The Independent: 9 August 2000
FIJI: FLAKY GOVERNMENT OFFERS ASPIRIN TO GUTTED ECONOMY
Fiji's new rulers hope their hasty Budget will dull the pain for island businesses.
By DAVID ROBIE in Suva
FIJI'S deposed elected government coalition has accused the military-backed interim administration of financial abuse.
Former National Planning Minister Dr Ganesh Chand condemned interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's appointment of the largest cabinet in Fji's history while the country was on the brink of economic ruin.
The appointment of 20 cabinet ministers and 12 assistant ministers would cost the country $F750,000 a year.
In its mini budget late last month, the interim government endorsed the Public Service Commisson's recmmendation that all civil servants, including cabinet ministers, take a 12.5 percent pay cut. But teachers have already served notice of a national strike in protest.
Dr Chand strongly criticised an early decision by Qarase to buy a new $131,000 landcruiser for prime ministerial use.
"And Mr Qarase has the temerity to ask the civil servants to accept a 12.5 percent pay cut because times are hard," Dr Chand said.
Prime Minister's Office Secretary Joji Kotobalavu said the new vehicle would be the only ne used by the PM while two were used by his predecessors, Mahendra Chaudhry and Sitiveni Rabuka.
NOW rebel leader George Speight and his key ringleaders are in custody on a makeshift island prison off Suva, Fiji's interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase plans an uncertain "indigenous" economic future.
He is likely to face legal challenges from the ousted elected government of Mahendra Chaudhry.
Fiji's economy, meanwhile, is in tatters.
Official figures released last week show the attempted May 19 coup and subsequent political crisis have, for starters, seriously damaged the tourist industry.
Arrivals for June were down more than two two-thirds - from more than 38,000 in June 1999 to just over 12,000 in June this year.
The former government is planning a legal challenge following advice from its constitutional lawyers that it had an excellent case. Chaudhry, during a visit to Australia as a guest of the Howard Government for briefings - such as the legal options - and medical treatment for the distress he experienced as a hostage, has renewed calls for international intervention.
He says that intervention by bodies such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth is the only way equal political rights can be protected.
The Chaudhry caucus maintains the abrogation of the constitution under duress was illegal and subsequent action by the nterm administraton is unconstitutional.
But Qarase says people calling for the reinstatement of the 1997 constitution and the Chaudhry government are unrealistic.
"It is not merely enough to focus attention on the constitutional democratic process. We need to look deeper into the root causes of widespread Fijian disaffection, brought into the open by dissatisfaction with certain policies of the last government," he said.
Last week's mini-budget, a 10-year "blueprint" for indigenous development and the establishment of a new Department of National Reconciliation with himself holding the portfolio are among Qarase's strategies for rehabilitating the economy.
He said a new constitution and a rehabilitated and revitalised economy were vital building blocks for enduring peace, stability, progress and spiritual rejuvenation in the country.
In the mini-budget "survival package" announced by interim Finance Minister Ratu Yavala Kubuabola, F$9 million has been set aside to rehabilitate the economy and restore business confidence.
The minister said criteria for how these funds would be spent would be spelt out soon, but the Fiji Trade and Investment Board is expected to get a substantial boost to market the Fiji islands.
"Business and investor confidence, both locally and abroad, has been shattered and will be tough to rebuild," Kubuabola said. He also announced the reactivation of factories within the tax-free zone to attract investors.
Other features of the budget, which targets a net deficit of 3.5 percent of gdp, or F$113 million, include:
Both the Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Fiji Retailers Association cautiously welcomed the mini-budget.
Chamber president Natwarlal Vagh said the reintroduction of the tax free zone scheme would encourage investment.
While retailers' president Himmat Lodhia said the budget was mostly a reallocation of funds, he said it was unclear how they would be distributed.
The Fiji Council of Churches was sceptical of the budget and the government's plans, pointing out that "restoring indigenous Fijian rights" was a smokescreen for the self-interest of Speight and other backers of the attempted coup
On Chaudhry's record, a planned front page special colour supplement in The Fiji Times marking the first anniversary of government by the reformist multiracial administration headed by the Fiji Islands' first Indo-Fijian prime minister, said it all.
Outlining the self-styled people's coalition government "strategies for a better future", the feature quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."
Compared with previous indigenous Fijian administrations since independence in 1970, Chaudhry's government had been remarkably resourceful and managed several achievements for grassroots Fijians in a short time.
These included F$4.7 million for tertiary education scholarships in a sector where Fijians were under-achieving; a $4 million subsidy to the Fiji Development Bank to provide soft loans for Fijians trying to establish small businesses; $1.3 million for a micro-finance scheme to benefit Drekena village and the Qauia and Wakanisila settlements; $1.2 million for the Fiji Rugby Football Union - the sport akin to religion for Fijians in this deeply spiritual nation - and the debut of an integrated village development programme designed to boost living standards in rural Fijian villages.
This supplement was never seen in public. On Friday, May 19, the day before scheduled publication, Speight and six renegade soldiers from the elite Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit stormed Parliament and seized the Chaudhry government as hostages in the name of "indigenous Fijian paramountcy".
Now Chaudhry's ousted government caucus is in the west of the country regrouping after being held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days.
Speight and seven of his rebellion ringleaders are detained in a makeshift tent prison on the island of Nukulau off Suva Point, and interim Prime Minister Qarase has taken the first steps in hauling Fiji back from the brink of economic ruin with an appointed cabinet that has questionable legitimacy.
"For [the Chaudhry government] to set up a self-proclaimed government would be a direct challenge to the executive authority of the president and the Great Council of Chiefs as the appointing authority," said Qarase, a banker who has never been elected, after the swearing in of the interim administration.
"If they persist with it, they will be dealt with according to law."
Qarase's administration is expected to run the country for up to three years - more than half of the five-year life of an elected Fiji government - to prepare for a return to democracy.
Although the 27-member administration excludes any of Speight's advisers, it includes at least three staunch nationalists who are widely alleged in Fiji to be in the "shadows" behind the attempted coup and others who sympathise with the Speight indigenous nationalist cause.
According to Fiji Trades Union Congress president Daniel Urai, the interim government would not be taken seriously because of members who were involved in the illegal takeover of the elected government.
One of the two indigenous deputy prime ministers in the Chaudhry government is among many people who have condemned the swearing in of the interim administration as discriminatory and outside the 1997 democratic constitution (abrogated by the military in a decree on May 30).
Only four of the 71 MPs elected under the 1997 multiracial constitution were included in this interim cabinet, which has no popular mandate.
FIJI'S RULERS ACCUSED OF FINANCIAL ABUSE
FLAKY GOVERNMENT OFFERS ASPIRIN TO GUTTED ECONOMY