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Monday, November 30, 2009
Fiji remains out of Commonwealth Games
The quixotic shades of Bainimarama
PAUL MCGEOUGH
November 30, 2009Sydney Morning Herald
Powerful man... Frank Bainimarama, left, and father Kevin Barr sits with friends in the Muanivatu squatter settlement in Suva... he says Bainimarama is "unique... and anything but mad". Photo: Kate Geraghty
In his third report from Fiji, the Herald's chief correspondent considers the nation's dictator.
They called the solution the Bainimarama taxis. Villagers from the mountainous heart of Viti Levu, Fiji's biggest island, wanted a proper road, with bridges over the winding river that forced them to walk a good deal of the way to Suva. They thought their delegation was being fobbed off when the dictator undertook to inspect the route personally.
Weeks later he arrived, not by helicopter but by shanks's pony, fording the endlessly bending river as many as 10 times. A road with so many bridges would be prohibitively expensive, he explained. But he wondered if horses might make life easier - and he ordered 20 be delivered.
It's another in the quixotic shades of light and dark that are Commodore ''Frank'' Voreqe Bainimarama. Stories told in Suva suggest a cross between Saddam Hussein and Forrest Gump.
In the past week, his office twice agreed tentatively that theHerald could interview Bainimarama. On Thursday we were told there would be no interview.
In the official portrait that hangs in most government establishments, the dictator's braid and medals are impressive. But something dark in the eyes refuses to engage the camera.
The Herald was told he is mad - was treated for mental illness, a former senior political figure claimed. Bipolar, suggested a senior journalist. "One day he talks sense; the next he's erratic."
That he cannot take advice was commonly asserted. Advisers whose opinions differ from his quickly find themselves working elsewhere. We were told of Bainimarama refusing to take phone calls and of hapless ministers sitting for hours outside his office.
But Bainimarama is sharp, too. His regime let the New Methodist Church off its leash, hoping it would counter the political weight of the traditional Methodist Church - but as soon as he saw that it was not worth it, the New Methodists were sat on.
When the Catholic priest Kevin Barr produced research to prove school attendance was falling dramatically, because poor families could not afford school bus fares, Bainimarama made them free. "We were dumbfounded," Barr told the Herald. "He is unique … and anything but mad."
Barr describes Bainimarama variously as tough, jovial, not a great intellectual and capable of anger. "Of course he reacted angrily when [the former foreign minister] Alexander Downer came away from meeting him, describing him as a madman."
Former colleagues say Bainimarama, 55, enlisted in the navy, rising through the ranks on the back of family connections. He served just once in Fiji's international peacekeeping operations - in the Sinai, from which a former officer said he was repatriated on disciplinary grounds.
His 2006 coup was bloodless. But he has been accused of direct involvement in the torture and deaths of eight soldiers who mutinied in the aftermath of a previous coup - in 2000. The deaths were investigated by the Fiji police who, Amnesty International reported, were close to charging him in relation to the deaths before his own coup.
Debate in Suva is endless - and inconclusive - on the extent of Bainimarama's power. He is Prime Minister and head of the military. His Indo-Fijian Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, and army chief of staff, Colonel Mohammed Aziz, are rated as the regime's next most powerful members.
But sitting over the Government is the all-powerful Military Council. "Ministers hold no power," an observer said. "The Military Council is the real power and everyone does as they are told. Ministers routinely go to the Queen Elizabeth Barracks to get their orders from the council."
An exception is Sayed-Khaiyum, who holds a clutch of ministries - justice, anti-corruption, public enterprises, industry, investment and tourism and communications.
Much to the Military Council's chagrin, Bainimarama is seen to rely heavily on Sayed-Khaiyum, to intellectualise what one analyst called the "quasi-legal justification for all that they do".
Acknowledging weeks of rumours that the Military Council was pressuring Bainimarama to dump Sayed-Khaiyum, the observer noted that a similar campaign preceded the dropping last year of the former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry from the finance portfolio.
