Terms of Endearment.

The fluid situation currently affecting the nation of Fiji has currents of many directions. Fiji T.V news covers the eddies of turbulence, amid the scenic back drop. Latest developments include Fiji Village's report of the Commander assuming executive control and the Fiji Live report of the President signing of the legal ordinance for the dissolution of Parliament. Pacific Beat podcast has audio of the Army Commander's press announcement and reaction by Australian Prime Minister by John Howard.

Although the Fiji Prime Minister has vowed not resigning in this article, Ministerial vehicles have also been repossesed by the military as reported by the Fiji Village article.
Fiji Army senior officer, announces the use of Nukulau to house persons whom they designate characters of ill repute. While another Fiji Live report is that, a caretaker Prime Minister has already named.
Although the Fijian series of shifting political landscapes has also angered the baby-sitting big brothers of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. The 1997 constitution allows a premature exit of a standing Government, as described in online version of magazine: Island Business article. However Asia Time articles quotes Fiji Prime Minister 2001 speech, denigrating the concept of liberal democracy and decries any foreign intervention in Fiji's affairs.

This is an excerpt:

Oceania

Fijian PM says liberal democracy would destroy region
By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY - A debate in the South Pacific about western liberal democracy has been revived by Fiji's military-installed Premier Laisenia Qarase, who says it is ill-suited for to the region and would "destroy" its traditional values.

Addressing Pacific leaders in Hawaii earlier this month, Qarase said Pacific island nations, where social and ethnic tensions are rising, should go slow in imbibing foreign ideas and safeguard their traditional "communal democratic" systems.

Qarase made these comments as political tension in his tiny multi-racial Pacific island nation heats up ahead of a Court of Appeal verdict later this month on the legitimacy of his regime - and amid growing pressure by countries like Australia and New Zealand for him to step down.

On November 15, Fiji Supreme Court Justice Anthony Gates ruled in favor of the 1997 multiracial constitution, which was revoked following the May 19 coup against the elected government of Indian Fijian prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry. The coup, launched by a group that said it was acting on behalf of indigenous Fijians and called for indigenous Fijian political leadership, set back efforts thus far made toward a multi-racial democracy.

The judge also called on the former president Ratu Mara to reconvene parliament. But the Qarase government appealed this verdict and Fiji's Court of Appeal will begin hearing it February 19.

With growing pressure on Qarase to give way to a government of "national unity", his comments on how western democracy does not fit Fiji comes at an interesting juncture. More so, these comments challenged the very principles of the 1997 constitution.

Qarase also used his address to appeal to the international community to stop its interference in Fiji. "Solutions for our problems in Fiji lie in Fiji and interference from outside will not solve the problem," Qarase said, in reference to criticism from Fiji's neighbors about the military installed government.

Qarase, who was Fiji's chief merchant banker before taking over the prime ministership last year, said Fiji and many other countries in the Pacific are travelling from communal democracy to liberal democracy. Fiji's communal democracy refers to a traditional chief system, under which every village or community has a traditional leader whose stature is not political but often spiritual too. These chiefs are grouped together in a Great Council of Chiefs, which meets annually or whenever they are called upon to discuss issues of national importance, such as the May 19 coup.

The council of chiefs has no legislative power, but it is considered the traditional guardian of the Fijian establishment.

Some countries, Qarase argued, never want to reach Western- style liberal democracy "because by doing so we will be embracing some of the adverse effects of some of the things that flow automatically from principles of full liberal democracy".

"There is a big problem for us as leaders because some of these principles will tend to destroy our culture and our traditional values," he added. In a communal democracy, he said, the structure is very clear. "There is a coalition within the society, there is a dialogue and there is consultation and a lot of issues are resolved by consensus among elders," Qarase explained.

He acknowledges that the chief of local communities would be the final arbitrator in such a system, but that he would be making decisions "after a lot of dialogue". Because there is no government and an opposition to argue things out like in a liberal democratic structure, this communal system of democracy will not allow much room "for divisive elements in that society", Qarase said.

Critics, however, say Qarase is invoking a false clash of concepts, perhaps to help justify the political system since the May coup.

For his part, Indo-Fijian political analyst Dr Sanjay Ramesh says that Qarase's explanation is not a correct picture of the situation in the Pacific and that what it has is often an autocratic set- up. "In Fiji, there never existed a communal system of democracy," he argued. "What did exist was a hierarchical autocratic communal system, which is in constant tension with both national and global political and economic values."

"The indigenous Fijian social structure is rigid and there is no social mobility," observed Ramesh. "That is why Western liberal democracy is incompatible."

There has been some debate on the power and accountability of the chiefs, who have a lot of authority on the local level. Qarase is not the first Pacific leader to raise concerns about the supposed incompatibility of Western liberal democracy with indigenous Pacific cultures. Many others have done so in the last few years as social tension and unrest increases in the region.

In a recent paper, Lopeti Senituli, director of tje Tonga Human Rights and Democracy Movement, argued that people's participation and accountability of leaders should be the cornerstone of good governance in the region. This, he added, should be a process and not an event, such as voting in elections. "Casting a vote in an election is an event that is meaningless without the accountability of the elected government to the people," he says.

In the Kingdom of Tonga where a "traditional" form of government exists, Senituli says that it is facing civil unrest from the grass roots because the government is undemocratic and unaccountable to the people.

Turning his attention to Fiji, where he has lived for many years, Senituli observes that the world view of the two of its major communities - the ethnic Fijians and Indian Fijians - are vastly different. "But I firmly believe that the differences can be bridged," he said.

Ramesh adds that in addition to Fiji and Tonga, other Pacific Islands such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are also facing similar social and political upheavals. "It is a clash between the old and the new value systems," he argued. "Indigenous leaders throughout the Pacific have to provide a framework for social mobility and economic prosperity. That is not possible under an autocratic system."

Fiji is a special case because of its large population of Indians, descendants of indentured laborers brought over by the British to work in cane plantations over a century ago. Indo-Fijians now make up almost 50 percent of Fiji's 700,000 people, which means almost half the population does not belong to the indigenous Fijian communal democracy system Qarase speaks of. Thus, Ramesh points out that Indian Fijians will have to live "under the whims of the chiefs and their cronies" forever.

"Indo-Fijians want a system that at least give them fair representation in parliament and fundamental rights protected within a constitutional framework," he said.

(Inter Press Service)

In another Fiji Live article, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark still in rampaging mood from the telling-off the NZ Police, bounces back and scoldingly rebuffs the office of Fiji President, for approving the dissolution even though, in a statement published by Fiji Village they report the President did not support the action.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and New Zealand P.M line up their limited assortment of sanctions, one in particular is especially designed to prevent Fiji soldiers from transiting the borders of the Commonwealth, as reported in this article.

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