Feuding Fiji leaders set for face-off

Laisenia Qarase (left) was appointed Prime Minister in 2001 with the blessing of military chief Frank Bainimarama (right) but relations soon soured. Pictures / Reuters, Fiji Times

The potentially explosive showdown looming in Fiji between the country's embattled Prime Minister and its maverick military chief is both political and personal.

As Fiji waits for the return of Frank Bainimarama from overseas, the bitter feud between the Commodore and Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase threatens to unleash the South Pacific nation's fourth coup in less than 20 years.

Qarase plans to introduce a bill which would pardon many of the Fijians convicted for their involvement in the last coup in May 2002, and a subsequent military mutiny six months later. Bainimarama nearly lost his life in that coup, which happened six years ago yesterday. He was chased down a hillside by rebel soldiers as troops from the Counter Revolutionary Warfare squad tried to seize control of the country's main military barracks in the capital, Suva.

The mutiny was thwarted, with five rebel soldiers shot dead, but the commander has not forgotten how very differently it might have ended. Hence his repeated threats over the past year to topple the democratically elected Government if Qarase goes ahead with the contentious legislation to grant amnesties to the coup plotters, including ringleader George Speight.

He reiterated those threats in even stronger terms yesterday, warning that there would be violence and bloodshed if the the bill was passed. It would pitch the country into chaos, with the prospect of Fijians hacking each other to death, said Bainimarama, due back within a week from Egypt where he is visiting Fijian peacekeeping troops.

>>Two bills at heart of Fiji coup tension

The military is also angry over a second proposed bill that would enshrine indigenous ownership of coastal land. Bainimarama fears it could damage foreign investor confidence and harm the tourism industry.

The Army has been critical, too, of links between a former official from Qarase's party and notorious Australian conman Peter Foster, who was arrested in Fiji last week on charges of organising a smear campaign against a rival New Zealand businessman.

Overseeing the growing acrimony between the adversaries is Fiji's ailing President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, who is in his eighties and rarely seen in public.

Relations have deteriorated sharply since Qarase was appointed Prime Minister, with Bainimarama's blessing, in 2001. He headed a coalition Government which, it was hoped, would heal the racial tensions between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians, the descendants of indentured labourers brought to the country in British colonial days to cut sugar cane.

Jon Fraenkel, a political scientist at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, said it was meant to be a group of apolitical technocrats who would stabilise the country.