Fiji turns the page

September 22, 2014 01:00 am | Updated November 16, 2021 06:16 pm IST

Fiji has chosen its first elected leader in >eight years . This marks a new democratic beginning for the South Pacific nation after suffering self-inflicted wounds over a period of some 28 years. Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, who took power in a bloodless coup in 2006, is back, his Fiji First Party having led the field of seven parties. With an 82-member committee of international observers drawn from 13 countries including Australia and New Zealand and the European Union having endorsed it as a “credible election”, Bainimarama will be able to put behind him the phase of global condemnation and international sanctions that had followed the 2006 coup. The sanctions should now end and the country could return to the Commonwealth with full status. The four coups between 1987 and 2006 stemmed primarily from tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians: when Bainimarama took power he seized on the long-simmering rivalries and held out the promise of ending corruption, racial divisions and policies steeped in racial discrimination and dispossession, especially those against peasant farmers on leasehold lands. He repeatedly delayed a return to democracy while reworking the Constitution that had stressed indigenous Fijian political supremacy, and taking the economy forward. An indigenous Fijian, he also sought to please the Indo-Fijian segment which accounts for some 43 per cent of its population. He pushed for equal rights for all: this election saw full voting rights from the age of 18, for the first time. He abolished hereditary, rival power bases such as the ethnic Fijian Great Council of Chiefs and launched a delimitation exercise that by and large grouped people according to their ethnicity, essentially leaving ethnic Fijians in a position of advantage.

Yet, for Fiji to be able to make a true transition to democracy, the military should now step back. Its stand that it will not hesitate to intervene if a situation arises that holds a threat to national interest, is bad news. The restrictive media framework involving stiff penalties for critical coverage that was in place, did limit the media’s ability to examine rigorously and present an accurate picture of certain aspects of the government’s functioning in general; this trend has to change. The freedoms of the judiciary need to be restored fully. The new regime should overcome the cloud of human rights abuses it had found itself under, and make a fresh start. The desire of the voters for stability has come out loud and clear. For this verdict to mark a true paradigm shift, the regime will need to go forward with an inclusive agenda based on all round development that will bring the tourists and the investors back to this idyllic archipelago.

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