Page 10 - Islands Business September 2023

Fiji Fiji
DEMOCRACY. ABORT. REPEAT.

By Richard Naidu examined where Fiji was placed on the “authoritarian-
democratic spectrum”, and “the character of reform in Fiji
“Democracy Reimagined.” On paper, an ambitious title that since the re-institution of elections in 2014” as the FijiFirst
captures the next step in the journey of a nation that’s fresh government grappled with the “dual challenges of political
out of the shadow of a 16-year, one and then two-man rule, reform and economic development”.
led on this new path by the very man who shot the heart out
of paradise with his original coup d’état in 1987.
Textbook script to paradise lost and then recovered?
For those desperate for Fiji to find a way beyond the almost
“Ultimately, the fundamental issue is, as a country,
40-year cycle of being repeatedly held back from fulfilled are we ready to commit to developing a new
potential, this promise of redemption perfected couldn’t be democracy and committing totally to the values of
democracy and accepting the results of an election,
better scripted. whether we like it or not, and sticking to the rule of
But it doesn’t take much to see the familiar demons of law?”
- Deputy Prime Minister, Manoa Kamikamica
the past lurking just beneath the surface of such hopeful
imaginings.

A necessary pain
Democracy Reimagined was the title of a panel discussion Bainimarama spent his first eight years in power as a
in Suva in August featuring the leaders of the political parties military leader, following his 2006 military takeover, until the
who found their way into the Fijian Parliament in the general 2014 elections when the newly formed FIjiFirst party won a
elections of December 2022. All except the FijiFirst Party, landslide election.
now in Opposition (it was invited to the panel) after 16 “As our experience of democratisation phenomena over
years in power under its leader Voreqe Bainimarama, were the last 30 to 40 years tells us, countries do not emerge from
represented. this process overnight […] The process is as likely to stall or
The panel headlined a two-day symposium that followed, retreat into a semi-authoritarian condition as it is to progress
delving into the nuts and bolts of the wheel called democracy. to a more democratic outcome,” Tarte and Carnegie said in
Coming six months after a hard-fought election that saw the their 2018 paper.
end of what came to be described as the “two-man rule” of “The international community may have enthusiastically
prioritised the normalisation of economic and diplomatic
relations but there are ways in which Fiji’s political arena
has skewed in favour of the incumbent government rather
than deepening democracy post-2014 […] while there is the
“Governments changed peacefully, institutions appearance of progress in the shape of meaningful elections,
remained strong. Electoral laws were transparent.
Election systems provided confidence. And that was the overall situation is less democratic and more precarious
the reason why Mauritius was successful.” than it seems,” they wrote.
- Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance,
Biman Prasad
Prerequisites to Democracy
Tarte has previously said that there were two fundamental
prerequisites for democracy that were lacking in the first four
decades of Fiji’s independence era.
Bainimarama and his Attorney-General and chief political One was a broad consensus within the nation that supported
architect, Aiyaz Saiyed-Khaiyum, the significance of the the idea of democracy and constitutional government.
symposium was obvious. Another was the presence of a human rights culture that
As one of the convenors, Associate Professor Sandra Tarte, recognises the rights and freedoms of all citizens.
Acting Head of the University of the South Pacific’s School The irony, she now observes, is that being subject to
of Law and Social Sciences said in an interview with Islands a heavy-handed government is what may have caused
Business, it’s important to take a nuanced look at the past. the mainstreaming of issues such as social and economic
“We really needed this change of government. But I feel empowerment and human rights, and in the process, a shift
the Bainimarama era has, over a long period of time, covered away from the identity politics of Fiji’s past.
a lot of changes as well. I don’t think we’re the same Fiji as “I would argue that in this period, people started to value
we were back in 2006, or 2000, or 1987. And I also think that, the importance of the rule of law, especially when they saw it
for better or worse, this period has perhaps enabled us as a being abused, quite routinely, by the government of the day.
nation to really put that past behind us,” said Tarte. A government which came in to do this sort of cleanup and
In a paper published in the Australian Journal of Politics continued to use force to drive things, but in the end [did so]
and History in 2018, Tarte and co-author Paul Carnegie for its own interests,” said Tarte.

10 Islands Business, September 2023