Issue No: 599; 18 March 2001

In a media interview, the regime's Attorney General Alipate Qetaki stated that the regime had to take unconstitutional and unlawful steps in order to implement the Fiji Court of Appeal decision. He further stated that the appointment of the interim regime as the caretaker regime is the process "to ensure that after the elections everything will be in order".

Qetaki, a civil servant before becoming the Attorney General, also revealed that he still has a contract with the Public Service Commission which expires in 2003.

This revelation confirms the belief of many, including the Fiji Public Service Association, that the upper echelons of the civil service is heavily politicised. The ease with which certain elite ethnic Fijians move from the civil service to politics to statutory body board memberships and chief executive positions, back into civil service and politics, reveals how a small coterie of elite Fijians have been trying to control Fiji's politics after the 1987 military coups. These are the faceless people within the government structure who have detested a democratic government from running Fiji and who have ensured that the President takes steps which are unconstitutional.