Speight's treason trial adjourned

SUVA - Fiji coup leader George Speight's treason trial has been adjourned - a day before the country votes to restore democracy following his coup last year - on the grounds the judge may be too old to hear the case.

Fiji's High Court sat amid tight security before Justice Peter Surnam adjourned the case today after hearing legal argument that he would pass the retirement age of 65 for judges during a trial expected to last at least seven months.

The adjournment, until next year, means Speight will contest racially divided Fiji's election from a prison cell as a candidate for the indigenous Fijians' Conservative Alliance Party.

It also means that if he wins his seat in the indigenous stronghold of Korovou on the northeast of the main island of Viti Levu, he will be eligible to sit for two scheduled sessions of parliament later this year before his trial resumes.

Treason carries the death penalty in Fiji but capital sentences are generally commuted to life in prison.

Under Fijian law, Speight would be disqualified as an MP if he was elected but was unable to attend parliament because he was in prison.

Speight wore a traditional sulu skirt as he entered the court in an old colonial building in the Fiji capital of Suva. But he was soon on his way back to his prison island of Nukulau off Suva, where he has been held with 12 co-accused for about a year.

"I'm in jail, how can I campaign?" Speight said as he was led from the court. Speight smiled and waved to supporters and media as he was later driven away in a red police bus.

Surnam asked Fiji's Court of Appeal for a ruling on whether he was fit to continue hearing the treason charges.

The Court of Appeal will not rule before January, with the treason trial then not likely to proceed until February 2002.

"I am 65 and the (appeals) court needs to decide on that," Surnam said, adding he did not want the result of the case challenged because he was too old.

Speight and a group of nationalist gunmen stormed parliament on May 19, 2000, in the name of indigenous rights and overthrew Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister who won a landslide election victory in May 1999.

Fiji's military later appointed an indigenous interim government headed by caretaker prime minister Laisenia Qarase, who called new elections for August 25.

Extremists have distributed leaflets threatening bloodshed if ethnic Indians again win votes at the ballot box, the head of a UN observer mission has said.

Conflict between ethnic Indians and native Fijians has fuelled three coups and a military mutiny since 1987. Ethnic Indians, ancestors of indentured labour brought to work the country's sugar cane fields, make up about 44 percent of Fiji's 800,000 population and dominate business.

Chaudhry has called on Indo-Fijians to show courage and vote for their democratic rights.

Polls will close late on Saturday but a result is not expected until September 6 as ballot boxes must be shipped in from Fiji's more than 300 far-flung islands.

Eighteen parties and 351 candidates are contesting the poll.

A plethora of indigenous parties are expected to splinter the Fijian vote and Chaudhry is again forecast to dominate at the ballot box, especially in the Indo-Fijian sugar cane belt.

Fiji's electoral system splinters the country along racial lines, with parliament's 71 seats divided into 46 communal Fijian and ethnic Indian seats and 25 mixed race or "open" seats.

Speight's coup has hit the Fijian economy hard. Official tourism figures show visitor numbers down 41 percent in the year after the coup and the economy shrank dramatically. Fiji was also suspended from the 54-nation Commonwealth after the coup.

- REUTERS

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