"The Military Council has been trying to get rid of him for a long time - Sayed-Khaiyum is not popular," he said. "Frank needs him, but the military is a very racist, indigenous Fijian organisation and they hate this little smart-arse Aiyaz.
"Keeping a lid on these guys - there are about 10 of them - is a constant issue for Bainimarama," he said, identifying the Land Force Commander, Pita Driti, as a likely challenger in the event of a new crisis.
But the consensus is that Bainimarama is firmly in control.
A senior Western diplomat observed that Bainimarama makes up his own mind, but respects council decisions and listens to the council.
Barr says Bainimarama told a recent pre-budget workshop for businessmen that his goal was not power but a new vision for Fiji. "And then I'm out of it," the priest quoted Bainimarama as saying. When asked about the 40-plus per cent of Fijians living in poverty, he berated the businessmen, demanding they share in the burden. "I fully expected him to push the issue of poverty under the carpet," Barr said.
As co-chairman of the Wages Council of Fiji, Barr also discovered Bainimarama responds to business lobbying. When business got Bainimarama to defer the last wage rise for six months, ''I was so angry I went on TV and criticised him.'' Called to the dictator's office two days later and expecting the sack, Barr instead found Bainimarama, head in his hands, saying ''sorry, sorry, sorry''.
Barr believes Bainimarama will honour his promise of an election in 2014. ''He says he'll stick to it but he needs time to do what he needs to do - to clean things up."
Disturbing assessments of Bainimarama are tempered by Peni Moore, a self-declared anarchist who runs the Women's Action for Change lobby and sat on the committee that drafted his charter for Fiji's future.
"I'm quite extreme in my views, but they were taken on board in the charter process - in which the military was not involved," she told the Herald.
As chairman, Bainimarama spoke just two or three times. Moore said Bainimarama devised an odd clause to lock in successive governments to the charter ideals but a silent non-agreement met his reading it out aloud. "Someone said it didn't make sense. He dropped that.''
It fell to Sayed-Khaiyum to shine a light on Suva's madness.
"We think that an elected parliament is a good thing," he told theHerald. "But we have to get the system right in a country that has been subject for decades to a mode of thinking by MPs, bureaucrats and political parties who have been attuned to a particular kind of thinking - it takes time to stop them wanting to put those systems back in place."
Asked the source of regime's authority to abandon democracy, Sayed-Khaiyum cited the 64 per cent of surveyed Fijians who supported Bainimarama's charter for a better Fiji future. ''That's a huge mandate," he said, greatly satisfied.
Commonwealth admits Rwanda, lashes Fiji
www.fijilive.com - November 30, 2009
Leaders of the Commonwealth have admitted French-speaking Rwanda and admonished Fiji, as they emphasized their club's commitment to promoting democracy and human rights.
The decisions were set out in a statement at the close of the three-day summit in Trinidad's capital that also threw the Commonwealth's full weight behind climate talks soon to start in Copenhagen.
The Commonwealth, a grouping that now counts 54 members with Rwanda's inclusion, asserted that it remained a vital and relevant institution in the 21st century, having evolved from its origins as an alliance of former British colonies, while maintaining Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as its symbolic head.
Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma and other officials stressed that the 60-year-old body had a unique role because it represented a mix of significant economic powers, such as Britain, Australia and India, as well as "small and vulnerable" nations such as the Maldives, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.
Its voice was all the more powerful because it represented those of two billion people, or a third of the planet's population, they said.
"We should not underestimate the influence of this institution" in deciding world issues, said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose country is to host the next Commonwealth summit in 2011.
That heft was applied on Saturday, when the Commonwealth said it fully backed efforts to negotiate a new climate pact at the December 7-18 talks in Copenhagen.
The message was boosted by the presence of three non-Commonwealth leaders on the first day of the summit who had a stake in seeing a successful outcome in Copenhagen: Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
"Success is in sight" at Copenhagen because of the Commonwealth's resolve, and because of announcements by the two biggest polluting nations, China and the United States, setting carbon reduction targets, Ban said.
