KEY POINTS:
Frank Bainimarama controls the guns, and in Fiji's's recent history that has often counted for everything.
The military commander claims to be holding his country's Government to account and ensuring that the rule of law be respected. But with his coup threats he is obviously prepared to break
the law and is holding the nation to ransom.
This is the kind of contorted logic that confounds both his opponents and observers such as political science professor and Pacific affairs specialist Dr John Henderson. "He sees himself as fully justified in threatening a coup to see that those who ran the previous coup are properly punished. To my mind that's very disordered logic."
This man, whose threats and demands are the cause of already costly instability, is the same man credited with bringing stability to his country during the dearth of leadership that followed the attempted coup by George Speight's group in May 2000.
That demonstrated, among other things, the capacity of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) to promote either security or insecurity.
Commodore Bainimarama is an indigenous Fijian from the Kubuna Confederacy in the east of Viti Levu, the same confederacy from which Speight derived the support of villages and influential backers. Bainimarama, however, has not appeared to share the parochialism that is the hallmark of indigenous politics, and has support among Indo-Fijians as well as urban indigenous Fijians.
"Bainimarama believes that everything he has done since May 2000 has been in the interests of promoting political stability and reconciliation," writes Henderson's colleague, Canterbury University political scientist Greg Watson. "He believes the Army deserves credit for setting Fiji back on its feet in 2000, even though its intervention was unconstitutional, and he is determined to do what he can to ensure justice prevails for all involved in the Speight coup and subsequent mutiny."
Bainimarama has been an outspoken critic of the early releases from prison of some prominent people convicted for their roles in the coup, and of calls by political figures for those still jailed and others who may yet be charged to be forgiven.
His most clearly articulated demands include dropping bills that could provide for Speight and others to be released, indigenous fishing rights to be recognised and indigenous land claims to be heard.
Tupeni Baba, a politician and academic, is among those who claim these demands are a side issue and that Bainimarama is acting out of self-interest in an attempt to avoid being arrested himself.
It was Bainimarama who, by coercing Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara to resign as president and then taking power himself, carried out the only successful coup in 2000.
The military commander says that action was justified by the "doctrine of necessity", which allows for extra-legal intervention in exceptional circumstances. But the police, under Australian Andrew Hughes, opened an ongoing investigation into whether Mara was forced to resign.
The fijilive.com website reported late on Thursday that Hughes, who had returned on leave to Australia after receiving threats, had resigned.
Henderson says Bainimarama could "potentially be in jeopardy" regarding this investigation but was more likely to face sedition charges for his recent threats to overthrow the Government and for the illegal removal by the Army of a shipment of ammunition from the wharves. Any arrest, however, had been impossible in the current situation.
Baba points out there was also an investigation into the putting down of the November 2000 mutiny by members of the Counter-Revolutionary Warfare unit (CRW) who were supportive of Speight. Four loyal Army members died and four rebels were later beaten to death. There have since been claims that among those killed were members of the CRW who had nothing to do with the mutiny.
"These were CRW who were not in the camp, who had decided to leave. They were working as ordinary people, they were taken into camp and killed," Baba says. "He was the commandant. There are investigations into that, into the rounding up of people who were not involved. There are a number of investigations that the police are doing that implicate Bainimarama very badly."
Some senior military who did not support Bainimarama's actions had left while others had been stood down, including a colonel recently returned from the Middle East.
"Even Frank's own head of legal division, Colonel CauCau, has been stood down because he allegedly sent an internal memo to people in the camp saying that their position is unconstitutional," Baba says.
"So many of the substantive people have left the military. You are left with people who are really very junior but are carrying very senior ranks."
Even if Baba's assessment is incorrect, there are other personal motives which are being pointed to as a factor in the commodore's action. The aim of the mutiny at Queen Elizabeth barracks in Nabua, Suva, was to assassinate the military commander, a goal it nearly achieved.
"That's given him a personal point of sheer determination," says Henderson, "that 'they' - being Speight and those who backed the mutiny - shouldn't get away with it."
Twenty soldiers were convicted in a court martial relating to the mutiny but Fiji's Court of Appeal has ordered a retrial.
Bainimarama's relationship with Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase cooled in 2001 when Qarase was returned as PM in the first election after the coup of 2000 and consequently no longer felt beholden to the Army commander for his position.
Says Henderson: "That infuriated Bainimarama. Qarase showed his disfavour with Bainimarama by making it clear that he wasn't going to reappoint him [in 2004] for a further five years. Bainimarama then made it very clear that unless he was reappointed he would take matters into his own hands and we had the first of what became a pretty familiar cycle of Bainimarama threatening a coup if he didn't get his own way."
In the election this year Qarase needed to form a coalition to govern and that essentially included the Speight interest group that was pushing indigenous rights.
Fiji's ethnic mix has changed from almost even to 60 per cent indigenous Fijian and 40 per cent Indo-Fijian, with the latter continuing to drop because of a perceived bleak future if they stay and the prospect of better opportunities abroad for those with skills.
The latest developments are already doing immense harm as hotels empty and are likely to further entrench the view that Indo-Fijians don't have a bright future there.
Casting doubt on Bainimarama's political motives, Baba points to the actual policies of the Qarase Government.
Baba was in the Timoci Bavandra Government ousted by Sitiveni Rabuka's coup of 1987 and the Mahendra Chaudhry Government held hostage by Speight's group. He is now in the senate, to which he was appointed by Qarase's Government. and has been accused by former colleagues of changing his political stripes.
He has told Fiji media he still considers himself a liberal and a socialist but saw the ruling party as "the only alternative for Fiji moving forward".
Source of pride and money
Among Pacific Island nations only Papua New Guinea has a similar-sized Army per capita to Fiji.
But Papua New Guinea's is a rag-tag outfit compared with the 4000-head Republic of Fiji Military Forces which is well resourced, well trained and internationally experienced.
The ethos of the military staying out of politics was drummed into the force through training by the British and, later, the New Zealand military but Sitiveni Rabuka, who was number three in the Army at the time of his coups in 1987, showed the lesson had not been heard. George Speight's group was not a military coup though it was supported by a section of the elite Counter-Revolutionary Warfare unit which had been close to Rabuka and had trained on his land.
Fiji is proud of its Army - made up almost entirely by indigenous Fijians - and much kudos accrues from a military career. It has been increasingly used by the United Nations as a peacekeeping force but, in the case of the coup, these deployments are under threat. The UN did, however, continue to use the Fijians after Rabuka's coups.
More recently, Fijian soldiers have earned big money as security for private interests in conflicts such as in Iraq, which has helped make the military a significant earner of foreign currency for Fiji.
