EDITORIAL: Fiji politics a farcical affair

LOUIS PIERARD
The latest news from Fiji gives little confidence for our foreign affairs dealings with that nation. The farce goes on: Fijian politics appears to inhabit a parallel universe. The oddly-titled Fiji Human Rights Commission yesterday attacked New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark's s reaction to the military coup as "ill-timed and potentially damaging". It said Wellington's response was undiplomatic and that it made matters "worse for ordinary people". It said Miss Clark was "not adequately briefed".
New Zealand government duty minister, Ruth Dyson, says the coup has been widely condemned and the commission's remarks are surprising and disappointing. Why the understatement? The commission's comments are, in fact, ludicrous.
What troubles Fiji's human rights watchdog (described as an independent statutory body) is not the level of withering hostility, which the coup fully deserved, but that last month's military takeover by Col Frank Bainimarama should have been criticised at all.
The commission complained that New Zealand's response to the coup was on "constitutional grounds" and said the ousted Qarase administration was itself illegal and guilty of violating international obligations on discrimination. Perhaps the latter was true was.
And maybe Colonel Bainimarama's motives were pure. Indeed, Qarase's weak, corrupt government earned the mistrust anger of many Fijians. But is it only they who are unaware of bizarre irony in their methods?
The first public pronouncement by newly reinstated president Ratu Josefa Iloilo was that he would help secure immunity for members of the armed forces who overthrew the Government. Yet part of the improbity for which the previous administration was accused was that it was planning to grant immunity those involved in a previous coup.
When a nation's supposed human rights defenders argue that the means justifies the ends, such endorsement will guarantee that coups, rather than an orderly (albeit inefficient) election process, will dominate Fijian politics for a long while yet.
No leader can ever be confident he or she will not be deposed in the same way: If a lack of confidence in democratic process to further the ambitions of one part of Fiji's community can be comprehensively rewarded, rest assured others will follow their example.
And who can blame them? Fiji's Human Rights Commission? In the absence of rational argument, a response on "constitutional grounds" is all that can be hoped to preserve the concept of democracy, freedom and the rule of law in Fiji.