The Commonwealth's belief it can also act as a moral mentor, nurturing better regard of human rights and democracy in the world, was brought to the fore in its decisions on Rwanda and Fiji.
The admission of Rwanda, reportedly at the behest of Britain, Australia and Canada, appeared to have some connection to a behind-the-scenes political deal with France, which had influence over the former Belgian colony in Africa until ties frayed in a round of mutual accusations following its 1994 genocide.
Within hours of Rwanda proudly saying the Commonwealth had taken it in, Sarkozy's office in Paris announced that long-frozen diplomatic ties with Kigali had been restored.
"My government sees this accession as recognition of the tremendous progress this country has made in the last 15 years," said Rwandan Information Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, quoted by the Rwandan daily New Times online edition.
The Commonwealth's Sharma said Rwanda's people "aspire to our values and principles and I conveyed a warm welcome to Rwanda on behalf of us all."
A British Foreign Office spokesman said the country had "made progress towards meeting the Commonwealth's core values" in areas of democracy, rule of law and human rights.
It was only the second time the Commonwealth had allowed in a country with no ties to Britain's colonial past, after the adherence of Mozambique 14 years ago.
Although human rights groups had opposed Rwanda's admission because of its poor rights record, Commonwealth officials expressed confidence that peer pressure by other nations in the organization would prove beneficial.
The club has already shown its willingness to freeze out members who veer too deeply into autocratic or brutal rule, as in the case of Zimbabwe. That country had its membership suspended until it unilaterally withdrew from the Commonwealth.
In their statement on Sunday, Commonwealth leaders applied the same tactic to Fiji, which was suspended in September.
They called on Fiji, led by strongman Voreqe Bainimarama who toppled the elected government in a December 2006 coup, to "commit itself to a credible, inclusive and time-bound political dialogue towards the restoration of constitutional civilian democracy without further delay."
They added that a decision to exclude Fiji from the 2010 Commonwealth Games was in line with the principle that "sporting ties are inseparable from the values of the association."
Sunday, November 29, 2009
An unholy alliance of church and state
Sydney Morning Herald
PAUL MCGEOUGH IN SUVA
November 29, 2009
The role of religion... children at their first Communion at the Holy Eucharist Church in Suva. Photo: Kate Geraghty
When Fiji's regime brought the Methodist Church under its thumb, a fundamentalist rival joined forces with the police.
Pastor Atu Vulaono was the cannon that backfired, revealing the Fiji regime at its tin-pot best. In a double-act with Esala Teleni, his brother-in-law and the Police Commissioner, the evangelist's ''Souls to Jesus'' crusade was given wings as a strategy to supplant the power of the Methodist Church - the denomination into which most indigenous Fijians are born.
Rolling his eyes to the heavens before fervent crowds at venues such as Suva's National Gymnasium, Vulaono might have been just any God-botherer. But funded by the Police Department and co-opted to spearhead a spiritual campaign against crime, the evangelist flew too close to the Fiji sun.
"It became too disruptive an influence," says Netani Rika, editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times. "First it was a problem in the police force and then among indigenous Fijians, for whom religion is very important. So [Fiji's leader Frank Bainimarama] sat on them, because if they were allowed to continue to ridicule the other denominations, there was going to be trouble."
Indo-Fijians were rattled because the ascent Vulaono's New Methodist Church coincided with calls for Fiji to be declared a Christian state in which only ''good Christians'' could be appointed to government. "The New Methodists have a right to exist under the Declaration of Human Rights," a senior lay Methodist acknowledges.
"But to be supported by the Government? That's a different question," says Rika.
Vulaono claimed to have more than 70 congregations across the islands and was booking a 20,000-capacity stadium in Suva for his rallies.
In tandem, the Police Commissioner ordered his officers to dance in uniform on Vulaono's stage. Observers in Suva claim that Teleni's support for Vulaono contributed to a $F9 million blow-out in last year's police budget.
