In Their Own Words: Fiji, May 2000

Three people wrote in real time as Fiji's constitutional order came apart.

Chaudhry spoke the night of 17 May 2000, defending his government's record to a crowd hours before Speight walked into Parliament. Teaiwa and Lal wrote during the siege, while the outcome was still unclear.

We're republishing extracts from all three.

Brij V. Lal, "The Sun Set at Noon Today"

Intro:

Brij Lal wrote this on 19 May 2000, the day of the coup. He helped draft the 1997 Constitution that Speight just binned. He knew exactly what had been lost, and he said so in plain language before the smoke cleared.

Lal died in December 2021. This is the piece he'll be remembered for.

Extract from "The Sun Set at Noon Today" by Brij V. Lal, in Brij V. Lal and Michael Pretes (eds), Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji (ANU E Press, 2008). Full chapter at doi.org/10.22459/C.12.2008.02. Reproduced under fair dealing for criticism and review, Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s41.

Fiji has failed the ultimate test of democracy: to survive a change of government. We now know what havoc a gang of armed thugs can wreak. George Speight, front man for an assortment of interests, has achieved virtually everything he wanted. The People’s Coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry is out of power. The President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, has been forced, however gently, to vacate his office. The timing and the manner of his departure, under armed guard in the middle of the night, brings to an end an illustrious, though not unblemished, career. He was the last of the great chiefs who ruled Fiji. The multi-ethnic Constitution, prepared after such exhaustive consultation, is out. And Mr Speight and the seven men who hijacked Parliament and held the Prime Minister hostage, have received amnesty. Mr Speight, volatile, dangerously delusional, the self-appointed saviour of the indigenous Fijian ‘race’, even though he himself is half-indigenous, is savouring his gains and demanding a place at the head of the country’s political table: he wants to be Prime Minister. If he has his way, there will be more Speights in Fiji in the future and, one fears, in other South Pacific states where the roots of the democratic tradition are dangerously shallow.

Twenty-six years on, Fiji's running the same test again. The 2026 election is only the third under the 2013 Constitution, which replaced the Constitution Lal helped write. Whether it holds is still an open question.

Teresia Teaiwa, "An Analysis of the Current Political Crisis in Fiji"

Intro:

Teresia Teaiwa wrote this in June 2000, while Speight still had hostages. She died in March 2017. The argument she made hasn't been superseded.

Her thesis: the 2000 crisis wasn't an iTaukei-vs-Indian conflict. It was an intra-Fijian leadership breakdown, with Speight as a product of the Rabuka era, not a separate phenomenon.

Extract from "An Analysis of the Current Political Crisis in Fiji" by Teresia Teaiwa, in Brij V. Lal and Michael Pretes (eds), Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji (ANU E Press, 2008). Full chapter at doi.org/10.22459/C.12.2008.05. Reproduced under fair dealing for criticism and review, Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s41.

The problem with Fijian nationalism is that there is no Fijian nation. There are Fijian provinces, and traditional Fijian confederacies, but the two military coups of 1987 and the current hostage crisis illustrate with disturbing insistence the erosion of indigenous Fijian social order and the fragmentation of indigenous Fijian leadership.

The problem with prevailing analyses of the political situation in Fiji is the notion that the conflict is between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. The ‘race’ card is misleading and mischievous, and unfortunately, Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji’s first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister, played right into it with his abrasive leadership style. But in the end, Chaudhry is not the problem and neither are the Indo-Fijian communities.

Fiji’s problem is Fijian. Following the fortunes and misfortunes of the country’s three indigenous Prime Ministers — Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Dr Timoci Bavadra, and Sitiveni Rabuka — we see the increasingly problematic configuration of indigenous leadership in the country. Ratu Mara’s leadership draws on the mana of his own chiefly title, Tui Nayau; his wife’s mana (the Roko Tui Dreketi, from the confederacy of Burebasaga, is the highest chiefly title in the islands); and his close association with a tight elite cohort of European, part-European and IndoFijian business interests. Ratu Mara’s leadership, however, has alienated rival chiefs, proletarian and nationalist groups within his domain of eastern Fiji, and has generated resentment in the western provinces.

The late Dr Timoci Bavadra, Prime Minister in the predominantly IndoFijian Labour/National Federation Party coalition government, was consistently described in the media and literature as a ‘commoner’ even though he came from a noble Fijian background in the chiefly village of Viseisei. The problem with Dr. Bavadra’s political genealogy in 1987 was not so much his Labour ideology nor his ‘commoner’ status, but the fact that significant and powerful sectors of indigenous Fijian society — in the east — were not ready for a Fijian Prime Minister from a western province.

