Aputsch can succeed only when the military, the police and Government administrators have lost confidence in officially elected leaders and are happy to accept outsiders as replacements. Amid the confusion and contradictory reports emerging from Fiji, it is clear that George Speight, the leader of an attempted putsch, has failed to gain such acceptance. The bulk of the Army and the police have remained on the sidelines, and few indigenous Fijians have flocked to his cause.
When, on Friday, Speight took Fiji's first ethnic Indian Prime Minister and other parliamentarians hostage and claimed power in the name of indigenous Fijians, he must have been counting on support from these quarters. Such backing would guarantee the return of power to indigenous Fijians. Events, however, have not developed as Speight planned, and he must now contemplate desperate measures. Conceivably, he could yet play his final card, the shooting of hostages, if his demands are not met.
Fiji's official leaders have so far reacted maturely to the crisis, declaring their support for the constitution and the democratically elected Government of Mahendra Chaudhry. The position of the President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, is doubly difficult because a daughter of his, a minister in the Chaudhry Ministry, is among the hostages. Last night, with his reputation - and that of his country - on the line, he was standing firm. Such strength and a unity of purpose will be needed if Fiji is not to regress to the odious state that prevailed before a non-racist constitution was introduced two years ago.
Fiji's leaders should be fortified by the knowledge that the Taukei, the radical indigenous Fijian nationalist group that backed past coups and supports Speight's betrayal of democracy, was soundly defeated in last year's elections. And that six months ago, a national poll saw Chaudhry rated the most popular leader, with 62 per cent approval. For the first time, his popularity surpassed that of Sitiveni Rabuka, the architect of the 1987 military coups.
Nonetheless, while many indigenous Fijians seem to have seen Speight's action mainly as an opportunity for looting, resentment towards the Indians lingers. Such is perhaps inevitable, given a racial situation which seems among the world's most difficult. The presence of two different, and sometimes seriously differing races, has sparked massive disorder in other such societies. Indigenous Fijians were prepared to tolerate only a month of the country's first Indian-dominated Government in 1987 before Rabuka seized power. Chaudhry's Government endured exactly a year. Only the mild Indian reaction to such intolerance and contempt for democracy has prevented the descent into political and economic chaos reaching disastrous proportions over the past 13 years.
It was a considerable feather in Fiji's cap that, before Friday's attempted putsch, the political clock had been turned back to the days before Rabuka's coup. The new multiracial constitution, and a multiracial Government, pointed the way forward and continue to be the only avenue to political stability and international acceptance. Coups and imposed rule will provide no enduring solutions. In the end, accommodations which recognise the realities of modern Fiji will have to be made. The lack of support for the attempted putsch by a bankrupt businessman suggests, perhaps, that this is now widely accepted.
Recognition of the Fijian people's democratically expressed will should strengthen the resolve of Ratu Mara and other leaders in this most difficult of circumstances.
Fiji coup coverage
<i>Editorial:</i> Telling absence of support for coup
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