In April rank-and-file police and senior officers were stunned when ordered to attend a car-park rally where a New Methodist preacher harangued them on the ways of Jesus Christ. Hindu and Muslim Indo-Fijians were made to attend, too - but had to listen to the preacher's use of the indigenous Fijian language and his implicit rejection of their faith and culture.
Officers were forced to attend the New Methodist crusades - where they were made to sing and dance in uniform on the stage. "Teleni called all Indo-Fijian officers to a meeting and told them if they did not like what was happening, they could get f---ed,'' an observer told The Sun-Herald.
A combined police-New-Methodist, law-and-order campaign took to the streets of the capital, blaring out a message that turning to Christ was the way to deal with crime.
The police lectured night-clubbers, urging them to repent. Couples frequenting Lovers' Land, on Suva's waterfront, were ordered not to embrace in public - and sent to their separate homes.
Prostitutes who did not heed police warnings to get off the streets were summarily trucked to a bridge over an ocean inlet where they were ordered to make the six-metre leap into the water. But, according to several of the women, Christian idealism sometimes broke down at this point - they were made to service the arresting officers and had their purses and mobile phones stolen.
Some of the prostitutes were warned that if they were caught again, they would be made to jump from a higher bridge.
Others had their heads shaved. Some were made to run alongside police vehicles in Suva's streets. Under police escort, they also had to attend Vulaono's Sunday afternoon crusades. A human-rights activist said the Fiji courts were pressuring women who were victims of domestic violence to reconcile with their husbands.
Peni Moore, of the Women's Action for Change lobby, said much of the ill-treatment of prostitutes stopped after she complained to Bainimarama about the commissioner's "biblical bullshit".
In the meantime, the traditional Methodist Church was being neutered by the regime - and winning little support for its plight from other denominations.
Catholic priest Father Kevin Barr dissects the traditional Methodist Church as a force of darkness that deserved the treatment dealt to it by the regime - "the message to its top people was that they should get lost''.
"At the leadership level, the Methodist Church contains an explosive mix of fundamentalist Christianity and ethnic [indigenous Fijian] nationalism," he says.
Church sources say the phones of its leaders are tapped; their emails are intercepted; and they are followed by plainclothes officers as they move around Suva and the islands. Their passports have been confiscated, blocking travel to international religious forums. They are not allowed to meet with more than two people at any one time.
The Methodists' annual conference was outlawed; their traditional fund-raising was forced to a halt; and even a gathering as innocent as their national choir competition was deemed a likely hotbed of subversiveness - and blackballed. Seven senior Methodists, including the church president, the Reverend Ame Tugaue, and its general secretary, the Reverend Tuikilakila Warairatu, are awaiting trial on spurious charges after they were rounded up in April.
They were detained overnight, interrogated and accused of being political activists. "They were treated as nobodies and verbally abused, as senior officials tried to find out the extent to which the church intended to resist the regime," an associate says.
Asked about the church's seemingly meek compliance with regime edicts, the lay Methodist explains: "We're giving meaning to the biblical message of Christ - give the shirt from your back to whoever wants it; if they say walk a mile, we'll walk two miles.
"Our leaders can't speak out, even in church, because members of the military are in the congregation and we don't know who comes to pray and who comes to spy.
''The message to us was they'll not be stopped. Forget morality, law and order and human rights - might is right."
At the time of the Methodist arrests, a government spokesman said the church should concentrate on the spiritual needs of its congregation rather than "promoting the ambitions of a few politically minded individuals".
Ultimately the police-led New Methodist crusade became too embarrassing for the regime. Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum saw himself as a sensitive new-age guy, so Teleni had to be hauled in, The Sun-Herald was told.
There was no public announcement. "The closest to an official announcement was a letter from the chief censor to editors, ordering them to cease broadcasting the New Methodists' paid programs on the grounds that they had become a security risk," a media source says. Says Barr of the police crusade: "It was a stupid thing." The priest dismisses Vulaono as something of a charlatan - "he roars and yells at sinners; to hear him preach is out of this world. People were upset as much by the influence he was gaining over the police and young people as by the contradiction of Frank's claim to want a multi-religious society, and here was this splinter group trying to dominate the country.
