The last article in this series highlighted how after 1995 Sitiveni Rabuka and Jai Ram Reddy dedicated their time and effort single-mindedly to bequeathing Fiji the 1997 constitution.
This was in the hope that it would finally help mould an inclusive society where political decision-making was not blighted by ethnic concerns at the expense of national concerns.
It was expected that the unprecedented nobility and monumental achievement would propel them into government at the 1999 polls.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Jai Ram Reddy faded away from the political scene after failing to win even one seat for the NFP.
Sitiveni Rabuk bagged eight seats and was gracious in defeat by offering to take any ministerial position that Chaudhry wished to offer him as the triumphant leader of the victorious Fiji Labour Party. Chaudhry failed to understand that this was what was mandated in the 1997 constitution.
He also could not see the nobility of the gesture from Rabuka – the outgoing Prime Minister. Instead, he cut deals with the other political parties who had nothing in common with the FLP.
Let us analyse further the reasons for Rabuka and Reddy’s defeat in 1999.
Vanua politics
Those who are familiar with Fijian history would be aware that the Fijian chiefly system evolved over time and will continue to undergo change as we go past the upcoming election on December 14.
Keen watchers will have noted that after removing the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (BLV) and telling chiefs to drink homebrew under mango trees, the Bainimarama government has not only shown respect to chiefs, but involved them in important functions.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the choice of the present President. Ratu Wiliame Katonivere is the Tui Macuata – a direct descendent of one of the original signatories of the Deed of Cession through which Fiji was handed over to the Queen of England.
Let us go a little way down memory lane here. After Fiji’s Cession in 1874, Governor Gordon’s “indirect rule” was designed to “seize the spirit in which native institutions had been framed, and develop to the utmost extent the capacities of the people for the management of their own affairs, without exciting their suspicion or destroying their self-respect” (in the words of one historian).
When Gordon established the Great Chiefly Council (later GCC and then Bose Levu Vakaturaqa or BLV) in 1875, he was enshrining the chiefs within the national government machinery.
Government in Fiji was thus predicated on the back of a traditional system that was shaped, fossilised and maintained by the colonial administration. In his landmark study on power in pre-colonial Fiji, historian David Routledge writes: “The traditional socio-political order consisted of small, kinship-structured and locality-oriented entities fighting and intriguing for advantage over one another.”
Political power play, intrigue and internecine rivalry had no small part to play in these sociopolitical adjustments.
Toward the end of the 18th century, circumstances pushed these vanua further into combining to form still larger units called matanitu (confederacies).
Thus these social units emerged “within the context of political processes”, and therefore, were “power constructs articulated by the continual exercise of force”.
In the 19th century, as contact with beachcombers, missionaries, traders, planters, and labourers began to impact further on internal social and economic relationships, strategic alliances and kinship bonds began to take on a new significance.
It was this social and political organisation of Fijian society that the colonial administration encountered and subsequently entrenched through its administrative strategy of “indirect rule”.
When the colonial administration zoomed onto Ratu Sukuna as its most useful local asset, it was attempting to juxtapose a modern government apparatus on a traditional system of power.
Ratu Sukuna was the first of the local senior bureaucrats.
He then “adopted” Ratu Mara, Ratu Edward Cakobau, Ratu Penaia Ganilau and Ratu George Cakobau as the next batch of chiefs who would lead Fiji. Realising that Ratu Mara was the most talented of the lot, Ratu Sukuna played cupid in getting the Lau chief to marry Adi Lady Lala Mara who was the Roko Tui Dreketi.
Thus Ratu Mara’s lower chiefly rank was complemented by his wife’s paramountcy in Burebasaga. The system appeared to work well in the beginning as this crop of chiefs took Fiji through independence and beyond.
The three confederacies (Tovata, Kubuna and Burebasaga) plus the chiefly households that dominate these chiefdoms were part of the “invented tradition” of the colonial administration.
It was hoped that the chiefly system would hold strong in perpetuity. However, many of the chiefly disputes continue to arise from the cracks of these “reinventions”.
These disputes, plus commoner demands for greater access to resources and opportunities, weakened the chiefly system even though key chiefs continued to wield power both within their traditional realms as well as in government.
All this came to a head in 1987 when the Alliance Party lost power and Rabuka executed a coup shortly afterwards. It was in the aftermath of that coup that vanua politics finally reared its head without camouflage.
Numerous complaints and disputes pitted chiefs against chiefs and commoners against chiefs. Rabuka had to juggle between different personalities and factions throughout his political journey from 1987 to 1999.
The Fijian Association Party (FAP) had its genesis in 1987. Those who distrusted Rabuka supported the FAP. You will note that many of Rabuka’s former supporters were not too enthusiastic about the 1997 constitution.
Was it a coincidence that many of these rejectionists owed money to the illfated National Bank of Fiji? There was another party that emerged in the lead-up to the 1999 elections – the Veitokani ni Lewenivanua Vakarisito was particularly anti-SVT and its leader, Sitiveni Rabuka.
The VLV and FAP took a combined 13 seats in 1999. There appeared to be bad blood and distrust of the SVT and its leader. Inside sources say that the fact that Rabuka managed to win eight seats caused a huge disappointment in some elite circles.
The aim was to push him out of politics in the same way that Reddy went.
A remote Reddy
It would be incomplete not to analyse Reddy’s fall in this series as he was the other leader involved in bequeathing Fiji the 1997 Constitution.
As mentioned earlier, Reddy had moved away from his grassroots support in his pursuit of that constitution.
There was a sort of misplaced trust that his work would speak for itself and that the electorate would support him.
Reddy, by nature was an aloof person. Professor Narsey shared in one of his columns that Reddy lacked humour.
His rival, Mahendra Chaudhry, has always been a canny politician with a keen sense of the pulse of the electorate.
These things worked against Reddy and the NFP. There were other factors at play in 1999.
The preferential voting system was new to Fiji and Mahendra Chaudhry appeared to understand it best at the time.
The electorate had become numb to the significance of the 1997 Constitution.
They had more immediate breadand-butter issues to think about. The NFP machinery was weak without the full involvement of its leader.
We lost an excellent opportunity to show what real citizenship and belonging meant. Working across the ethnic divide had been extremely difficult; the 1997 Constitution provided all the incentives and structures to engage in this meaningfully. The rest is now part of history. I will conclude this series in my next article by once again focusing on what real belonging means and how it could be achieved.
• DR SUBHASH APPANNA has been writing occasionally on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed in this article are his alone and not those of The Fiji Times or his employer.
