A coup by any other name

By now it’s old news that the Fiji Human Rights Commission – or to be more accurate, its director – has released another pro-coup report.

But the absurdity of the report (released on August 29), which presents FHRC director Dr Shaista Shameem’s findings on whether ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s human rights were violated, deserves a mention.

In fact, not only is the report – the second – unabashedly supportive of the military-led regime, Shameem also makes a stunning revelation, something no serious analyst has ever put forward.

After thoroughly analysing the events of December 5, 2006 (and May 14, 1987, September 28, 1987 and May 19, 2000) she’s concluded that it was not a coup.

Fiji, according to Shameem, has had not four but just one coup. The only true coup Fiji has endured was that by Sitivieni Rabuka in September 1987 when he declared Fiji a republic, according to her “legal” analysis. How strange because by all accounts the September 1987 coup was the least traumatic.

Shameem is at pains to make the point that Voreqe Bainimarama’s 2006 coup was actually at President Ratu Josefa Iloilo’s direction in the “public good”.

Legend FM News reported in the days after Shameem released her report that she was advising those critical of it to “get a good lawyer to help them understand it.”

That was the height of arrogance to imply that it required lawyers to truly understand what she had written. It’s not the language that’s hard to follow – it’s the logic.

The report talks of the President’s “reserve powers” or “presidential prerogative” and how he used those powers on December 5 to authorise Bainimarama to remove Laisenia Qarase’s government.

That the President has these powers is not in dispute. It’s the way Shameem tries to imply that the coup was not actually Bainimarama’s doing but that of the aging President exercising his sovereign power.

But as the whole world knows, Bainimarama had been advertising his threat of a coup for years previously and began escalating his threats – and creating an impression of a crisis – in the second half of 2006 before finally acting on his threat.

So to now say that it was actually the President who recommended the removal of Qarase’s government because he allegedly had not been kept in the loop on matters of government, is far-fetched.

She tries to make out that the President had been struggling over the “constitutional dilemmas” created by the military’s threat.

“Our own investigations revealed that the President was confronted with a number of constitutional dilemmas as he attempted to steer the country through a turbulent political period. In the process, the office of the President came under great strain…”

She writes: “Finally, on the morning of December 5th the Prime Minister refused point blank to attend a meeting with the President when called to do so.” Actually, it’s a matter of public record that Qarase was on his way to see the President but was ordered by soldiers to get out of his vehicle and walk from the gates up to Government House, which he refused to do. That was not a refusal “point blank” but a refusal to be treated in an undignified manner.

The report goes on to say:

“Subsequent to these series of events, the President reportedly sought a number of opinions regarding the dismissal of the Prime Minister for breaches of the Constitution. The President appears to have contemplated these opinions in private for some time on the morning of December 5th. An hour or so later, the RFMF Commander visited the President and a decision to remove the Prime Minister was reportedly made. Shortly afterwards this decision was executed by the Commander who announced to the public at 6pm that evening that he had ‘stepped into the President’s shoes…’ …

The Commander of the RFMF ‘stepped into the President’s shoes’ to remove the Prime Minister and do what the President himself was prevented from doing.”

I’m curious: if the President was really in control and grappling with his “reserve powers” on the morning of December 5 why then did he not make a broadcast from Government House to reassure the nation that he was in control? Why did he not inform the nation of what was happening if he really was the sovereign head of state?

Why did he not speak then and why was he incommunicado for the entire time Bainimarama was president until January 5, when he handed “power” back to Ratu Iloilo who then read a speech, no doubt written by the military’s speechwriters, praising the military and blessing its takeover?

Meanwhile, Shameem being a lawyer should have known better than to comment on a case that’s already before the courts – sub judice as the lawyers say.

She makes the extraordinary assertion that the courts – and Fiji’s people – had no right to question the President’s decision to support the overthrow of the government:

“Whether or not the President employed the right approach in exercising sovereign power in December 2006 is not for the courts, nor the people of Fiji, to judge. The constitutional and conventional power of prerogative was provided to the President as Head of State to make his own judgment in this regard, and the specific justification for them cannot be investigated by the courts.”

Oh and by the way, she found that Qarase’s human rights had not been violated. Not when he was surrounded by soldiers in his home in Suva as the military seized power, not when he was forced to flee to his home island of Vanuabalavu and not when he was prevented for months on end from returning to Suva (until last Saturday).

It’s sad that Shameem is using what must now be dwindling FHRC funds to set up inquiries (the completed one-man media inquiry and the ongoing 2006 election inquiry) and spend time writing reports that try to legally justify the overthrow of an elected government.

What about the two deaths in military custody of civilians? If the FHRC was truly independent it would be calling on the authorities to bring to justice those responsible for Nimilote Verebasaga’s death in January Sakiusa Rabaka’s death in February.

It doesn’t seem right that while the policemen allegedly responsible for Tevita Malasebe’s death in June have already been charged and appeared in court, the two deaths that occurred months earlier at the hands of the military remain unresolved.

What this says to me is that soldiers are protected from prosecution while everyone else – policemen included – will certainly have their day in court.

I leave you with a line from letter to the editor, written by an Andy Rooney from Oregon in the US, printed in the Fiji Times on Saturday, September 1.

“When it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck no matter what sort of spin the spin doctor (Dr Shaista Shameem) puts on it.”

 

• To read Dr Shaista Shameem’s extraordinary report for yourself, go here.