During his Prime Ministership, a brash nouveau riche elite of 'indigenous' Fijians developed and thrived. George Speight is a good representative of this group. 'Part-Europeans' form the largest and most influential group of general voters and in the post-coup era have shifted away from their historical identification with colonial European privilege towards a reclamation of their 'part-Fijian' or vasu-i-taukei roots. This shift in 'part-European' identification reflects a recognition of the contemporary realities of political power in Fiji: indigenous Fijians rule.

The confederacy fault lines she mapped in 2000 haven't been resolved by any constitution since. They're still the subtext of every Fijian election, including the upcoming one.

Mahendra Chaudhry, "Last Public Address before He Was Made Hostage"

Intro:

This isn't analysis. It's a primary document. Mahendra Chaudhry gave this address on 17 May 2000, before the coup. He's defending Rewa Rice, land policy, and his government's record to a room that already knew what was coming, even if he didn't.

He's still alive. Nobody's asked him to revisit it publicly. That's worth noting.

Extract from "Chaudhry's Last Public Address before He Was Made Hostage" by Mahendra Chaudhry, in Brij V. Lal and Michael Pretes (eds), Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji (ANU E Press, 2008). Full chapter at doi.org/10.22459/C.12.2008.23. Reproduced under fair dealing for criticism and review, Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s41.

Two days before his government was taken over by George Speight and group, Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry spoke to about 500 people at a public meeting in Nasinu. That was probably his last public utterance before he was made hostage — shut behind parliament doors till now. What he said at the public meeting at Nasole Temple on Wednesday 17 May is very much today a concern for everyone — racial unity. He said the government’s latest priority was to work out strategies to unite the nation. ‘Fiji is the only home and hope of all people living here — we must have a common goal and hope,’ he said. He also said that indigenous Fijians and Rotumans should know that their rights and interests take precedence over the rights and interests of other communities, should there be a conflict of interest between Fijians and other communities.

We are completing our first year in Parliament, this coming Friday the 19th of May. Actually, I should have been here earlier than this evening to meet with you and share our views. But it is better late than never.

Tonight you will want to hear, as you have already heard from two of my Ministers and the Honourable Krishna Dutt, as to what the government has done since taking office some 12 months ago. As you know if you have read our manifesto, and this was widely distributed, you would have found that we have highlighted the problems we faced as a nation last year. We laid out this problem and then alongside that we said what we are going to do about these problems if we were elected. And as a government we had told you that our top priority would be poverty alleviation: that we will work and give priority to those programs and we will allocate resources to those programs which will help the poor because they come first. And we have begun doing this. We have said that we will bring down food prices on basic items by removing VAT and customs duty. We have done that. Government revenue is very buoyant.

We must produce as much food as we can within the country so that food is cheap and import only food that we cannot grow locally. And for that if we have to protect our farmers we should protect them. That is why we helped to revive Rewa Rice Ltd. Some people did not like that. But there were 1000 rice farmers in Vanua Levu. They have no other livelihood and if we hadn’t revived the Rewa Rice company those 1000 families would have become destitute. Some people who are importing rice into this country and who are making a lot of money out of that did not like that because they said they will not be able to make a lot of money if Rewa Rice company comes back into operation. They don't want to care about what those 1000 families will do, how their children and wives will live, what they will eat. But this government cares about them. It cost the people $4.5 million to start Rewa Rice again. But this is the government that puts people before money.

Our latest priority at this time is to unite our nation. That is very important. Because a nation that is divided, which is split, will not progress. Fiji's only hope for all her people is that we all come together as brothers and sisters, as citizens with common interest, with a common goal. Everybody's rights and interests, traditions, customs and cultures are protected under the Constitution. Let nobody fool you that your custom is under threat, your religion is under threat, that your land may be taken away from you, that you might lose your property.

Let me remind those people who are protesting today, that they were the very ones who put through the 1997 Constitution when they were in power. And under that very Constitution the rights and interests of all communities are firmly secure. If every time we lose an election, we want to change the Constitution of the country, we will not get anywhere. The world is moving ahead very fast. We have entered the 21st century. This is a world of technology. We have got to move forward with that world.

Rewa Rice didn't collapse. It's still operating, rebranded as Fiji Rice Pte Limited in 2017, with mills in Dreketi, Labasa, and Ba. The farmers Chaudhry was defending that night still exist. The company he revived still exists. The government that revived it didn't survive the week.