All quiet in Fiji – deadline passes
AAP reported late this morning that the deadline Fiji’s armed forces commander set as the go-ahead for ousting the government has passed with no apparent military move on Friday with top-level meetings going ahead to try to avert the South Pacific island nation’s fourth coup in two decades.
Commodore Frank Bainimarama late Thursday rejected the concessions offered from Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, which were aimed at ending a long running feud between the two men, saying they did not go far enough.
Bainimarama then set a deadline of noon Friday for Qarase to dump contentious bills, to call police off a sedition investigation into senior military officers and a range of other demands and if the government didn’t accede, the military would start “cleaning up” the government at some point after the deadline, with Bainimarama saying that he vowed a “peaceful transition.”
AAP from Fiji reported that as the deadline passed, the streets of the capital, Suva, remained quiet and there was no obvious troop presence.
A soccer match between the armed forces and police, part of an annual day of sports events between the two services was under way at the national stadium before a crowd of several thousand.
AAP says that there were some signs of tension, with long lines of people waiting to withdraw cash from bank machines, and some businesses closed with windows boarded.
Qarase, speaking on ABC radio on Friday said he was not afraid of Bainimarama’s threats and that “very prominent people” were holding talks Friday that could bring the crisis to a peaceful end.
Qarase said, “There is a big split in the army … it could well be a factor”.
Bainimarama and Qarase have been locked in a bitter dispute for almost two years, with the military commander has repeatedly threatened to force out the government, with at the core of the dispute is proposed legislation that would grant pardons to plotters of a 2000 coup, and two other land rights bills that Bainimarama says would unfairly favor Fiji’s indigenous majority over the large ethnic Indian minority.
In Sydney, Australia, foreign ministers from the 16-country South Pacific Forum were holding talks on the crisis.
Hopefully the crisis and its impact on Fiji’s up until now very buoyant tourism industry can be averted.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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