Fiji, gateway to the South Pacific Island nations in which Indo-Fijians were the dominant community at the time of its independence from British colonial rule in 1970, has gained reputation of a nation of coups. Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka of the Fiji Army, who had passed out of the Indian Army’s Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, chose for his thesis “How to Stage a Successful Coup,” had put it in practice on return to Fiji in 1987.

The Fiji Labour Party government of the day had a preponderance of Indo-Fijians in the Cabinet. Rebuka’s intention was to keep Indo-Fijians out of political power for all time to come. It caused a major upheaval in the country and led to mass exodus of Indo-Fijians to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and other countries, reducing them from majority community in the land of their birth to one of minority, with just 37 per cent population.

After two more coups, Voreqe Bainimarama, army commander, staged the fourth coup “to end all coups,” ruled the nation by edicts for seven years, adopted a new Constitution in 2013 giving equal rights and recognition to all citizens for the first time unlike its two earlier Constitutions and returned to parliamentary democracy in 2014 by winning a free and fair election conducted in the presence of international observers.

FijiFirst, the political party of Bainimarama, ably assisted by Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, an Indo-Fijian legal luminary, won a comfortable majority and provided a stable government of peace and prosperity for all. In the just concluded second general election held under the new Constitution, FijiFirst won by a narrow majority. SODELPA, the main opposition party, is now led by Rabuka and he is determined to recapture power and to provide an Indo-Fijian mukt government and bring back the feudal Great Council of Chiefs, abolished by the Bainimarama government.

Under the new Constitution, election of members of Parliament is by a multi-member open list system of proportional representation. FijiFirst polled 227,241 votes which resulted in 26.2 MP seats in the 51-member Parliament. The Election Commission has rounded it as 27 seats. SODELPA polled 181.072 votes resulting in 20.9 seats. It was allotted 21 seats. National Federation Party, also in the opposition, secured 33,515 votes resulting in 3.9 seats. Instead of allotting four seats, it was given only three. The election results were challenged by the SODELPA and the NFP in the Court of Disputed Returns but they withdrew their petitions subsequently.

Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and Attorney-General Khaiyum, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, have adopted the Singapore model of government and have promised to move Fiji towards a modern paperless and cashless society. The government has launched a new mobile app, digitalFiji in Suva, the capital city. It is expected to revolutionise the way people access government information and service. In Singapore’s own development journey, Bainimarama said, their government took technology by the reins, bringing their government services online in an innovative way that gave their citizens a direct line of communication with their government and made services massively accessible. SODELPA, on the other hand, wants to take the country back by restoring the Great Council of Chiefs abolished after the 2006 military coup and preserving the “iTaukei way of life.” Indigenous Fijians are called iTaukeis who own 91 per cent of the land which cannot be alienated.

When the chiefs of the iTaukeis ceded the Fiji group of islands to Britain in 1874, Queen Victoria wrote to Sir Arthur Gordan, the colony’s first Governor, to assure the people that their land would not be taken over and that they would be governed in accordance with their ancient customs and traditions. The Great Council of Chiefs was the creation of Fiji’s colonial rulers to safeguard Queen Victoria’s assurance to the iTaukeis. Preserving the iTaukei way of life is the antithesis of modernisation. Till the 18th century, cannibalism was part of the iTaukeis way of life.

In the run-up to the November 2018 election to Parliament, coup master Rabuka, who had just assumed leadership of the SODELPA, was able to convince a large section of iTaukeis that if the FijiFirst was returned to power, there was a real danger of the government depriving them of their land rights in spite of Section 27 of the new Constitution stating clearly, “The ownership of all iTaukei land shall remain with the customary owners of that land and that iTaukei land shall not be permanently alienated whether by sale, grant, transfer or exchange, except to the State for a public purpose (like roads) and the owner will be paid compensation.”

The easy-going iTaukeis have not been participating fully in the economy of the nation and are content with leasing their land to Indo-Fijian or Chinese farmers for a meagre return. Quoting a paragraph from Aiyaz’s 2002 Master in Laws thesis which reads, “Cultural autonomy must have a sunset clause. Its prolonged continuation will place a stranglehold on the very members it seeks to protect and it will concomitantly disallow the critical cultural space to which a just, vibrant and coherent nation-state can flourish while embracing diversity.” SODELPA leaders tell iTaukeis their land was not safe under FijiFirst government. While the Great Council of Chiefs fulfilled its purpose during the colonial period, this self-serving, reactionary antediluvian institution has no place in modernising Fiji which wants to be a “Pacific tiger” as Singapore has become an “Asian tiger.”

India always had a special relationship with Fiji. Indira Gandhi, the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Fiji in 1981, referring to the people of Indian origin settled there, had said, “I feel somewhat like a mother about the welfare of a married daughter who had set up home far away.” She laid the foundation of the Girmit Centre in Suva.

After a gap of 33 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a day-long visit to Fiji in November 2014, shortly after the Fiji-First government took office.

Promising to expand defence and security cooperation between the two countries, Modi announced a $ 75 million line of credit for a co-generation power plant and a $5 million fund to develop Fiji villages. Prime Minister Bainimarama rolled out the red carpet for Modi and organised a traditional welcome ceremony in Suva’s Albert Park. Modi addressed the Fijian Parliament also, a first by a foreign dignitary after the recent election. “It is a new day and a new beginning in our relations with Fiji,” declared Modi. He offered to work work with Fiji to build a “Digital Fiji” and promised to depute technical experts in the field of IT, agriculture and health care. Four years after, there is no evidence of implementation of these promises.

Two days after Modi’s visit, Xi Jinping, Chinese President, paid a three-day visit to Fiji to mark the 40th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries and signed a series of bilateral agreements. China pledged a development assistance of $ 50 million, in addition to about $ 50 million in grant and aid, besides signing six memorandums of understanding, including one enabling visa-free entry to Fijians visiting China, and another to set up a Chinese cultural centre in Fiji.

Students from Fiji have been given easy access to educational institutions in China and liberal scholarships. All promises made by the Chinese President were implemented within a year of his visit in 2014. Fiji’s recognition of “One China” policy as opposed to six South Pacific nations having diplomatic ties with Taiwan, has helped it develop special relationship with China. The Chinese now have a firm foothold in the South Pacific, thanks to its proactive diplomatic mission in Fiji.

(The writer is a veteran journalist and former Director of The Statesman Print Journalism School)