"Then, suddenly, it was over. I spoke to the PM's secretary - he waved his hand and said, 'Finished.'"
There are doubts that Vulaono ever attended Bible school, much less had any formal training as a church minister, and he is a target of ridicule in the blogs that thrive in Fiji despite, and because of, the regime's censorship of the media.
"The joke around town," according to a women's rights activist, "is that Frank shut Pastor Vulaono down, [because] he had a problem with the whole Christian thing - he just didn't like seeing the preacher become so powerful."
Just as the traditional Methodists got the regime message, it seems Vulaono did, too.
At last Sunday afternoon's Souls to Jesus gathering at the National Stadium, the crowd of about 2000 was pumped - swaying, dancing, gyrating; eyes closed; a finger pointed to heaven.
A warm-up relay of preachers, which included Vulaono's daughter, whipped them into a frenzy. But as the headline act, Vulaono was restrained, shuffling to and from the lectern, but not seeming to engage the crowd.
He did not respond to telephone messages left by The Sun-Herald over a 10-day period.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
FICAC wants to change Qarase’s charges
 Former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase |
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In Paradise Lost, where dissent fears to tread
Sydney Morning Herald
November 28, 2009
Paul McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty found that more than the pillars of democracy have been dismantled in Fiji.
On the island of Vanua Levu, droves of expectant fishermen were at sea long before arrows of gold signalled the special dawn that marks a magical feat of nature - the rising of the balolo.
It was two weeks ago. An engorged full moon hung over the villages that face south over the Koro Sea - Naidi, Vivili, Waivunia and Nacekoro. The lunar light and a high tide would trigger the biannual emergence from coral reefs of the red and green balolo worm for brief but frenzied spawning on the mirrored surface of the sea.
Their orgy done, the writhing mass would disappear before sunrise - save for what fishermen crazily scooped into canoes and what was devoured by the ogo and damu, the village fish staple.
Billed as the caviar of the Pacific, balolo is delicious fried or as a soup. But it must be handled carefully - left in the sun, it melts. And villagers must forgo ogo and damu for a time after the rising because, they say, these species become poisonous after feeding on balolo.
As balolo goes, so goes democracy in today's Fiji. Extolled as the caviar of good governance, it emerges briefly, evaporates when exposed to sunshine and leaves poisonous the uniformed and pin-striped sharks that devour it.
There is a beguiling air of island calm in Suva's tatty streets, even in the city-fringe squatter camps where tens of thousands inhabit a marginalised twilight and warmly greet strangers with the customary ''Bula''. Beneath the surface, however, is palpable fear. Few talk openly about their oppressive regime - of dozens interviewed by the Herald, just four allowed publication of their names.
Next Saturday marks the third anniversary of the bloodless coup that installed Voreqe Bainimarama - Frank to the islanders - as a Pacific dictator. His government is a militarised, politics-free zone. Under tight censorship, so is the media. Rupert Murdoch'sFiji Times and the locally owned Fiji Sun slobber over the regime. Government ministers are military stooges, kept on a tight leash by an all-powerful Military Council. Pliant elites have been cowed to silence.
Government is by decree - usually read first on the regime website. A respected local analyst said: "Three or four guys run the whole country, making decisions left, right and centre. No one is allowed to question them." A prominent human rights activist said: "It's surreal - I live here and sometimes I ask, 'Did that just happen?' "
Religious figures argue some control tactics were learnt by Fijian soldiers on United Nations peace-keeping missions. Journalists say some tactics used against them are taken from the media-control manual of the Chinese. Beijing is the regime's most generous foreign donor.
Rumour and conspiracy theories abound, stoked as they are by a raft of blogs. Amid claims the Government taps phones, hacks local email traffic and runs an electronic witch-hunt to identify contributors to aggressively anti-regime blogs, a senior journalist said: "It's a sophisticated operation - the expertise required to run it is not available locally."
