TOO MANY CHIEFS

Racial tensions are less of a problem in Fiji than traditional, anti-democratic

values, says Mark Chipperfield

Suva, Fiji Islands FOR a country that has spent most of the last year convulsed by ethnic hatred, political uncertainty and constitutional turmoil, Fiji can seem uncannily normal. Suva, the raffish harbour capital, is undergoing a makeover. Teams of council workmen are repairing broken pavements and repainting streetlamps. Amid the boarded-up buildings, torched during last year's race riots, a newly formed police squad is coming down hard on litterbugs. In today's Fiji people who drop sweet wrappers and cigarette butts have much more to fear than those who seek to overturn the country's elected government.

'You see, we have very peaceful coups in Fiji,' explains Joe, my smiling taxi-driver, as we weave through army roadblocks. 'Only two people died — and that was by accident.'

Fijians take wicked delight in upending any preconceived ideas the world may have about them, especially since George Speight ran amok in the parliamentary compound last May, taking hostage Mahendra Chaudhry, the country's first Indo-Fijian prime minister, and most of his cabinet.

During an interview with Laisenia Qarase — the man who leads Fiji's current unelected cabal of nationalist politicians and Speight sympathisers — I was served afternoon tea by a butler immaculately dressed in a native kilt (or su/u), tie and jacket. The temperature outside was a sultry 32°C.

Even though Fiji has been a republic since 1987, and is currently suspended from the Commonwealth, portraits of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh still hang above the Prime Minister's desk. Amid the delicate chink of Royal Doulton, Qarase, a pretend Prime Minister in a government that the Fiji Court of Appeal has branded as illegal and without legitimacy, calmly laid out his blueprint for entrenching political power in the hands of his fellow indigenous Fijians. Indeed, if the nationalist taukei movement gets its way, Indians, who comprise 44 per cent of the population, will become ghosts in their own country. Fiji's fragile hold on democracy would be surrendered, perhaps for ever.

Those who support the Speight agenda (one he inherited from Sitiveni Rabuka, the leader of the two 1987 coups) are comfortable in the fiction that they are somehow upholding 'indigenous culture' against a rapacious, global economy. It is a mantra that is often repeated. Foreign reporting, too, usually focuses on the long-standing tension between the Indian and Fijian communities. Pictures of Indian canefarmers being driven off their land by angry Fijian villagers make good television footage, even if the farmers have paid a peppercorn rent for 20 years and were being legally evicted. The real story is that Fiji, by Pacific standards a modern if poorly run economy, has been surprisingly good at absorbing Western influences while preserving its traditional village culture.

Both Indians and Fijians exaggerate the level of racial tension. Most of the time, the two races work together, go on strike together and watch rugby together. Even George Speight, Fiji's bald-headed demagogue who wants to reduce Indians to serfs, claims that his closest friend is an Indian. The Fiji Times recently reported the case of Ravin Singh, a 15-year-old Indian boy who ran away from his village because of poor exam results, Four days later he was found living with a Fijian family who had befriended him outside McDonald's.

At Traps Bar, Suva's top nightclub, Fiji's young urban elite mix freely, regardless of ethnic origin. Apart from the curious sight of a group of sulu -clad Fijian men talking on their mobile phones, this could be any drinking den from Manhattan to Covent Garden. Well-educated, well-travelled and highly opinionated, Suva's smart young things represent a direct threat to the old Fijian order, symbolised by the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), known to its critics as the Great Council of Thieves. The GCC is perhaps the worst farewell present Britain ever bequeathed a former colony. Designed as a sop to Fiji's various chiefs, or ratus, the council has long been an impediment to the country's progress as a modern, democratic nation. Though its position is enshrined in the constitution, the GCC is unelected and its deliberations secret.

'The chiefly system is a complete lie,' one foreign businessman told me. 'What we're talking about here is feudalism pure and simple; or, in Fiji's case, a type of corporate feudalism. It suits the chiefs to keep Fiji in the Dark Ages. Do they care about jobs, employment, investment? The answer is no. That's democracy, Fiji-style.'

The main victims of George Speight's violent uprising are not, as he promised, rich Indian businessmen but the poor indigenous Fijians. Suva's slum areas are now crowded with squatters. It is estimated that about half of the country's population, about 400,000 people, now live in the capital. Beggars and prostitutes line the streets. A soup kitchen operates in Sukuna Park. With the Fijian economy in free-fall, unemployment and the cost of living are rising. Many poor Fijians — those who cheered on Speight from the sidelines or ferried pigs and yams into the parliamentary compound — can no longer afford cooking fuel or (in a society which prizes education) their children's school books. Middle-class Fijians, meanwhile, are jumping ship for New Zealand and Australia.

'Ordinary Fijians think Speight is their messiah. He speaks the right gospel, but he's leading them into the wilderness,' says Sam, a young Fijian engineer now working in Sydney.

In the old days, the Fijian chiefs ruled with an iron hand. Missionaries recorded with horror the practice of loluku, whereby wives and retainers were expected to accompany a dead chief into the grave. When Chief Mbitui died in 1840, writes Thomas Williams, in addition to his own wife, five men and their wives were strangled to form the floor of the grave'. Blind obedience to despots has deep roots within traditional Fijian society. Even today it is regarded as 'un-Fijian' to question the wisdom of the ratus. The Revd Akuila Yabaki, a Methodist minister and leading pro-democracy figure, has been shunned by his fellow Fijians for speaking out against the chiefly system.

Far from being an assertion of indigenous self-determination, many Fijians now believe that George Speight's bungled coup of 19 May was the last throw of the dice for Fiji's discredited, largely clueless chiefs.

The problem with Fijian nationalism,' one commentator remarked, is that there is no Fijian nation.' With fresh elections planned for August, the people of Fiji will have another chance to reaffirm their faith in democracy and racial tolerance. They are unlikely, however, to elect another Indian prime minister for some time.