The promises have gone; Gone, gone, and they were here just now: WS Merwin
The abrogation of Fiji’s 1997 constitution has saddened me immensely.
Part of the reason is personal. As a member of the three-man Fiji
Constitution Review Commission, I had a small hand in devising it. Our report
was a comprehensive document based upon the most
extensive consultation in Fiji, a close first-hand examination of the constitutional
arrangements of jurisdictions with problems somewhat
similar to Fiji’s, and expert advice drawn from the South Pacific region
and international experts in Europe and North America.
The constitution, based on our report, was unanimously approved by an ethnic-Fijian
dominated parliament and blessed by the Great Council
of Chiefs. Now it lies tattered in the dustbin of Fijian history.
I feel deeply sorry for the ordinary people of Fiji as well who will have to
pick up the pieces from the wreckage of the last twelve days and
start all over again. The task of re-construction will not be easy. The fabric
of multiculturalism and harmonious race relations has been
severely strained. The philosophy of multi-ethnic cooperation on the basis of
equal citizenship has been discarded. The economy, which was
beginning to show signs of recovery after years of stagnation, is hobbled. However
you look at it, the hostage crisis is a huge disaster for
Fiji.
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 constitution is out, and Mr Speight and the seven men
who hijacked parliament and held 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 asking for a place at
the country’s political table. There will be more Speights in Fiji in
the future and, one fears, in other South Pacific states as well coping with
the collapse of law and order and imported conventions of
governance.
There are other casualties of this crisis as well. Among them is the Great
Council of Chiefs. Sadly, they stand today a diminished body of
dithering men and women, confused, partisan, manipulable, unable to exercise
their much sought after -- and much hoped for -- role as the
custodians not only of indigenous Fijian but Fiji’s broad national interests
as well. They listened to Speight’s pleas for Fijian paramountcy,
but there was no place in their deliberations for the voice of a multi-ethnic
democracy and the defence of a constitution which they
themselves had blessed just three years ago. They have showed themselves to
be the chiefs of the Fijian people only, not chiefs of Fiji.
Fiji’s much praised military forces, too, have had their reputation tarnished.
They vacillated while the country burned. Why, it will be asked
for some time yet, did they not intervene earlier, and more decisively, to prevent
a catastrophe they knew well was coming. Allegations of
complicity cannot be dismissed and, one hopes, would be investigated by an impartial
body. Be that as it may, there is no doubt now that the
military is deeply divided, its ranks infected by the deadly virus of provincialism.
Had the crisis gone on longer, and regional and personal
loyalties to chiefs and vanua (land, place of birth) tested, it is not too far-fetched
to say that the army would have fragmented into separate
provincial militia. In view of its lacklustre performance in protecting the
security of the state, and its blatantly partisan and racially exclusive
character, the people of Fiji may well ask whether Fiji should have an army
at all. If that is not countenanced, then it will be in the interests of
the indigenous Fijian people themselves to have more and more non-Fijians enter
its ranks to diffuse provincial tensions. Keeping the status
quo is a recipe for disaster.
This crisis, everyone now knows, was more about the re-structuring of power
in indigenous Fijian society than it was about race. It was also
in some sense about a cry of those Fijians marginalised by modernisation and
globalization, feeling left by the wayside while others marched
on for reasons they cannot understand. Speight’s mesmeric rhetoric and
simple solutions touched a chord with them. Get rid of the Indians
and revert to Fijian tradition, and the world will be well. It is not as simple
as all that, and Speight and his advisors know that, but they
manipulated innocent and confused Fijian emotions for their own ends. The crisis
was not about Fijian identity and tradition. In any case,
identity is a process that changes with time, and there is no one single, cohesive
Fijian identity and tradition to speak of except in opposition
to other groups.
Indo-Fijians are the meat in the sandwich. They are trapped, terrorised into
silence. They are still regarded as ‘vulagi’, foreigners, in their
own land of birth, where they have lived for four to five generations. They
have no land although they drive the engine of the country’s
agricultural economy. And now, once again, they face the stark prospect of political
disenfranchisement and unequal citizenship, and that, too,
for one, and one reason, only: because they are of a different ethnicity. Their
plight deserves more sympathy than is usually shown.
Unwanted and humiliated, many will understandably seek to re-build their lives
in other countries, and one hopes that countries which have
benefited from their labours, especially Australia, will show sympathy.
Meanwhile, Fiji drifts, divided and uncertain, into uncharted waters. An era
has come to an end, and another is in the throes of a difficult
birth. In the words of Matthew Arnold, Fiji is poised to:
Wander between two worlds; One dead and the other powerless to be born.
Brij V. Lal, Fiji-born and grandson of an indentured labourer, is a Professor
of History and Director of the Centre for the
Contemporary Pacific at The Australian National University.
This text may have been edited to protect the writer.
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