Above image: Fiji P.M under stress.
The steadfastness of the Fiji Army commander on the ideals of truth, law and order has forced other institutions including some of the media (both domestic and international)into differing camps.
Despite the recent the online Fiji Times poll stating the true sentiments of the people of Fiji, the past track record of these native institutions have yet to been analysed throughly by any stretch of the imagination. The title of BBC article "Indigenous Heads Helps Fiji Crisis" could not be any further from the truth.
S.i.F.M has be pointed out in earlier posts, on the awkardness of involving the Great Council of Chiefs as a mediator to the current conflict in Fiji politics.
Fiji Daily Post Editorial advocating the sphere of Institutional Soverignity should be applied to the test of Customs enforcement to validate it's validity.
To consider the Fiji Daily Post's editorial stance (posted below)as logically sound; Fiji Daily Post's rational must also apply to the case of, Fiji Police and Australian SAS soldiers colluding to circumnavigate Fiji's immigration and custom control at Nadi International Airport.
Respecting institutional sphere sovereignty
Fiji Daily Post 14-Nov-2006
Governments will come and go, but the state, in a manner of speaking, goes on forever. Military leaders may come and go, but the military goes on forever. Even chiefs come and go, but the chiefly system may go on forever. No one is indispensable or permanent where power is concerned; only our institutions of power rightly outlast us.
It is folly to imagine that each or anyone of us has a monopoly of significance. It is egoism to suppose that without any of us holding down our place in the world, the world would be unable to function properly. Governments will fall over simply if their budget appropriation bills are not passed in the house. Military leaders may fall on their swords (as it were) if they fail to win the battle of legitimacy and moral authority. And chiefs have been clubbed for less than failing to support the will and livelihood of their people.
Our point is that society – every society – is a balance of powers and institutions that are purposed to work for the good of all in an integrated and harmonious fashion. No single leadership group or institution should imagine it is superior to others because the obverse principle is also true: all social institutions are necessary and without each of them operating properly in their sphere of sovereignty, a society would collapse under the weight of lopsidedness. Thus when one cog in the institutional balance claims for itself more power than is functionally useful, it throws the entire system out of alignment.
Or, as the apostle Paul put it, the entire body politic suffers if, the eye disdains the function of the hand, or the head discredits the need for feet. Or if, as in our present case, military leaders usurp the institutional role of the parliamentary majority. This may seem like a little thing, but, as we have seen, it throws the institutional balance of forces into a spiralling orbit and everyone is affected. Restoring the balance can never therefore be a privately settled matter without the entire nation looking on in earnest.
Fiji is out of balance because the principle of ‘sphere sovereignty’ has been abused. What are required are calm institutional heads and a renewed commitment to sphere sovereignty: letting governments be governments; letting military leaders be; and letting chiefs do their chiefly duties.
This is an excerpt from outstanding writer on Viti affairs in a Fiji Times opinion article.
The Fijian dilemma
FRANCIS WAQA SOKONIBOGI
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The qoliqoli is one of three issues the Government needs to solve with the military+ Enlarge this image
The qoliqoli is one of three issues the Government needs to solve with the military
From the outset, it must be impressed that the Fijian problem is Fiji's dilemma. Unless we identify the conditions that led to past coups we cannot be too hopeful for a rosy future.
Fijian grassroots landowners are again being exploited in the impasse.
In whichever way and manner the stand-off is reconciled, Fijian land and qoliqoli owners will be reduced to a state of non-people.
On one hand, should the Government achieve its objective of enacting the Qoliqoli Bill, the Native Land Trust Board (NLTB) masquerading as for the Fijians' will virtually become owner of the qoliqoli as it did of all native Schedules A & B Crown lands.
On the other hand, should Commander Voreqe Bainimarama have his way, the Fijian loses the last evidence to its claim as collective owners of these islands.
And ownership is not the last bastion of indigenous hopes. The sacrosanct umbilical chord and link to between the Fijian and his/her vanua as i taukei is under threat of being severed forever.
The Fijian has already lost his land to the NLTB and now he is at the point of losing his qoliqoli (traditional fishing ground) to either the State (should the army get its way) or again to the NLTB (if the three controversial bills are enacted).
