Smash And Grab

A coup by armed thugs in Fiji has destroyed democracy, fueled racism and ruined the country's reputation By ELIZABETH FEIZKHAH

With his 1988 memoir No Other Way, former army colonel Sitiveni Rabuka wrote the book on Fijian coups d'état, detailing how he overthrew the Pacific island nation's first Indian-dominated government in 1987. On May 19, civilian George Speight, a friend of Rabuka's, set out to see how far that manual could take him. Joining six M-16-toting members of a special forces unit set up by Rabuka during his 12-year rule, Speight stormed Fiji's Parliament and detained 43 members of the country's second Indian-dominated government, including Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.

Speight had been a restaurateur, insurance broker and forestry executive, all without notable success. Four days before the coup, he was committed for trial on extortion and currency charges. Now, vowing to achieve indigenous Fijian supremacy, he appointed himself Prime Minister. He later decided he should be Finance Minister too, because you have to get the numbers right. While the hostages languished in parliamentary offices under the guns of his security team, Speight wrangled over their freedom--and an end to Indian political power--with President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the quasi-senatorial Great Council of Chiefs and armed forces chief Commodore Frank Bainimarama. In spare moments, he watched cartoons and danced with supporters, who gathered by the hundreds on the lush parliamentary lawns. A coup is perfect, Speight crowed to the Christchurch Press newspaper. There is no substitute in terms of impact to express your feelings when you don't like something.

Coups seem to have become a habit in Fiji. Indigenous chiefs and politicians have long resisted sharing power with ethnic Indians, the descendants of immigrant laborers who make up 44% of the country's 800,000 people and are resented for their educational and business success. After his two 1987 coups, Rabuka had the constitution rewritten to guarantee ethnic-Fijian dominance. When an exodus of Indo-Fijians and a slump in international investment plunged the country into recession, Rabuka backed a new constitution that restored Indians' political rights. Last May the changed rules brought Chaudhry's multiracial coalition to power. The result: another coup. Early in the crisis, Rabuka said democracy was a foreign flower in Fiji. After the nation's third coup in 13 years, many Fijians, and their regional neighbors, fear it's a flower that may never be allowed to grow.

Their concern has increased with every concession made to Speight--and by week's end he had won many. The 1997 constitution had been scrapped and Chaudhry and his government dismissed. President Mara had stepped down, ceding power to a military council led by armed forces chief Bainimarama, a Rabuka ally. Speight and his men had been promised amnesty. And it was likely some of them would be included in a civilian government. Speight was no longer concerned, he said, that the army would try to rescue the hostages.

The powers that be in Fiji did not exactly rush to save democracy. After the coup, police managed only a token blockade of Parliament, letting coup supporters flood the grounds--nixing any chance of a rescue bid--and erupt onto the streets, where they attacked Indians, police and soldiers, looted Indian shops and homes and trashed Fiji's TV station. The response of the military, which is 99% indigenous, was also relaxed. Bainimarama disowned the officers who took part in the coup and deplored the terrorists' actions, but said: We understand their feelings. In the Council of Chiefs, too, there is a lot of sympathy for the views expressed by Speight's followers, said chairman Rabuka, who is expected to join Bainimarama's advisory council. The nationalistic Taukei movement, an umbrella for several ethnic-Fijian parties, sniped at the coup makers (who had struck during a Taukei protest march) but said it shared their aims. Fijians like Anereta Gonekalau were less equivocal. George Speight, I'm behind you all the time, runs a song she composed last week. Thank you for your quick action/ Had you been late Fiji would have died.

In asserting solidarity with ethnic Fijians and making the dotty claim that Indians had been planning their genocide, Speight--who has a degree in marketing and was reportedly invited to join the coup because of his communication skills --was tapping old fears of Fijians' domination by the Indians they still call guests. With his ham-fisted attempts to reform the bureaucracy that oversees land titles, Chaudhry only added to those fears. When he assured ethnic Fijians that the constitution guaranteed their rights, including clan ownership of 85% of the nation's land, many refused to believe him. Rabuka's government never had the constitution translated into Fijian, says Teresia Teaiwa, a lecturer in Pacific studies at New Zealand's Victoria University. Uneducated people do not know what is in it. So it's easy to stir up fears based on ignorance.

But the coup was less a people's movement than a power play based on dollars and cents, says Sanjay Ramesh, political editor of the Sydney Fiji Times. Speight's backers, who are rumored to include senior military men and wealthy businessmen as well as opposition M.P.s, are a new force in Fijian politics, says Robbie Robertson, a Pacific historian at Australia's LaTrobe University. Power in Fiji has always been closely held by the chiefly caste, epitomized by ex-President Mara. But under Rabuka a brash indigenous middle class arose, drawing power from new money and international connections. These young men-- and many who aspire to be like them--resent the chiefs' hereditary lock on power. This is a Gucci coup, says Robertson. It is run by a new breed of Fijians, nouveau-riche commoners who through their business interests control much of the chiefs' income. In their struggle with the aristocracy and the left-leaning Fijians and Indo-Fijians of Chaudhry's coalition, says Teaiwa, the people caught in the middle are the majority. Rabuka's coup did not improve things for ordinary Fijians, and nor will Speight's, she says.

The coup is certain to hit Fiji's tourism-and-sugar-based economy hard, especially if its neighbors follow up their threats of aid and trade sanctions. Fiji's repeated kowtowing to the gun has Australia and New Zealand worried that ethnic terrorism might spread elsewhere in the Pacific. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark warned that if Fiji goes down a path of racial segregation which denies Indian citizens normal democratic rights, it can expect the same treatment as apartheid South Africa.

It will take about 10 years to get back to where the economy was before last week, says James Datta, chairman of the Fiji Islands Trade and Investment Bureau. Recovery will be slower if Indo-Fijians flee, as they did after Rabuka's coup. Virtually every Indian wants to leave, they're so fed up with this, says Niraj Yadav, chairman of the People's Organization for Indo-Fijian Rights. Those who support Speight, says Suva political analyst Jone Dakuvula, are willing to have Fiji become an international pariah and an economic basket case just so they can become members of an interim government.

But if Speight's coup succeeds, it will surely be repeated. The message going out, says economist Wadan Narsey of Suva's University of the South Pacific,is that any small group who wants political power can get the support of a unit of the army, bring in people from the villages and hold the country to ransom. Seizure of power by one group will anger and alienate other groups, deepening regional, class and racial rifts. If this coup doesn't split Fiji, the next one surely will.