Arson and ''targeted robberies'' drive non-government organisations from Suva's higher-rise buildings. "We don't feel safe," one NGO official said.
The Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, denied claims that the fine print of a media decree released last week in effect empowered him to shut down TV stations.
Earlier this month the outspoken Fiji-born Brij Lal, of the Australian National University, was hauled in for questioning before being deported. "We thought illegal detention was over," an alarmed NGO official said.
Already brittle relations between Suva and the regional powers - Australia and New Zealand - chilled in April when Bainimarama abrogated the constitution, sacked the judiciary and introduced harsh censorship rules and laws of assembly. They went into the deep-freeze early this month over Fiji expelling Australian and New Zealand high commissioners for allegedly interfering in the appointment of Sri Lankan judges to Fiji courts.
Bainimarama had grandly promised the political re-engineering of Fiji so that it would be rid of the race-driven politics that entrenched a couple of decades of stalemated-democracy and military coups. But mounting a coup to prevent future coups? That is not altruistic; it is absurd.
Most Indo-Fijians (37 per cent of the population) are said to back Bainimarama; most indigenous Fijians (57 per cent) oppose him. Indo-Fijians made up 51 per cent of the population in 1966 - four years before independence from Britain. Their forebears had been transported as indentured labour to cut the sugar cane but they came to occupy most of the senior posts in commerce and the professions. Denied equality with Melanesians, and suppressed by the coup leaders of the past, they migrated in search of better lives. The next release of immigration data is expected to tell a different story. "There's a new trend of higher-level, professional indigenous Fijians leaving now," we were told.
Despite all Bainimarama's claimed ambition for an inclusive society, some observers say military power will not allow that. "Like the three previous coups, this one is about serving the interests of the indigenous Fijians, too - it's the old elite reasserting its power," a local analyst observed. This was the coup of old Fijian establishment military figures - ''It got rid of all the upstarts."
Bainimarama, who ran the military before the 2006 coup, initially staked his credibility on an early return to democracy, promising elections this year. Now it's put back to the dreamtime year of 2014. And Bainimarama rules through Hugo Chavez-like decrees that serve the regime and populist decision-making.
Rules for a February national dialogue on Fiji's future read like a festival for the single-minded - contributions must not be inconsistent with Bainimarama's charter; anyone facing charges may not attend.
The Methodist Church, a guiding influence of modern Fiji, has been neutered; political parties are excluded. A tinpot democracy is now a tinpot dictatorship.
But more than the regime makes a visitor feel they have stepped into the pages of John Le Carre's The Tailor of Panama.
Suva elites need prompting to respond to the emasculation of their rights, their government and institutional pillars since the ructions three years ago. There was quiet embarrassment in March as they watched reports of thousands of black-suited Islamabad lawyers win reinstatement of Pakistan's chief justice - also the victim of a dictator. When Fiji's judiciary was sacked a month later, 10 lawyers turned up to protest but melted away quietly.
In June they watched as tens of thousands of defenceless Iranians confronted thuggish security forces to protest at rigged elections. No one took to the Suva streets.
And in August they saw millions of Afghan voters defy murderous Taliban threats. There was not a Fijian mutter when Bainimarama decreed Fijians too dumb to elect the right government but they would get a chance in five years if they behaved themselves.
"There's something wrong with us,'' said a former key political figure. ''There was talk about protest marches but that fizzled out."
A lawyer says things are not bad enough to spark an uprising. And a human rights activist says: "The military and the police can act with impunity - people don't want to get killed."
"Don't be fooled by the air of calm," the Herald was told. "There's a lot of resistance - but it's underground. There are a lot of very unhappy people just waiting to have a go.''
Fijians are a treacherous mob, according to this observer. Some bide their time for revenge; others go along with incumbents, making odd alliances from old rivalries and disputes.
"But most just wait for a sign of weakness. Around the grog [kava] bowl the venom wells up but in public everything is beautiful. Frank knows how this works."