Whatever the result the Fijian landowner is at a point of no return and trapped in a catch-22 situation by the very people and institutions they have entrusted to redeem their heritage.
Thus, effectively Fiji is converted into a terra nullius' by the Fijian people themselves and no one else.
Fijian leaders are voluntarily alienating their heritage through the Torrens system.
All over the world, colonising powers have fiercely pursued the commercialisation of native lands and this was ideologically supported by the terra nullius or vacant land doctrine.
When applied, this doctrine deprived indigenous peoples of their birthright as suffered by the Aborigines of Australia.
It would be informative for the purpose of this argument to be reminded that the system of registering real property in fee simple adopted by the colonial Fiji Government and continued in the post-colonial period was sourced by the Torrens system.
The system was named after Sir Robert Torrens who was from South Australia where the doctrine of terra nullius was applied by the colonisers. According to the terra nullius doctrine the aborigine had no title to his land. In that regard, the system is purchaser or settler-friendly. The relevant part reads:
"When a man holding property under deed wishes to have it placed under the Act (Torrens system, our emphasis), he takes his deeds, which are his title to the property, to the office. The deeds are carefully examined by the solicitors to the Lands Titles Commissioners; and if there is no difficulty, and after all due publicity is given and precautions taken to prevent fraud or mistake, a certificate is issued, and the old deeds are cancelled. From the moment the land is brought under the Act and a certificate becomes indefeasible, unless it has been fraudulently obtained; and he can hold the property against the world."(South Australia its History, Resources and Production, Harcus William JP (ed), 1876: 77-79)
This shows that the title may be indefeasible except if fraud is proved.
Because the Aborigines were considered non-humans and are not the owners of the land, fraudulent land dealings were impossible to be claimed by the natives of Australia.
During the Torrens system's establishment aboriginal status written in the terra nullius language was as follows:
"The natives have no settled place of abode, but each family wanders over a space of several miles, an aggression upon which by another family is invariably punished. And they have no fixed habitation; when the family, either from the vicinity to the grubs, or other strong inducements to settle for a time upon a particular spot, they pulled down some branches of trees, and construct a few huts about four feet high and in the form of a bee-hive cut in half; they are thus quite open on one side and at night they keep up a large fire. The instruction to the resident commissioner contains the following special directions on this subject.
"The Government having appointed an officer whose especial duty it will be to protect the interests of the Aborigines, the Commissioners consider it necessary to do more than give you a few general instructions as to the manner in which they are desirous that your own proceedings with regard to the native inhabitants should be regulated. You will see that no lands which the native may possess in occupation or enjoyment, be offered for sale, until ceded by the natives to your self"(Caper's SOUTH AUSTRALIA by Henry Capper pp 60-62).
Fijian land ownership
The Fijian situation on the Western real property interpretation is diametrically opposite to that of Australian Aborigines at approximately the same time of the enactment of the Torres system in the South Australian Parliament.
In Fiji, Commodore Good enough and Consul Layard were the last land enquiry commissioners before the 1874 Cession.
Their report became the guidelines for all British adopted laws of land tenure in Fiji.
Any deviation from the intention spelt out by their report is, to our contention, is therefore, contradictory.
We quote here the relevant paragraph on this subject in the report dated 13th April, 1874, and reads as follows:
39 We have made the native tenure and ownership of land in Fiji the subject of sensitive study; and have obtained from J.B. Thurston, and from Mr. C.R. For wood and other gentlemen, explanations and papers on this subject worthy of consideration purchases have been made from natives to a large extent, as will be seen by an accompanying, but there remain seen tracts of unoccupied tracts of lands, though, as is said with perfect accuracy by Mr Pritchard, formerly Her Majesty's Consul in Fiji Every inch of land in Fiji has an owner. Every parcel or tract of land has a name, and the boundaries are defined and well known the proprietorship rests in families, the heads of families being representatives of the title. Every member of a family can use the land attaching to the family.
