The deadly November 2 firefight between rival factions of the Fiji armed forces has again revealed the true source of "regional instability", and the greatest threat to human rights and democracy, in the South Pacific: the privileged neo-colonial capitalist elites that have been assiduously cultivated over many decades by the region's most significant resident imperialist power, Australia.
Members of the Fiji army's elite Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) unit seized the armed forces' national headquarters, the Queen Victoria Barracks in Suva. Leading the 40 or so commandos were several soldiers who had only just been released from detention following their participation in George Speight's terrorist coup against the elected Fiji Labour Party (FLP)-led government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
The goal of the attackers was to topple the commander of the Fiji military forces, Commodore Frank Bainimarama — the power behind "interim" Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's throne — and replace him with someone more sympathetic to Speight's followers. At least eight people were killed when soldiers loyal to Bainimarama retook the barracks.
Despite Bainimarama's arrest of hundreds of Speight supporters on July 26-27, the Fiji armed forces and the military-backed "interim" government has remained riddled with Speight sympathisers.
While unhappy with the way Speight dislodged Fiji's elected multiracial government (and fearful that Speight's blatantly anti-Indian Fijian policies could ignite a race war that would frighten away Western investors), Bainimarama completed the coup by first taking power and then appointing the "interim" government.
The election of the liberal-reformist FLP in 1999 was seen by Fiji's aristocratic elite as a threat to its carefully constructed political and ideological monopoly. It quickly moved to crush any potential political movement based on united action by Fiji's workers, Melanesian Fijians and Indian Fijians.
The military-backed Qarase government is now drafting a constitution that will again discriminate against Indian Fijians (the scrapping of the 1997 constitution was one of the first of Speight's demands agreed to by the military). Elections based on this constitution will not take place until mid-2002.
Since July, Bainimarama has offered an olive branch to Speight's military supporters — dropping treason charges against CRW members and releasing them and delaying serious investigations into those behind the coup — in the hope of mending the fractured military. The murderous attempted putsch was their answer. More violent conflict can be expected as Bainimarama will have little choice but to purge the military and government of Speight's fanatical followers.
Among those mentioned as Speight supporters are High Court Chief Justice Timoci Tuivaga, vice-president Jope Senioli, cabinet ministers Apisai Tora and Inoke Kabuabola, police chief Isikai Savua and former chief military spokesperson during the May coup Lieutenant-Colonel Filipino Tarakinikini. The renegades hoped to install Tarakinikini as head of the military.
(A telling example of the Australian ruling class's commitment to democracy in Fiji was the attendance by Tarakinikini at a Gold Coast meeting of the Fiji Australia Business Council in late October to talk up investment prospects in post-coup Fiji. Tarakinikini hobnobbed with corporate chiefs of some of Australia's largest companies, such as ANZ and Westpac.)
The outbreak of fighting within the Fijian army has exposed the criminal folly of the Australian government's refusal to act on the calls of Fiji's deposed multiracial government, and the trade union and pro-democracy movements, for serious action to restore democracy in Fiji.
Instead of imposing effective sanctions, as was demanded by Fiji's democracy movement, Canberra instead went along with the fiction that the Bainimarama wing of the military is committed to the restoration of democracy and is the best bet for the restoration of "stability".
The Australian government immediately dropped calls for the democratically elected Fiji Labour Party-led government to be reinstated, and merely urged an eventual return to "constitutional government".
The Australian government tacitly accepted the FLP's overthrow because it believes that the Melanesian Fijian chiefly elite, backed by the Fiji military, best defends Australian imperialism's considerable economic and political interests in Fiji.
It is now obvious that the greatest threat to "stability" and democracy in Fiji comes from the very forces Canberra has sought to protect — the military and the chiefly elite.