14 November, 2000 (by Jone Dakuvula)

It was pity that our debate with Mere Samisoni on the Television "Close Up" Programme last Sunday could not have been longer because there were a few points that I wanted to say, but I did not have the courage to interrupt Mere. Riaz Khaiyum had told us that we could interrupt each other, so long as it did not develop into an uncontrolled slanging match. Mere took advantage, but I did not because I noticed very early that Mere had a lot to say and I decided to let her have as much time as she needed.

One of the points I wanted to make in that TV debate was the implication of a High Court decision to uphold the 1997 Constitution and declare the Abrogation Decree as invalid. It would mean that all the Decrees published since May 19th and all other public decisions, including expenditures and contractual commitments made by the Military Council and the Interim Administration are legally invalid. The Interim Administration as well will be without legal legitimacy. Many people will wonder why the High Court of Fiji should make at this time such a bold decision to put into question all that they believed had brought about some semblance of stability and normality into our lives. The answer to that is, just as George Speight and his gang were bold enough to disrupt our lives by announcing to the whole world that they had abrogated the 1997 Constitution, and plunged this country into a vortex of turmoil, depression and violence, so the High Court should be equally firm in its independence to decide to return us to Constitutional democracy. Constitutional democracy is the only proper basis for long term stability and confidence. I have always said that George Speight's putsch, although it resonated with deep primordial feelings of indigenous nationalism, really represent the sentiment of only a minority of indigenous Fijians/and particular a small of well off Fijians who are greedy for power. The majority of indigenous Fijians just want to live peacefully with their neighbours and to have a government based on laws that are respected by all. They do not care if Apisai Tora or Ratu Inoke Kubuabola are Ministers or not.

A return to Constitutional democracy is inevitable but it is a question of both timing and form. The time is right now, because we all know that international sanctions are not being intensified, only to give us time to do the right thing and return to normality. This country cannot afford to wait another two or three years of rule by a group of unelected people who have recently paid themselves handsome increases in salaries whilst the rest of their public servants have theirs reduced by 12½%. The international community does not accept the Interim Administration as legitimate and wants a return to Constitutional democracy as soon as possible. As I said, when the Court decides in favour of the 1997 Constitution, it means we must return to the lawfully elected Parliament and government. If the Interim Administration defies the High Court, or the Court of Appeal, then that will be the end of the rule of law as we know in this country, because no one will ever believe its in the future, whatever Constitution that replaces the 1997 one. After the High Court decision, should we have and illegal regime here, respectable banks, and other financial institutions in Fiji and overseas will not deal with it, because it will not have legal legitimacy. Foreign Governments also will not deal with an illegal regime that does not respect the decision of it's Court.

Notwithstanding the Minister of Information's views, the decision by the New Zealand Government to prohibit the Minister of Commerce, Tomasi Vuetilovoni, from entering New Zealand, is a signal of what is in store for us internationally should the Interim Administration decide to reject the Court decision against it.

It is good that Mere Samisoni had said on Television that the S.V.T. will respect the Court decision and will join a Government of National Unity that might be called together by the Fiji Military Forces, on the authority of the President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo. Let us hope that Mere was not speaking out of turn because we still have to hear from the S.V.T. leader if he and his colleagues will respect a High Court decision that overturns what they had supported. Or are they again going to embark on another Taukei Movement Programme of destabilisation for another coup?

Mere will have to advise those Fijian MPs who got their names on to George Speight's various Cabinet lists that they do not demand to be Members of a G.N.U. Cabinet because it will complicate the Police investigations. There are some Fijian Members of Parliament in the S.V.T. and other Opposition Fijian parties, who were not tarnished by the scramble for offices following the events of May 19th. These can be appointed into a G.N.U. Cabinet.

In her latest article in the Daily Post on November 9th, Mere says she is upset about my calling some Fijian people who "act like kids". Note I said some Fijians (not all Fijians) who were the target of my article on childish behaviour. I was referring to many of the Fijians leaders who supported George Speight's 56 days in the international limelight, at the expense the hostage members of the elected government. Speight's supportes, let us not forget, had threatened to murder members of the Coalition government if they were not given amnesty and allowed to form a Cabinet. Thus my calling these acts "childish behaviour" was less than mild!

I was also accused of being "insensitive" to the feelings of indigenous Fijians. Most ordinary indigenous Fijians do not know, let alone read my articles in the Daily Post. But I know many educated Fijians do, and to those who are offended, I make no apologies to them because they were meant to offend the tender nationalist "sensibilities" about supporting the criminal actions in Parliament on May 19th. Mere has also gone to great lengths in defending Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, as a sort of "above the fray legality counsellor" to the S.V.T. And I am accused of "making half cooked accusations that illuminate nothing of relevance". I do not like repeating myself, but let me refresh Mere Samisoni of what I have already said about Ratu Inoke that have not been rebutted by her or anybody else.
(a) Ratu Inoke told a S.V.T. Management Board Meeting a few days after the 1999 General Election result, that we must get rid of the Coalition Government in the shortest time possible. People must be ready to shed blood and die for that "cause". He said this only a few days after Major General Rabuka had refused the request of some ex MP's to lead another military coup. Since the S.V.T. could not have forced another General Election, or achieved a majority for a vote of no confidence in Parliament, what then did Ratu Inoke mean by getting rid of the government in the shortest time possible?
(b) Ratu Inoke and Apisai Tora together revived the Taukei Movement and co-ordinated the marches with the Nationalist Vanua Takolavo Party activists that built up towards the coup of George Speight.
(c) Ratu Inoke, on the day of George Speight's seizure of Parliament, told Jokapeci Koroi, President of the F.L.P., to leave Government offices in Parliament because they were taking over.
(d) He led the S.V.T. delegation that expressed its support to George Speight in Parliament on the 24th of May. He told George Speight supporters that they were "under his protection".
(e) His name was on George Speight's various Cabinet lists and he did not say or do anything to deny his willingness to be on those lists.
If these are "fabrications, slurs and wild conjectures", then why not rebut them with counter factual argument Mere? Furthermore, can Ratu Inoke deny that he said to a worker at the Suva Wharf before the Mutiny day: "Don't forget Thursday". What was that about?