Insisting the disquiet was widespread, a senior journalist admitted his own puzzlement. "I can't figure out why it hasn't translated into massive civil disobedience. People don't seem to care. There's a sense of apathy and the priorities seem to be getting food on the table and getting the kids to school."
The 2006 coup was bloodless - by some accounts, soldiers were ordered to remove bullets from their guns. But the menace of abuses, hostage-taking and violence in previous coups hung in the air as Bainimarama took over - and is still there.
Peni Moore, of Women's Action for Change, says women knew they might be raped or murdered in the first coup in 1987. In 2006 the big shock ''was that people were traumatised just by the threat of violence".
A Fiji journalist says that memories of brutal rampages in support of George Speight's 2000 coup, and Bainimarama's role then as chief of the military, along with the failure of key institutions to speak out, ''mean that ordinary people do not have the courage to protest now. In 2000 they were taught a very good lesson."
In Suva today meetings with those who might lead a protest, including former powerbrokers and other respected members of the pre-coup establishment, are akin to being hustled into the fitting room in Le Carre's tailor's salon. There is strident condemnation and articulate analysis of all that is democratically repugnant in the regime. Back out on the street, however, these brave men bite their lip and go home.
Says Netani Rika, the Fiji Times editor-in-chief: "Yes, you do get the government you deserve."
Apart from the shut-down of parliament and the military takeover of the public service, the two institutions most oppressed by the regime are the Great Council of Chiefs, the hereditary clan leaders of the islands, and the Methodist Church.
Describing the chiefs, the Methodists and an elected government as the ''three-legged stool of Fijian society", a prominent journalist explained: "It's revolutionary to have all three shut down and it is amazing that the people have accepted it all so passively."
A former senior political figure sketched a Pacific Armageddon. "He's an absolute dictator. They're in for the long haul and they're trying to destroy everything."
Was there anything he or his organisation would do to protect everything? "Well …" and he paused. "There's a great sense of impotence." He deferred to a powerbase claimed by all Fiji factions. "All is not lost. I have great faith in God. It might look as though Bainimarama will go on running the country - and if you talk to people you will find no proof for what I'm about to say - but divine intervention will see that we have an election next year."
Others demand a more earthly response. Excoriating in his critique of the Suva establishment, a prominent analyst exploded during an interview with the Herald: "What has happened to ethics and morality? Our society has gone bonkers. They think themselves decent but why do so many people turn a blind eye to such corruption and illegality? They address Frank as 'honourable sir'; they call his ministers 'honourable minister', and they crowd to the golf course to hobnob with these guys."
Is anger welling explosively? Might poverty trigger an uprising? It's speculated about but there have been so many potential triggers that a Western diplomat observes dryly: "Something deeply rooted in the people stops them."
Heading the list of those branded as traitors for supporting the regime is Archbishop Petero Mataca, whose Catholic Church was oddly silent as his Methodist brothers found themselves wedged beneath the regime's boot. And the Methodists - like others - were aghast when Mataca joined Bainimarama as co-chairman of the committee the dictator appointed to draft a blueprint for future governance. Mataca declared the post non-political.
"No coup is good - but this one was better than most," said Father Kevin Barr, an avuncular Australian priest and an articulate Catholic voice in Suva. His name also appears on lists of those who have ''gone over'' to the regime. "The previous coups were race-based - this one is about a just and multicultural society."
In particular, Barr defends the regime against loud complaints of a public service takeover by the military. "They've taken about one-third of the key jobs. But I have to tell you, the people Frank has put in are outstanding." Military officers run home affairs, prisons, justice, immigration and other departments. "Immigration was a mess,'' says Barr. ''It's been cleaned up. At the airport the other day I saw the new head of the department actually out there, inspecting things for himself. Prisons have never been better run - they've even banned officers from drinking kava on the job. The new head of housing doesn't mess around - he gets out on the ground and he gets things done."
