BY DAVID ROBIE & SHERYL HO
SUVA, May 20 — George Speight, the leader of the seven gunmen who seized Fiji parliament on May 19, has defied mounting international condemnation of the kidnapping of Fiji's elected cabinet. He claims that his regime is now the legal government of the Pacific nation.
Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the country's first Indo-Fijian prime minister, the cabinet, the parliamentary speaker and MPs have been detained under armed guard in parliament since the morning of May 19. Chaudhry's Fiji Labour Party swept to office in last year's general election.
Speight's self-styled "interim government" named a list of "advisers", but at least three have denied any involvement and condemned the attempted coup. The police and military forces appear to remain loyal to constitutional authority but have not taken action against the gunmen. Anti-government demonstrators have blocked parliament's main entrance.
The attempted coup follows a series of protests by some indigenous Fijians in the past few weeks against Chaudhry's multiracial government.
Speight, a timber industry businessman and undischarged bankrupt, claims that indigenous Fijians support the illegal regime. About 48% of Fiji's 800,000 people are indigenous Fijians; 46% are Indo-Fijians, and the rest are mixed-race or ethnic minorities.
Speight said he had no apologies for holding what are seen as racist, pro-Fijian views. "We are not going to apologise to anybody and we are not going to step back, and we are not going to be daunted by accusations of racism, or one-sidedness. At the end of the day, it is [about] the supreme rights of our indigenous people in Fiji", Speight said.
He said that only President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and negotiator Sitiveni Rabuka (who led two 1987 military coups and was ousted as prime minister by the Chaudhry coalition government) were not in support of his action.
Mara has declared a state of emergency and the armed forces have called up all reservists in the greater Suva area. However, Speight claimed at a press conference that the 1997 constitution — which replaced one that openly discriminated against the Indo-Fijian minority — had been revoked and that there is "now no longer the office of the president".
Speight, the son of opposition MP Savenaca Tokainavo, is reportedly a director of the Wattle Group, an Australian investment company which has allegedly siphoned millions of dollars from the Australian police and Fiji citizens.
Speight was also installed by former finance minister in the Rabuka government, Jim Ah Koy, as head of the Fiji Hardwood Corporation, a multimillion-dollar company which has been at the centre of controversy in recent months.
Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon joined the Australian, New Zealand and United States governments in condemning the attempted coup and called on the kidnappers to abandon their action. McKinnon warned on BBC television that Fiji could be excluded from the Commonwealth if the coup succeeded.
The Fiji Citizens' Constitutional Forum (CCF), a community-based group which played a key role in the establishment of the 1997 constitution, strongly condemned the kidnapping of the government.
"We call especially on our international partners who have contributed to the long process of democratisation in Fiji, which culminated in our 1997 constitution — governments, churches, non-government organisations and committed individuals — to join us in this chorus of condemnation against this 'civil coup'", said CCF executive director Rev Akuila Yabaki.
"The seven armed men who have carried out these acts of violence are unpopular politicians and discredited businessmen. Anyone who thinks that the ethnic Fijian community can benefit from this coup is living in a fool's paradise.
"The majority of Fiji's citizens voted overwhelming in support for constitutional democracy in the last election, including a majority of ethnic Fijians. This violence is not about protecting Fijian rights. It is about the interests of a few at all of our expense. The leaders of this so-called coup have no legitimacy and do not represent the breadth of Fijian support for constitutional democracy", Yabaki said.
Police declared central Suva a "no go" zone and said they were treating the entire central business district as a crime scene after scores of looters smashed their way into stores and set one shopping block ablaze. An unnamed police officer told Radio Fiji that 160 shops had been looted. Police barricades were thrown up on the main roads into the city.
[From the Pasifik Nius service via the Journalism Program, University of the South Pacific, Suva. Email <niusedita@pactok.net.au>. Visit <http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/nius/index.html>.]