebasaga, Sakiusa Rabaka, and Tevita Malasebe whose arrests got out of hand, cry out for resolution. The intimidation rituals of beatings and torture on a brave but unbowed resistance movement at the hands of Fiji’s security forces (i.e. usually police doing the dirty work on orders of the military) continue to cry out. Calls for an open society, for depoliticised and open justice cry out. All these call out for exposure and vindication through a free press, open courts, and a democratic polity. They demand we in the media do our duty – even if our duty does us. That’s the courage Fiji is struggling to find right now. I hope you find it in your heart to encourage that courage.
A BRIEF BACKGROUND FIJI TIMELINE:
1830s: Christianity arrives
1874: Fiji colonized - Queen Victoria
1970, 10 October: Independence from Britain
1987, 14 May: First Fiji coup – the Rabuka coup overthrows the Bavadra-led Labour government. Indian Fijians attacked by rampaging indigenous ‘Taukei Movement’ activists; The Great Council of Chiefs [BLV] resolves to support Rabuka coup. International sanctions against Fiji put in place henceforth.
1987 25 September: Second Fiji coup – Rebuka’s ‘republican’ coup revokes the 1970 Constitution Taukei Movement activists again rampage through Suva streets.
1987 3 October: Fiji declared a ‘republic’ thereby formally ending ties with the British Crown which have defined Fiji since colonization in 1874. Fiji is expelled from the Commonwealth and is suspended from trading with the EEC; new constitution to be devised – proclaimed 25 July 1990.
1992 30 May: New GCC-backed SVT party of Rabuka wins election majority and rules.
1994 15 January: New moderate Fijian FAP party of Jo Kamikamica formed.
1995-7: Reeves Constitution review Commission produces 1997 Constitution – Fiji’s third in three decades.
1999 19 May: Fiji’s first Indian PM, Mahendra Chaudhry, is sworn in thereby taking control of government out of itaukei Fijian hands for first time since independence. Itaukei public servants violate their oaths by destroying public records; itaukei ethno-nationalists incite protests and public demonstrations against incoming government.
2000 19 May: Fiji’s third coup led by George Speight on behalf of the military overthrows Fiji’s first Indian-led government and briefly restores indigenous itaukei Fijian control. By July, Bainimarama trumps Speight and Qarase is installed as Interim PM, 28 July.
2000 2 November: An army mutiny is attempted against military leader, Bainimarama, but he is protected and is to be instrumental in challenging the Fiji Methodist Church.
2001 9 May: Qarase launches new SDL party uniting SVT and FAP remnants; iTaukei ethno-nationalists form CAMV. In coalition, they win power at 1 September elections.
2002 February: 2000 Coup leader, George Speight, is convicted of treason and receives death sentence which is subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
2004 18 April: Ratu Mara dies;
August 2004 – April 2005: Vice-President Seniloli convicted of treason for role in army mutiny, along with other high chiefs and government ministers convicted for roles in 2000 coup.
2005 15 May: RATU (reconciliation) Bill released.
2006 12 January: Another attempted mutiny at QEB Military barracks fails.
2006 May: Qarase-led SDL party wins its second election and forms fragile multiparty government. War-of-words that began in after the first elected SDL government (in 2001) hots up in November with demand and counter-demand coming from both the elected government and the uncooperative military.
2006 5 December: Fourth Fiji coup - the Bainimarama military coup aims to finish what was intended in the 2000 coup. A State of Emergency is imposed and rule is by Decrees. In January 2007 series of legal maneuvers sees FB first assuming presidency then relinquishing it and subsequently being appointed Interim PM.
2006 December: Along with FDP staff, other outspoken critics of the coup - Laisa Digitaki, Imraz Iqbal, Virisila Buadromo, Richard Naidu, Mere Samisoni and even pop singer Laisa Vulakoro - are similarly threatened, abused and/or their property vandalized and destroyed.