Barr took strong exception to calls by Australia, New Zealand and the Commonwealth for speedy elections. "It won't make Fiji OK and a few years later there'll be another coup because all the underlying problems will still be there. It all could mean that I'm part of a mad experiment. But in trying to get to the root causes of all the complications we have in Fiji, this regime seems to be a good experiment."
Regime rhetoric about a non-racial, more just Fiji impresses. But one critic asks: ''Is he genuine or is this a popularity contest? Because he has reduced the economy to tatters and in that he's doing greater harm than good for the poor."
The Fiji Times's Rika says Bainimarama does not differ much from previous governments in policy. ''But it is worse than the others because it has total power. It can do anything it likes but in the last three years it has realised none of the objectives it set for itself. They said they wanted an inclusive, multiracial, corruption-free Fiji - a nation in which all would be one.'' The problem is not aspiration but unachievement.
Despite allegations of corruption, cronyism and shady financial management by the Bainimarama regime, a senior Western diplomat says there is no evidence of rampant corruption.
But there was disquiet over the early release from prison of Bainimarama's brother-in-law, a convicted killer, who was allowed to resume his post as head of the navy. Ten soldiers and police also were released from jail just weeks into their sentences over two deaths in custody in the aftermath of the 2006 coup.
Likewise, the diplomat said, at a time of job cuts and tightening government spending, paying Bainimarama as much as $F180, 000 ($105,000) for "30 years of accumulated leave" did not go down well publicly. Nor did a $F10 million pay deal for the military when others were having their belts tightened.
Questions also have been raised over the Government's $F190 million offer for BP South West Pacific, some tourist developments in which it has a stake and the security of the $F2.5 billion national pension fund and a military welfare fund - into which a local analyst claimed "every senior officer is dipping his hand". "They release no data," he complained.
Father Kevin Barr holds several public posts, including seats on the boards that manage wages and housing. The previous Qarase government, he says, was tinpot but drew no condemnation from abroad. However, Bainimarama was better. "Many would say there's never been a true democracy in Fiji," he says. The urban population equals the rural population, yet the latter got 17 parliamentary seats and urban areas just six. And in rural areas, people voted for the candidate nominated by their tribal chief, their church minister or the provincial council.
Asked who advanced under the regime, Barr said: "The poor are still pretty poor but see the government as on their side. The decision to raise the threshold at which tax is paid covered about 70 per cent of the population. Controls on the price of bread, rice and fuel helped them. Same with removing VAT from basic foods - but then they were hit by the 20 per cent devaluation of the currency, which raised prices again."
Peni Moore says the coup has been ''wonderful'' for tens of thousands of squatters around Suva, for sex workers, drug addicts and released prisoners.
"Frank put a stay on eviction orders issued by the last government against five of the squatter camps. I told the police I wasn't going to bother applying for one of their permits for a protest march, so they came by and issued it to me. And when we lobbied the UN to get more funds for women's issues, Frank wrote off in support of our bid.''
There was direct interaction with government where there'd been none before. "I believe Frank will stick to his plan for a 2014 election. Go to the polls next year and there'll be another coup - this is a sick society, with historic social ills and leaders who never have been trustworthy."
This critique was reluctantly supported by a human rights activist who conceded the regime's decrees "could be deemed to be good". She insists Fijians can govern themselves but acknowledges Bainimarama's point: "Even when parties have had multi-ethnic platforms, candidates use racism and the idea of 'the other' when campaigning for office."
The Fiji Times's Rika makes a similar concession. "People come into government talking of change but in office they revert to their racial groupings. We have to break out of this cycle. Bainimarama is right in his complaint that in the past we have failed to get from point A to point B - and that we need to make that leap. But it will happen only when people can see beyond their perceived differences."
Rika laments the ease with which Fiji's crisis is sometimes so difficult to notice, despite more than 20 years of coups and struggle. "Tourists come in from Sydney and Auckland - they get a 'Bula!' welcome at the airport; they disappear off to a resort and back to the airport. So Fiji? It's great."
Next year, the sun will still shine and the balolo will rise again. It will be devoured in village celebrations and fish will be poisoned.
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