Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Authors: Matthew Dornan and Frank Jotzo, ANU
High oil prices are disproportionately affecting Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific, while renewable energy could replace oil used for power generation and help reduce the risk of cost blowouts.
In Fiji, the oil import bill was around 14 per cent of GDP in 2010 and is likely to be higher this year, with oil prices again remaining above US$100 a barrel. Read more…
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: Sandra Tarte, USP
Recent claims in the media that Australia’s foreign minister has ‘ignored’, ‘neglected’ and ‘taken his eyes off’ the Pacific islands have underscored a number of policy dilemmas facing Australian diplomacy in the region. These have been evident for some time and centre primarily around the approach to Fiji’s post-coup government, led by Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama.
Like other western democracies, Australia imposed diplomatic, military and political sanctions on the military-led government after the December 2006 coup. Read more…
Author: Sandra Tarte, USP, Suva
In 2010, Fiji marked 40 years of independence. Significantly, the Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, chose to celebrate the anniversary at the World Expo in Shanghai, rather than at home.
In many ways, this choice underscored the focus of Fiji’s leadership in 2010, which was to diversify and broaden international partnerships. Read more…
Author: Matthew Dornan, ANU
Fiji Water announced on Wednesday that it will maintain its water manufacturing operation in Fiji, just one day after stating it would leave the country over an ‘untenable’ tax increase on exports of water.
This is one chapter in an extraordinary story concerning the boutique water manufacturer; a story that has led to the resignation of Fiji’s Minister for Defence, National Security and Immigration, Epeli Ganilau, and to the deportation of Fiji Water’s Director of External Affairs on ‘security and national interest’ grounds. Read more…
Author: Biman Chand Prasad, University of the South Pacific
Battered by coups, sluggish growth and in recent years the global increase in food, fuel and commodity prices, Fiji’s economy is struggling to regain its feet. The December 2006 coup led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama was the fourth in the last two decades. Bainimarama, in ousting the Laisenia Qarase-led Government promised to tackle corruption, put an end to racially discriminatory policies and reform the race-based electoral system.
The Prime Minister promised a general election under a new Constitution in 2014. However, the history of previous coups in Fiji and the economic recovery plans implemented by successive governments provide little optimism for a swift economic recovery. Read more…
Author: Satish Chand, UNSW@ADFA
The Australian acting high commissioner to Fiji was declared ‘person non grata’ and ordered to leave the country within 24 hours by the Fiji government on July 13.
This is the second Australian diplomat of a total of three that have been sent packing by the Bainimarama regime since taking office via a military coup in December 2006. Each expulsion by Fiji followed allegations of interference of the diplomats in the domestic political affairs of the nation. Read more…
Author: Matthew Dornan, ANU
The Nadarivatu hydro scheme may not be on the same scale as the Three Gorges Dam in China, but it is of similar importance for electricity generation in Fiji. When completed, it will generate 40 megawatts of power. This means that the Fiji Electricity Authority (FEA) will be well on its way to achieving its renewable energy target of 90 per cent of total generation. In total, the Nadarivatu scheme will replace 22,000 tonnes of expensive diesel and heavy fuel oil per annum.
So what is the problem? Unfortunately, the involvement of Sinohydro Corporation Ltd in Nadarivatu’s construction has raised significant labour and economic concerns within Fiji, and has contributed to unnecessary concern about the nature of China’s involvement in the Pacific region. 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: Virginia Horscroft
Fiji may not have been invited to this week’s Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Cairns, but its presence will be felt nonetheless.
Regional leaders expelled Fiji from the Forum back in May, because they were not persuaded that Commodore Bainimarama planned to restore democratic rule in the near future. Far from getting Fiji off the agenda, its expulsion has intensified the dilemma facing Forum members – as recent public displays of their differing opinions on the treatment of Fiji demonstrate.
Australia’s political leaders are anxious to ensure that the issue of Fiji does not overshadow this week’s meeting in Cairns. Instead, Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, is insisting that leaders throughout the region are keen to focus on the ‘real work at hand’.
Rightly so. The Pacific Islands are now facing unprecedented challenges to their economic development, thanks to the global financial crisis and climate change.
For these challenges to be tackled effectively, the Forum must agree on regional responses to them. The important role that Fiji has to play in those responses is inescapable.
Author: Satish Chand
Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the head of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, the appointed Prime Minister (PM), and the Minister for another half a dozen ministries in his government, presented his vision for Fiji in an address to the nation on July 1st. The Commodore espouses to have Fiji realise her potential, and possibly by September 2014 when the nation is gifted democratic rule. Achieving the vision is a tall order, believing that Fiji is on the path to the above taller still.
There are many positives in this address titled the ‘strategic framework for change’. For a start, the Prime Minister has covered hitherto uncharted economic territory. Issues ranging from the deteriorating conditions within the global economy to the floods of February that had a devastating impact on sugarcane crop were canvassed. Mention was made of the improving monetary and credit conditions to an ‘open skies’ policy to increase tourism inflows. The PM emphasised that the focus of his government for the following three years would be the economy.
Guest Author: Virginia Horscroft
While our attention is focused on the political crisis in Fiji, a development that could prove critical to the Pacific is passing almost unremarked.
This week will reveal whether members of the Pacific Islands Forum are able to cut a deal to negotiate a regional trade agreement.
If they manage that, it will be a major achievement for regional engagement – a welcome positive in a year that has so far not been a good one for the Pacific.
Author: Satish Chand
Fiji was suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum on Saturday, the 2nd of May 2009. This decision was anticipated given that the military regime in Fiji had made clear of its intention not to pay heed to the ultimatum given by the Leaders’ following their meeting in Port Moresby last January.
The decision by the Forum, while understandable, is unfortunate. Fiji was a founding member and the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara an instigator of South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation, the predecessor to the Pacific Islands Forum. The Secretariat is located in Suva. Fiji’s suspension is evidence of the fact that the Forum family has fractured.
The political problems in Fiji are hurting. Hurting Fiji foremost, and her neighbours next. Fiji’s GDP contracted by 6.6 per cent in 2007, and was close to stagnant in 2008. Poverty in the two years since the December 2006 coup is likely to have risen by a minimum of 8 percentage points. As of 2002, some 33 per cent of the population were poor. The figures for 2009 would certainly be above 40 per cent.
Author: Stewart Firth, ANU
Fiji’s prime minister and military commander Frank Bainimarama has given his first extended interview to the Australian media since his dramatic seizure of complete power a few weeks ago.
On April 10, following a court ruling that his 2006 military coup was illegal, he abrogated the constitution, dismissed Fiji’s entire judiciary, declared a state of emergency, ordered soldiers into Fiji’s media newsrooms as censors, and said there would be no elections until September 2014.
Pictured in The Australian newspaper with a bowl of the traditional Fijian drink kava, and surrounded by his grandchildren, Bainimarama is engaged in a public relations exercise. He has called for an immediate face-to-face meeting with the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, Kevin Rudd and John Key, who, he says, do not understand what he is doing for his country. They are highly unlikely to accept his invitation.
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.