2007: The purge takes effect with removal, suspensions and/or resignations of: Chair of Public Service Commission; Police Commissioner; Acting Police Commissioner; Deputy Police Commissioner; Assistant Police Commissioner; Solicitor-General; Deputy Solicitor-General; Supervisor of Elections; CEO of Ministry of Finance; CEO of Fijian Affairs Board; the Chief Justice; Chief Magistrate; the members and/or chairs of no less than 13 statutory boards and public enterprises; mayors of town councils; CEOs and permanent secretaries of government ministries; and university vice-chancellors. Harassment, disruptions, and vendetta politics take over.
2007 13 April: The Bose Levu Vakaturaga [the Great Council of Chiefs] is suspended by President in line with wishes of the Military Government.
2007 14 June: New Zealand High Commissioner, Michael Green, is expelled from Fiji on grounds of political interference.
2007 September-October: Six High Court judges resign from service citing political interference in their commissions.
2007 November: Eleven arrested in alleged failed plot to assassinate Bainimarama and other Cabinet members of the Military Government
2008 26 February: Australian publisher of The Fiji Sun, Russell Hunter, deported for political interference.
2008 2 May: Australian publisher of The Fiji Times newspaper, Evan Hannah, deported for political interference.
2008 December: New Zealand High Commissioner ejected for political interference.
2009 January: Second Australian publisher of The Fiji Times deported due to political interference.
2009 April: The entire Fiji judiciary is sacked (Coup 4.5) after the Court of Appeal rejected the October 2008 Gates High Court which found the coup justified. The Fiji Methodist Church hierocracy is forbidden by the Military Government from their convening church conference on charges of political interference. Three foreign journalists - Sia Aston and photographer Matt Smith from New Zealand’s TV3, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sean Dorney -- were expelled from Fiji, 13 April.
2009 May: Fiji is suspended from the Pacific Island Forum
2009 July: Twenty-seven Methodist Church hierocrats detained and charged for meeting illegally.
2009 September: Fiji is yet again suspended from the Commonwealth, invoking international disfavour and anathema; EEC suspends trading relations with Fiji
2009 November: Australian High Commissioner, James Batley, ejected due to political interference. New Zealand High Commissioner ejected for political interference.
2010 January: The Methodist Church hierocracy is again forbidden by the Military Government from convening their church conference - this time, until 2014.
2010 June: Loss to indigenous itaukei Fijians of their international and historic nomenclature and identity as ‘Fijian’ when the Military Government and Cabinet approve a decree for all Fiji citizens to be called ‘Fijian’ and formerly named indigenous ‘Fijians’ to be called itaukei - effective 16 July 2010.
2010 July: Second Australian High Commissioner, Sarah Roberts, ejected.
2011 August: The Methodist Church hierocracy is forbidden for the third consecutive year by the Military Government of convening the church conference.
2012 August–December: Work commences on fourth Fiji constitution by Yash Ghai’s Constitution Commission – public submissions process and drafting.
2013: Yash Ghai’s draft submission to president is rejected. Party and voter eligibility criteria set for next election and a FB-approved constitution is invoked.
2014 September: Election of FB and his “Fiji First Party” to office.
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[1] By way of personal background, I was born in Fiji in 1952 and came to Australia in 1963 for my secondary and tertiary education. I remained a Fiji citizen until 1989. Prior to signing on for work with the Fiji Daily Post, in 2005, I had taught Australian politics for three years and sociology (mostly at Monash University in Melbourne) for 24 years.
[2] Government held 42% of the balance, while the remaining 12% of shares were held by a number of minor shareholders. There was no controlling shareholder – a problem that was long identified as one of the structural weaknesses in the company and one which Hickling set about to change by acquiring at least 5% of the minor shareholders shares.
[3] In short, we allege corrupt collusion between the head of the management group, the major bank involved, former board members, and the government representative member on the Board.
[4] While our business strategy at the FDP had been working and the financial bow of the ship was coming about (as it were), when Frank Bainimarama’s soldiers turned up on the streets - as long promised, and as long resisted by the FDP - things went belly up for the newspaper (and remain so).
[5] It had been our hope that the Clark NZ government would hold the military commander on behalf of the Qarase government – but to no avail. We were also led to believe that the Howard Australian government would intervene under the terms of the Biketawa Agreement on the besieged government’s behalf – no such luck.