40. In order to make a purchase secure and beyond the possibility of dispute, present customs would require the assembly of the following persons, viz: the great chief or his representative, the lesser chiefs and the principle men of the adjacent town. These should walk over the land, define it, and conclude the sale on the spot. The natives should then build a house or plant yams for the purchaser, in recognition of his lordship over the soil as things now stand, if the purchaser were to deal with the great chief alone, he would only buy his rights as lord of the manor, or whatever they might be, and would not acquire exclusive possession of the soil.
Every inch of land in Fiji has an owner whereas in Australia where Fiji's real property laws were borrowed, the natives were declared nomads of no consequence. That was why we commented from the very beginning of this paper that whichever way the current dilemma is reconciled the Fijian land and Qoliqoli owners will be reduced to a state of non-people.
The Fijian and his land are one. The land in the western concept is dry land. In Fijian, the land means the vanua. Last but not least the vanua includes in its composition the chiefs and the people who install their chiefs.
The vanua is a holistic entity that envelopes the land, the sea and the air and all its biodiversity.
It encompasses culture, ideology and belief systems which are inextricably linked to these natural environs. Every Fijian knows, or should know, his link to all the components of his earth because they are part of a holistic whole.
Take one component of this holistic vanua equation out and the Fijian man is similarly reduced in stature and dignity.
This applies to any indigenous or autochthonous peoples of the world. Thus the recognition in the international human rights system, which has led to the evolution of indigenous conventions and declarations on the indigenous and tribal peoples' rights. These rights were evolved to give some semblance of balance and to justify the indivisible concept of universal human rights. The indigenous rights are subservient to the right to the State and their protective articles only apply to independent countries where the indigenous peoples are a minority.
This puts Fiji out of the picture as the State is dominated by Fijians. Therefore, any claim by government, which, by the way, functions through revenue afforded by all the people of Fiji and the international monetary network, that a certain Bill is for the Fijian people is nothing less than a political ploy and at best, a constructive fraud.
Who are the indigenous peoples who qualify for protection under international conventions, particularly in Fiji? They, among others, include:
Landless Fijians as a result of original land sales; Fijian landowners who do not approve of their lands to be controlled by the native Lands Trust Board;
so-called extinct (kawa boko) but still existing Fijians; those Fijians who are not given accounts of where and how their land income are distributed by relevant perpetrated Fijian institutions; anyone with Fijian blood or ancestry; displaced Fijians when their old tikina (district) boundaries were tampered with to facilitate changes in the colonial administration; displaced chiefs or tribal leaders.
Therefore, the Government, being the legal inheritor of the colonial government and its legacies, cannot justifiably or effectively claim it is for the Fijian people, because by right democratic governments are for all the people, with no exclusivity. Thus, the imposed indivisibility of human rights.
Now our dilemma is being taken up to the Great Council of Chiefs to solve.
The very council that over-rode the wishes of the Fijian majority in the adoption of the 1997 Constitution and the very institution that rewarded Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka, who beheaded the Fijian people in 1987.
The Queen was the Fijian head and now the Fijian collective organism, with the GCC being a national entity and indebted to the national government for its existence, is like a chicken with its head chopped off.
The GCC rewarded the executioner of the Fijian people with a life membership of their council. Some of its members were heavily involved in backing George Speight's farce of 2000.
It is time to look at the Fijian picture minus its chiefly cosmetics and let us analyse the PM's denial and the Army Commander's stance, not in anger and judgement but, in essence and in fact.
As we have always claimed, our destiny lies in the correct option our leaders opt for and in doing so Fiji may well avoid the coup syndrome. It has now become, not only the PM's and commander's personal political agenda, it has become a question affecting both the responsible leaders and the innocent bystanders and what Mahatma Gandhi calls the national karma' (cause and effect).
It is time not for pointing fingers but taking advantage of what our problem is trying to tell us.
Our problem is trying to tell us that the solution to the problem is within the problem. The first step in conflict resolution is conflict prevention. And to achieve that is to first identify the problem. We hope we have done that through this contribution.
Francis Waqa Sokonibogi is with the Fiji Ownership Rights Association.
E-mail: francis_sokonibogi@yahoo.com
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