Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

What should Australia do about Fiji? Four-and-a-half years after military commander Frank Bainimarama seized power, he shows little sign of allowing a return to democracy.

Fiji’s coup leader nowadays doubles as military commander and Prime Minister, while senior officers are positioned across the top echelons of the civil service. Read more…

Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

Tonga’s first-ever democratic elections took place smoothly on Thursday, and resulted in a resounding victory for those urging reform. ‘Akilisi Pohiva’s Friendly Islands Democracy Party won 12 of the 17 popularly elected seats, just two short of the number required to form a government. The other five popularly elected MPs are independents, who at least in theory could team up with Tonga’s nine noble MPs to form a government. The nobles, however, have made clear that they – and indeed King George Tupou V – prefer that Tonga’s next prime minister should come from among the people’s representatives. For the first time in Tonga’s history, therefore, the outcome of a general election will determine the shape of the country’s next government.

Since King George Tupou I unified the scattered island group in the mid-19th century, Tonga has had royal-appointed governments. The 1875 constitution created a Legislative Assembly, but the king retained authority to appoint members of cabinet, including the prime minister. Read more…

Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

The Solomon Islands has a new prime minister. Danny Philip is a veteran politician from the western part of the archipelago. His country is home to half a million people living scattered across a few hundred islands. Mr Philip introduces himself as a leader with whom the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which has been stationing hundreds of foreign soldiers, police and civil servants in the country since 2003, can do business.

But RAMSI cannot be pleased by his expressed intention to honour the militants who rampaged across the country with guns and bankrupted the state until 2003. Read more…

Jon Fraenkel, ANU

Kevin Rudd has talked of the danger of a ‘coup culture’ spreading from Fiji across the Pacific, but nowhere else in the region has experienced anything similar to Fiji’s three coups. The Solomon Islands witnessed a coup back in June 2000, when Malaitan militants in cahoots with the Police Field Force over threw Bartholomew Ulufa’alu’s government. But there an elected government was back in charge within the month, and the constitution was never abrogated.

Other than that, you need to go back over a century to find another example of a coup in the Pacific. In Hawaii in 1893, American settlers overthrew the government of Queen Lili’uokalani, installing a government that was recognised by Washington several years later. Bill Clinton apologised in 1993. Only Fiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea (PNG) have standing armies that might, in theory, carry out coups. Read more…

Author: Jon Fraenkel, State, Society & Governance in Melanesia Program, ANU

Last week, there was international outrage at the decision by Fiji’s military-backed government to abrogate the constitution, sack the judiciary and suspend elections until 2014.

Yet the reaction within the country has been much more muted. Whereas in Thailand and Madagascar, protestors have rallied to the defence of governments ousted by coups, in Fiji there has been a sullen – if begrudging – acceptance of the 27-month old military regime, despite its preparedness to now tear up the country’s fundamental laws. A few courageous barristers turned up to protest outside courts in Suva and Lautoka when they re-opened after the Easter break, but this was nothing like the reaction in Pakistan, when furious lawyers took to the streets in their black gowns to demand the reinstatement of their Chief Justice.

Read more…