[6] An account of his imprisonment at the military barracks on this occasion – one of dozens - may be found in the book, 1987: Twenty Years Later, edited by Vijay Naidu amd Ganesh Chand.
[7] There is in circulation a recording of my encounter with the captain who sat in our chairman’s chair in our Boardroom encircled by his soldiers and my weeping staff. It is not a nice recording – and I did not make it - but my voice as you may hear is full of anxiety and stress, and anger.
[8] A report on my experience here may be found in the International Press Institute’s 2006 Annual Report.
[9] The colonel subsequently became convinced Fiji didn’t need types like him either - he subsequently fled the country by speedboat to Tonga and is currently in Australia applying for asylum.
[10] The confidentiality of the group was in fact breached by one of our members, a chief, who immediately sided with the coupsters when they acted.
[11] Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr applauded this abolition despite national public desire and constitutional provision for its restoration in the new Yash Ghai draft constitution, which FB simply scrapped earlier this year (2013).
[12] In our case, we were awakened one night to the sound of machete-armed soldiers smashing their way through our FDP motor vehicles parked in our driveway. We recognized them and their getaway vehicle, but the police who attended the crime scene and who took our report begged for our understanding that knowing who was involved, it may be ‘years’, if at all, before the case could be prosecuted.
[13] On once occasion, a group taken to the military camp was given the task of ladling water from one drum to another, one at a time; they were abused and given further punishment if they refused to cooperate or performed poorly.
[14] I was on my way to McDonalds one sunny morning for breakfast and on the deserted hot pavement outside a school, two armed soldiers were yelling at and kicking a handcuffed fellow lying face-down on the ground – in the open, and undisturbed. I stopped, reached for my camera, then thought better of it when the soldiers simply looked up and continued. The scene and my lack of Mosaic courage to intervene have haunted me ever since.
[15] Anything, for example, that the Chinese embassy disagreed with in the FDP would be met with a threatening phone call, followed by an immediate visit, and even an educative dinner. I had several of these. But the most disturbing turn-up in this regard was the 2008 Fiji Human Rights Commission Report that supported the media crackdown. The report was rightly condemned by insiders and out, but was entirely consistent with previous judgements by the Human Rights Commission defending military brutality against democracy supporters. As a rival newspaper editor, Russell Hunter, summed it, the FHRC Media Report ‘is a shockingly sloppy piece of work’, a ‘litany of factual inaccuracy, hate speech, non sequiturs, and blatant misrepresentation all interlaced with a thick rope of racism’. Hunter was deported, after which his newspaper The Fiji Sun, became the mouthpiece of the coup government – and still is. Curiously, the Fiji Sun and Sanitarium Weet-Bix cooperate on many public relations co-sponsorships.
[16] It is ironic that Driti was later discharged and now faces sedition charges at the hands of his former bosses.
[17] These examples of excisions demonstrate this and shows how hard it was to ‘learn from experience’: PNG ‘Post Courier’ story about a sex worker allegedly bashed to death by police in Lae; AP story from Darwin about a woman who died after being stabbed by her boyfriend; AP story about rising unemployment in Australia and the strain it places on your welfare system; Tourism Fiji press release about its use of ‘tactical marketing’ to help declining tourism here in Fiji; A Danziger cartoon about American general-retired, Colin Powell; Story on Fiji Cane Growers Council asking for state intervention in the appointment of a new CEO; Editorial on EU removal of its sugar subsidy; Story on local reactions to EU withdrawal of subsidy; Editorial on local calls to ban the ‘Angels and Demons’ movie; Editorial on Catholic sex abuse in Ireland; Story about commencement of sugarcane crushing season – was twice rejected; Story on drop in reported child abuse cases in Ba; AP story on Italian PM refusing to resign amid teen scandal; AP story about a man arrested for live web-streamed rape attack in US; Story about PNG police being told to ‘pull up socks; AP story about gay marriage bill passing into law in New Hampshire; Story from our National Road Safety Council warning that ‘speeding is a killer’; Story of NZ travel restrictions not applying to present regime’s Reserve Bank appointee; Story of how FAO helps Pacific nations; Story of a school student arrested for drug possession; etc.
