X-Post: Islands Business - Trans-Tasman Political and Diplomatic Naivety.

Australia and New Zealand have effectively failed to leverage this increased aid to engage more meaningfully with the Fijian government to the greater advantage of all, not least the Fijian people. Their stance smacks of political and diplomatic naivety’.

An article saying that Australia and perhaps New Zealand have played an active role in influencing a continuing ban on lending to Fiji by international financial institutions received much coverage in the regional media and the blogosphere. It suggested the two ANZAC nations used their influence on organisations like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to stymie financial assistance to the Fiji Government after 2006. But while continuing to influence these two large institutional banks, Australia stepped up its own development assistance to Fiji, the article noted, accusing the Australian establishment of hypocrisy.

Expectedly, both sides of the Fijian divide furiously commented on the article while the financial institutions and Australian Government sources issued the customary denials in customary bureaucratese, putting their practiced skills of saying much without saying anything to effective use. The institutions denied they were influenced by politics in decision making related to lending to governments but the language that was used in communications around not being able to lend to Fiji since 2006 hints at exactly the opposite.

Australia has clarified its boosting of development assistance as being aimed at projects benefiting the people directly as against lending to the Fijian Government to implement any development schemes. The denials appear strenuous. Though they seem to have softened their public stance on Fiji over time, there is no doubt that the ANZAC nations were vehement in their criticism in the early years following 2006 and worked actively to campaign worldwide to treat Fiji as a pariah. For instance, they tried to influence the United Nations to drop Fiji as a supplier of personnel for peacekeeping forces in the world’s trouble spots. But their clamour went unheeded. They canvassed the European Community, again with limited success. They have also opposed Fiji’s participation in regional trade deliberations like PACER Plus. They refrained from engaging with the Fiji regime in the crucial early years after December 2006, pursuing a rudderless isolationist tack that bore no fruit and resulted in forcing Fiji to look north.

Islands Business

" Americans have also stepped up pressure on the ANZAC nations to relook at their Fiji policy in light of China’s growing geopolitical muscle in the region. Everyone knows that Fiji is the pivot of geopolitical influence in the region. And the ANZAC nations’ isolationist policy has driven Fiji straight into the waiting arms of the Chinese. "

It is this deepening engagement with the north, notably China, that ultimately got them worried enough to change that stringently uncompromising isolationist tack of the earlier years. In recent years, both Australia and New Zealand, although not keen on saying specifically they have softened their school masterly stance on Fiji, have increased their engagement with the country at several levels. Increased development assistance, which is referred to in the said article, is one of them. The article’s allusion to Australia’s hypocrisy is somewhat misplaced.

The hypocrisy is not that it is not stymieing the Fiji Government’s access to international funding agencies for loans while scaling up direct development assistance. Rather, the hypocrisy is about hiding their mounting worry about the consequences they now face with their stringent isolationist strategy of the immediate years following 2006. As well as deeper engagement with China, which has undoubtedly worried them, the Americans have also stepped up pressure on the ANZAC nations to relook at their Fiji policy in light of China’s growing geopolitical muscle in the region. Everyone knows that Fiji is the pivot of geopolitical influence in the region. And the ANZAC nations’ isolationist policy has driven Fiji straight into the waiting arms of the Chinese. For instance, a World Bank infrastructure loan that was close to finalisation just before December 2006 has been held in abeyance ever since, affecting a crucial water supply project. But the Chinese government stepped in and duly helped complete the project with a soft loan.

The Chinese government has thereafter assisted by providing financing for a number of other infrastructure projects such as roads and ports around the country including on other islands.
Australia and New Zealand have effectively failed to leverage this increased aid to engage more meaningfully with the Fiji Government to the greater advantage of all, not least the Fijian people. Their stance smacks of political and diplomatic naivety. They seem to have concluded that helping people with aid while denying the government with vital loans somehow vindicates their stand of opposing the December 2006 event and the present state of affairs.

It is incredible that the boffins in Canberra and Wellington could not have figured out that whatever aid that lands in Fiji and helps development, ultimately is credited to the government by the people, thereby making the government look good anyway.

Such befuddled thinking accompanied by the looming fear of the growing Chinese influence in the region and their unwitting part in abetting it, as well as pressure from the United States to toe its own line on conciliation on the Fiji issue in the interests of regional geopolitical rebalancing has further confused policymaking. On their part, the big financial institutions accused in the article of complying with the wishes of the ANZAC nations in denying financial assistance to the Fiji Government have expectedly denied such a thing happened. Their denial is enveloped in clever, circumlocutory corporate speak. But it is a little more than the proverbial fig leaf.

In view of the steps the Fiji Government is taking towards elections on September 14—under the watchful gaze of the international community—it is time these institutions and their board member countries revise their duplicitous policy that has led them nowhere so far. Fiji is too geopolitically critical to remain friendless for too long. The manner in which China and the Asian nations have rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the ANZAC nations post-2006 is testimony to this. Australia and New Zealand have undoubtedly realised this. It is time they acknowledged it—they won’t publicly. But they can do so by stopping any negative campaigning behind the scenes.

Source: "We Say" Islands Business -July 2013 Issue.


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