Opinion: Just another coup being plotted in Fiji... again

Opinion: Just another coup being plotted in Fiji... again
Michael Field

When Voreqe Bainimarama staged his 2006 coup one of the laudable if hopelessly optimistic aims was that it was to end the cult of coups in Fiji.

It was never going to be and now we are witnessing the evolution of yet another slow coup in Fiji.

It is an embryonic military coup, yet again, that is bound to end in a miscarriage.

Many seem to want to hail Lieutenant Colonel Tevita Mara as the new saviour of Fiji.

In fact Mara and friend Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka are just the latest in a long line of plotters; Rabuka, Speight, Bainimarama et al.

They are using the right language as Bainimarama did in 2006; end coups, end corruption.

Every coup plotter talks like that (Rabaka and Speight spiced it up with indigenous supremacy as well). This latest one has the benefits of some slick PR with the carefully controlled media interviews and press releases, although of late it seems this part of the world has moved on and stopped taking notice.

Mara and Baledrokadroka are talking about democracy. Mara, portraying himself as some sinner who has seen redemption, even talks about facing the people who he so cruelly tormented, and receiving justice from them. He plainly has a biblical view of himself, although one senses he is not expecting a cell, but rather Government House. He wants to be the next Bainimarama.

Neither he nor Baledrokadroka are saying what it is that Fiji really needs to do for security, peace and democracy; close down the Republic of Fiji Military Forces. The military is and has been since 1987 a menace to the stability of Fiji.

Indeed, as the Mara-Minerva events show; they are worse than useless. The Tongan Navy simply sailed into Fiji waters and got Mara. What happened to all the millions of dollars lavished on the Fiji Navy? The same navy that gave us all Bainimarama.

And if Tonga is to be believed, when the Tongan Navy showed up at Minerva this month, the Fiji Navy ran away.

Minerva is not an argument for a bigger and better Fiji military; it’s a little side-show that can best be solved by long established international processes and the very thing the South Pacific does best - lots of talking.

Because the RFMF is essentially a standing army with little to do (the UN invitations are not coming), it is top heavy in the colonel class. Many of the colonels have little actual military experience. They are classroom officers in an army thick with them.

Promotions are limited; Bainimarama’s instance at staying as commander ensures there is a road block at the colonel class.

The stable is full of dissatisfied colonels, many of whom want to be the next general, and thanks to Fiji’s coup culture, the prime minister too.

Mara and Baledrokadroka are plotting a military coup; and they are doing it because they (not the people) believe that they, as soldiers and as senior officers, are better at running Fiji than Bainimarama. So does Colonel Pita Driti.

This is 1960s Africa all over again; except there it was senior NCOs preparing the next coup, or two.

Frankly, this is a road to ruin for Fiji.

Sadly, as events in 2000 showed, most people saw the next coup coming. The only surprise was that it was George Speight nominally leading it and not the others that we had thought it would be; another band of colonels. Mara is giving the impression that he is the next coup leader but that's highly unlikely from Nuku'alofa. It will be another colonel, some one little known. That was the way things were in 2000 - and recall, Rabuka was just a colonel and down the peaking scale, when he emerged bright eyed on the road to Saving Fiji.

Samoa’s Tuilaepa Sailele has given the men an audience. This is an unwise piece of egotism on his part; its none of his business and it links him into the plotting underway.

What difference can he make to the situation?

The same can be said of Australia and New Zealand; hitching their wagons to a couple of out-of-work colonels is not a long term solution.

In a tactical sense, Mara and Baledrokadroka have a ruinous problem; a coup cannot be staged aboard without an uprising at home.

The simple fact is that the Fiji population is timid, compliant, divided and weak. The Suva media and intellectuals quietly moan about how hard things are - "oh, woe is us, we suffer under censorship" - and then do nothing.

There will be no welcoming revolutionary masses at Nadi airport for the two colonels.

They will come to New Zealand for a couple of days and brief foreign affairs officials and one or two politicians.

Mara will go back to Tonga and might even tour Samoa and California.

Then what?

The sad fate that befell Timoci Bavadra comes to mind. After Sitiveni Rabuka overthrew him, Bavadra trekked around the world with his message. For a while he had queues of reporters wanting to hear him. Then, as time passed, people like Richard Naidu - his advocate and press secretary - would have to ring up friendly journalists and get them to give a couple of hundred words to the lonely figure.

Bavadra’s cause was entirely just and right; but realpolitic meant he was doomed to become a lonely, lost figure. Somewhat like Laisenia Qarase.

Make no mistake, Mara and Baledrokadroka are plotting a coup and if it succeeds, it will be Coup V or Coup VI - depending on how you count Fiji coups.

But it will not succeed; it has nothing of the grassroots about it, it has nothing about democracy in it.

They are simply unhappy, dysfunctional ex-employees of a military full of born-to-rule colonels.

If Mara is the answer to Fiji’s question, then one really has to worry at what the question was.

The question cannot be: Which colonel will now rule Fiji?

20 June 2011