KEY POINTS:
Shalesh Vinay has met Helen Clark, has even had his photo taken with her, and thinks she's a nice person.
But he can't stand her politics.
The 33-year-old hotel worker from Fiji's Coral Coast, north of Suva, has lost half his income since last December's coup.
He accepts
coup leader Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama should take some of the blame. But the focus of his resentment is the ongoing travel advice maintained by New Zealand of security risks to tourists in Fiji.
"The travel advisories have been too harsh. To be honest, I blame Helen Clark. I think she is punishing ordinary Fijians, the poor people, when it is a government-to-government issue."
Vinay served Clark when she attended a 2002 Pacific Forum retreat at the Lagoon Resort in Pacific Harbour, operated by New Zealand couple Jim and Heather Sherlock.
The resort has had only about 19 per cent occupancy this year compared with an average 65 per cent occupancy in previous years.
The Sherlocks have had to cut back staff hours, with some workers getting only $75 a week. They say they weren't as severely affected by the 2000 coup, as the travel warnings were not maintained for so long.
Like the Sherlocks, Brad Johnstone, a former All Black and former coach for the Fiji national rugby side who runs the Funky Fish budget resort in the Mamanuca Island group, also blames the ongoing travel advisories and "continuing negative press for a big drop in business".
He says the Fijian Backpackers' Association normally runs at 80 to 100 per cent capacity all year but in the past year occupancy has fallen off to 40 per cent at times.
Johnstone says New Zealand should be helping to get a political system in place in Fiji where elections are not based along racial lines.
"The country will not be able to prosper until Indians living here feel Fijian ... I'd love to see my country get in behind Fiji."
The Sherlocks' staffer Vinay lives in the rural area of Nakaulevu where he supports his wife, daughter, parents, grandfather and uncle. He has worked in tourism since he was 21 and has skills as a barman, cook and waiter.
Before the coup he used to pick up extra jobs, but they have now dried up.
His wife, Irene Resma, had worked as a cook in the Pacific Harbour village but the restaurant closed after the coup because there were too few customers.
Vinay has to pay the mortgage on the family land, electricity and water bills for three houses, groceries for seven and medical expenses for his father who is a heart patient.
"It's too much for me ... we are really struggling. I have to do my budget carefully - I can't spend one dollar unwisely, so no new clothes or presents."
Vinay reads the newspaper every day but says there is no good news in it for him.
"We don't understand politics. All we understand is money in our pockets to feed our family."
Despite the bleak outlook he supports Bainimarama who has "done some good things", like moving towards a multi-racial Fiji.
In the slums of Suva, dogs rummage through roadside rubbish not cleared for weeks, children who should be at school play on water pipes crossing polluted streams and taro grows between tin shacks and old car wrecks. A man sits behind a car wash sign with a bucket and hose but no customers.
There are about a dozen squatter settlements scattered around Suva, many populated by Indians displaced from the sugarcane-growing areas after the Native Land Trusts Board discouraged the renewal of land leases.
Living in a tin shack perched on an unstable mud bank is Mahesh Prasad with five of his children - the youngest aged 12 - and a grandchild. Up rickety wooden steps he sits on patchy linoleum with a bowl of kava, ready to serve his visiting brother.
He once worked the sugarfields at Rakiraki but "the natives" took back the land.
Only his two daughters have jobs, both working for the Government. Prasad has had odd jobs like tiling and building maintenance but it's been hard to get work since the coup.
New Zealand should be more understanding, he says. He wants his sons to work in New Zealand to boost the family income.
"Can you help us?" he asks, unaware the New Zealand Government has taken Fiji off a list of Pacific countries that can use a new temporary visitor workers scheme.
About a kilometre away down Ratu Dori Rd, "no squatting" and "no planting"signs have been erected in anticipation of a new housing development.
Living at number 17 is indigenous Fijian Fulori Sicinilawa who has been squatting there for seven years with her brother, aunt and husband.
Her husband has a job doing deliveries, the others are unemployed. Now all the residents have been told to get out with just a week's notice.
"There are not enough jobs in Suva,"she says.
"This land is going to be vacated for new housing, we have to pull out our cassava and taro ... we don't know where we are going."
A friend, Akisi Lewatu, says she has no job and stays at home and looks after her two children aged five and 16.
"I blame the Government."
Another woman says she knows nothing about the Government and is nervous sharing her views with a reporter.
"I only eat and rest. I don't know anything."
She votes in national elections but claims to have no interest in politics.
"I don't feel I know enough. Sometimes I listen to the news but I don't want to think about it. We mind our business."
Mark Hirst, president of the Fiji-New Zealand Business Council in Suva says jobs in construction and tourism have declined dramatically.
Hirst believes tourism might not have been hurt so much but for the reaction from New Zealand and what he calls misleading media portrayal of soldiers on the streets eight months after the coup.
"They made it look worse than it was ... you'd have had to come to Fiji before to know there is no risk."
His vice-president, Bevin Severinsen, is also disappointed at how New Zealand is treating a close trading partner to which it sells far more than it imports back.
New Zealand should try to repair relations and start building bridges, he said.
"It's now a year on. It's time we sat down and start to find ways to get the show on the road."
Severinsen sees New Zealand adopting a hardline, black and white foreign policy to Fiji "yet other things we do are grey".
Though not supporting the coup Severinsen believes the end result is the "best thing that could have happened".
"It is probably the first time in Fiji's history that the country has seriously committed to trying to rid itself of all things which affect a developing country ... like corruption, a massively oversized public service and poor performing infrastructure."
Whether the new administration succeeded remained to be seen "but at least they show resolve".
"Frank [Bainimarama] is a dictator but he should be applauded for trying to do the right thing. I believe a lot of people are warming to him."
Severinsen concedes the beating by military and police of Ballu Khan, a New Zealand citizen, over an alleged assassination plot was unhelpful but that such behaviour went on before the coup.
He is critical of the travel blacklists imposed by countries including New Zealand against those in the interim Government and their families.
The travels ban were extended, following the expulsion of the New Zealand High Commissioner Michael Green in June, to cover all those appointed to head government departments and agencies, or placed on statutory boards, and their immediate family members.
Severinsen says it is putting off genuine people with good intentions to help get Fiji back on its feet.
He says the business council has had dialogue on many levels with the new administration and found it very accessible, more so than the former regime.
Caz Tebbutt, president of the Fiji-Australia Business Council, has no issue with sanctions but says some can be counterproductive.
"What we like to ask is for politicians overseas to understand the punitive impacts on the private sector ... businesses here have taken a battering this year."
He said Fiji's neighbours should adopt the 24-hour rule.
"Stop and think, because once sanctions are put on, they are hard to take off."
But Ulai Taoi, president of the Fiji Indigenous Business Council, believes the stance of New Zealand and Australia is correct, although many Fijian-owned businesses have been badly hurt. Turnover has halved at his office supplies company.
Taoi, who was roughed up in a military cell after being accused of creating anti-Bainimarama blog sites, says:
"This is the fourth coup. I am concerned this will never end, it is something the military has picked up and will wield every now and then."
Local media tried to position Fijians against New Zealand but he believed grassroots Fijian resentment remained targeted on the military takeover.
