Pacific coups not beginning of a line of dominoes, say experts

When the 2000 Fijian coup was quickly followed by one in the Solomon Islands, it fired speculation they were related and the start of a domino effect.

But despite pockets of instability the fears have proven unfounded.

Dr Jon Fraenkel, senior research fellow at the Pacific Institute of Advanced Studies in Development and Governance, recalls the catchphrase "copycat coups" after the Solomon Islands' uprising on June 5, 2000.

"The whole discussion about the domino effect when it first came out was the copycat coup. That was the phrase used in all the editorials the day after the Solomon Islands' coup."

Fraenkel says when the Fiji coup occurred it was not a great surprise for journalists because they had had the experience of the 1987 coup.

"But the Solomons was a complete mystery. No one knew anything about the Solomon Islands ... so they took the line, 'we don't know what is happening but do know there was a coup in Fiji two weeks ago so this looks very similar'."

Fraenkel says the media made all sorts of easy linkages. But the coup there was independent of Fiji and with a very different underlying political situation, he says.

In a recently published paper Fraenkel said politically Fiji was an exceptional case, not just in the Pacific but even internationally with its longstanding tensions between two ethnic groups.

In the Solomon Islands, also in Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Vanuatu, much greater ethno-linguistic diversity had contributed to difficulties in post-colonial state building but also diminished the capacity of elites to use direct ethnic appeal as a means of securing power.

After the 2000 coups, Fraenkel says, the emergent so-called arc of instability in the south-west Pacific had attracted concern, effectively suggesting northern Australia was surrounded by failing or conflict-ridden states.

He did not deny the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Bougainville, West Papua, Aceh and East Timor had been unstable, all either witnessing coups, secessionist crises or varying degrees of civil warfare.

But Fraenkel doubted frictions culminating in state failure were likely to be replicated across the region.

Further eastwards, Fraenkel says, the arc of instability gives way to a region of "extraordinary stability".

Many of those Pacific countries are dependent territories or freely associated with powers like the United States and New Zealand.

Pacific expert Professor Ron Crocombe, of the University of South Pacific, agrees there was no real risk of coups in such countries.

Even in Tonga, where there has been significant political unrest, a coup is increasingly unlikely with recent shifts towards a more open process, he says. 

"I would think people were out of touch if they thought coups in Fiji had an impact anywhere else. There was a huge ethnic dimension there that does not exist elsewhere in the Pacific."