Mere seems to think that only those S.V.T. MPs and ex MPs who supported George Speight's illegal seizure of the Government are "pro indigenous" and those like me who advocate the promotion of indigenous rights and aspiration through Constitutional, lawful and consensual paths, as not worthy of being regarded as Fijians. I happen to believe that I represent the silent majority view of indigenous Fijians who do not support criminal and violent methods of promoting indigenous concerns.

Mere also continues to accuse me of misunderstanding the state of mind of those minority of indigenous Fijians who marched in the Taukei Movement marches and went to express their support of George Speight in Parliament. As she said on TV, if Fijians are angry and in a state of fear and they do not want to see reason, then no amount of reason is going to stop them from acting according to their beliefs. I have understood this from the beginning but what I have been pointing out is that the people who were largely responsible for putting these Fijians in this state of mind are politicians and activists in the S.V.T., the Nationalist Party and other Fijian Parties and Independents (like Simione Kaitani) who, throughout the year up to May and thereafter, had stoked up these feelings with half truths and lies about the Peoples' Coalition Government and the Constitution. These so called Fijian leaders had even come to believe in their own propaganda, because their understanding of the Constitution, the system of government and the policies of the government was shallow and distorted. The overall strategy was to destabilise and overthrow the Government by legal or illegal means and replace it with a Government led by them. This was evident in the ready agreement of most MPs in the S.V.T., including Ratu Inoke, to be included in George Speight's Cabinet and, later in the scramble to get into Qarase's administration.

Mere goes as far as even to drag out the Davidson/Gallimore Study of income from the sugar industry to justify the illegal activities of the movement she was part of. As if those Fijians who were mobilised to support the Coup were aware of this study! The Davidson/Gallimore analysis may have, in her own mind, provided a justification for her own support for the activities in Parliament, but to use it as an excuse for the fanatical feelings of others who were not even aware of these articles stretches credibility too far and does not do any good to the merits of her argument.

The point of all these is, that ordinary Fijians in the villages do not get mobilised to march in cities and towns unless they have been convinced by some leaders that there was a real threat posed by the Chaudhry Government to their interests. There would have been no marches and no seizure of the Government, with threats to murder the members, had the Fijian politicians and activists and George Speight not incited their feelings.

Mere makes a big issue about the determination of the S.V.T. to fight Mahendra Chaudhry all the way, especially on the Constitutional Amendment. But she has ignored what I said in my earlier articles, that these Amendments that S.V.T. was misrepresenting to the indigenous Fijians, were virtually the same ones S.V.T. wanted to introduce into Parliament at the end of our reign, but could not for lack of time. It was shear political opportunism but it was effective. It was the same with the propaganda about the land deprivation threat posed by the Chaudhry Government. I have said before that the Coalition Government was only in the early stages of going through the procedure of negotiating the issue of lease renewals and rent revision under ALTA, when it was overwhelmed by this S.V.T/N.L.T.B. land loss scare campaign. At the end of all that, Apisai Tora went back to the $28,000 compensation payment that Mere and Mrs Druavesi had been so vocal about, as evidence of racial discrimination! She concedes in her article that all her grievances (inherited from her Guru, John Davis) about uneconomic land rents under ALTA were the fault of Fijian leaders in the last 40 years, but still justified her conviction that the Coalition Government deserved to be punished for the sins of these Fijian leaders.

Her solution is to reinstate in power those same Fijian leaders who had procastinated on the question of ALTA Land lease renewals, rent review and State Schedule A and B lands, for the 13 years that they had been in power. She has forgotten that it was Mahendra Chaudhry who, in his first speech to the B.L.V. in June 1999, promised to introduce to Parliament the Bills for the return of State Schedule A and B lands to the native land owners. These Bills had been gathering dust on the shelves for seventeen years since 1983 when the B.L.V. passed a resolution on the matter. Now Tora claims credit for doing it by Decree without a Parliament and as an unelected Minister. May be Mere prefers that kind of Minister and Government that acts by fiat without legal procedure or debate on issues of indigenous rights?

Mere accuses me of focussing only on the faults of the Fijian politicians and not the Coalition politicians. She needs to read my articles again including those that had been published before May 19th to note I had been one of the harshest critics of the Chaudhry-led Government. If I have tended to concentrate my fire on those who have supported the Coup since May 19th, rather than those who were deposed, then I make no apologies for that fact because I have been arguing for respect for the rule of law. All Mere has been engaging in is defending those who broke the law. She wants them to be excused. At the same true she wants reconciliation! Reconciliation can only genuinely occur when she and the people she has been defending accept that they had done a legal and moral wrong to the members of the Coalition Government, and apologise for it. She is asking for forgiveness without any acknowledgement from her side of the wrongfulness of their actions. Forgiveness does not mean that the people who did the wrong will no longer accept responsibility for the consequences of their illegal acts. Mere's fault is that she still strongly believes that her "Cause" was right, irrespective of the means George Speight and her group used to try and get into political power. In other words, it was right to support those who were willing to murder the Members of the Coalition Government if the FMF did not agree to their demand for amnesty and Ministerial offices.