With the Fiscal Review report recommending that the Coalition Government seriously reduce expenditure on the bloated RFMF, social media is gossiping that some dissatisfied RFMF elements still loyal to Bainimarama are contemplating another coup.
If the gossip has substance, it would mean that the RFMF have still not understood the terrible consequences or atoned for the treasonous coups they have committed against Fiji in the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006.
It would mean they have never understood how wrong and evil they were in following the unlawful orders of coup leaders.
Today, they even ignore the harsh views of the last Prime Minister they brutally deposed, the late Laisenia Qarase, just as they have forgotten their brutality to the governments of Bavadra/Reddy and Mahendra Chaudhry.
I believe that the collective RFMF blindness is due to the refusal of government after government to conduct honest “Commissions of Inquiry” into the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006.
That refusal is partly due to the many hidden skeletons in the cupboards of RFMF officers and powerful civilians in all governments, including the current Coalition Government.
That refusal is also due to Fiji’s refusal to punish anyone for the treason they have committed, except for easy scapegoats like frontman George Speight, while the real ring leaders have got away scotfree.
This article suggests that the only way to ensure that RFMF officers and rank and file never contemplate another coup is for Commander Major General Kalouniwai to forcefully remind the RFMF personnel, of all ranks, that it is their sacred duty to refuse to follow unlawful orders from any of their superiors or civilians in government who try to instigate a coup.
The RFMF must also acknowledge their past treason by performing a collective matanigasau, a heart-felt apology to the nation, for all their unlawful and immoral support of the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006; and they must publicly pledge never to support another coup again.
Maj Gen Jone Kalouniwai must also get the message across to the RFMF officers and rank and file that any coup will jeopardise an extremely valuable avenue that is opening up recently with calls in Australia for the Australian Defence Forces to employ Pacific Island military (including naval) personnel for strengthening regional security.
This is a potentially win-win situation for both Australia and Fiji especially in its current budgetary crisis, and might be a God-send for RFMF personnel (and their families), provided that the RFMF’s coup culture is banished forever.
But how exactly can the RFMF eliminate its deeply embedded coup cancer which has cost Fiji so much since the 1987 coup?
See the attached graph which shows how the Mauritius GDP per capita, before 1987 less than Fiji’s, is now twice that of Fiji. Can you imagine a Fiji today where every household is enjoying twice the income it does today?
The unidentified coupists and unpunished treasons
The world knows that the primary mover in the 1987 coup against the Bavadra/Reddy/ Chaudhry Government was third in command in the RFMF, Sitiveni Rabuka.
No other ringleader has ever been officially identified although all know of them. Rabuka knew full well that he had the support of the most powerful political and social forces in Fiji at the time: exministers of the losing Alliance Government, the Great Council of Chiefs, the Methodist Church and powerful ethno-nationalist civilian groups around Fiji who had openly engaged in support of the coup by taking part in public demonstrations, road blocks, systematic violence against IndoFijians civilians and arson.
Eventually, Fiji was declared a republic, a new 1990 Constitution was imposed on Fiji.
But Mr Rabuka’s progressive partnership with Jai Ram Reddy led to a revised 1997 Constitution approved unanimously by Parliament and a grant of immunity for Mr Rabuka so that “Fiji can move on”.
But that immunity provision came back to bite Fiji with the identified leaders of the 2000 coup also demanding immunity and being given it at one stage. One scapegoat, George Speight, was prosecuted and jailed. But there were senior RFMF officers supportive of the 2000 coup, never officially identified.
Many prominent backers of the 2000 coup escaped punishment totally and some managed to obtain prominent positions in every government since the 2000 coup, clearly indicating the broad support for the 2000 treason in the highest of places.
An RFMF with 99 per cent iTaukei backing and enjoying the benefits of two coups (1987 and 2000) against governments perceived to be led by Indo-Fijian political leaders, the RFMF easily took the horror step of a coup against even the indigenous Fijian led government of the late Qarase (a multi-party government of SDL and FLP).
This Bainimarama/Sayed- Khaiyum government then also granted itself immunity in a 2013 Constitution they imposed on Fiji without any approval of any parliament or referendum.
There was never any doubt that the bulk of RFMF officers and rank and file (except for a few who resigned their commission by 2006), supported the clear treason against the State. No one has been punished to date.
Is a largely iTaukei RFMF again contemplating a coup against the Coalition Government even though it is supported largely by iTaukei voters?
Qarase’s condemnation of the military
While iTaukei soldiers may not respect the voices of deposed and brutalised leaders like Mr Chaudhry or academic professors of economics, they must surely respect the judgement of a deposed and also brutalised iTaukei prime minister the late Laisenia Qarase, from whose book Prisoner 302 I quote (p.535): “When I reflect on the military leadership that has unleashed so much unhappiness, fear and abuse, I see the spreading presence of evil. Soldiers …. acted as agents and practitioners of thuggery, fear, force and torture…. I saw men who, because of some misconceived sense of military loyalty, were ready to blindly maintain illegal authority at the point of a gun…. they should have known not to follow illegal orders”.
The late Qarase despite his despair at what he saw the military had been reduced to, felt that “It is still possible through sound principled and professional leadership for the RFMF to regain its reputation and high standing of yesteryear”.
Teaching RFMF personnel their sacred duty: Zmbado’s 10 steps
There is no doubt that the bulk of the RFMF are “good” professional soldiers compared with the brutal military in many third world countries.
So why do they so easily commit treason, a crime usually punishable by death? All RFMF personnel (officers and rank and file) could read my 2011 article “Zimbardo: why good people support evil”.
This is Reading 99 in my Vol. 3 Our Struggles for Democracy in Fiji, Rule of Law and Media Freedom, pp. 313-323. (available at the USP Book Centre).
Psychology Professor Zimbardo (Stanford University) brilliantly explains why ostensibly good American soldiers began to do evil to prisoners in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay military prisons.
Prof Zimbardo pointed to Rule 153 of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which states (https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ en/customaryihl/v1/rule153) “Commanders and other superiors are criminally responsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates if they knew, or had reason to know, that the subordinates were about to commit or were committing such crimes and did not take all necessary and reasonable measures in their power to prevent their commission, or if such crimes had been committed, to punish the persons responsible.”
It has never been established whether the RFMF Commander at the time of the Rabuka coup knew about it, although his departure for Perth to collect a naval boat was highly suspicious given the extreme civil disturbances in Fiji at the time.
The Evans Board of Inquiry established similarly that the RFMF Commander Bainimarama was told by his intelligence unit six months before (and then again seven days before) that the 2000 coup was about to happen, but he went off to Norway for an unimportant meeting. Then there is Rule 154 of the IHL whereby “Every combatant has a duty to disobey a manifestly unlawful order”.
That would apply to every officer and rank and file who implemented and supported the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006.
My article explains all the evil consequences of the 2006 coup (many fully understood only today) which would have been obvious to all officers and soldiers in the RFMF, yet they continued to obey unjust orders from their superiors.
Important for all RFMF personnel today are Prof Zimbardo’s 10 steps they can follow if they have been pulled into doing evil (and I list a few): (1) admit mistakes, apologise and seek forgiveness; (3) only accept just authority and order, reject and expose unjust authority; (4) take personal responsibility for your actions (“I was only following orders” is no excuse); (10) “be aware that the present must one day pass, and the future will hold you accountable for your actions.”
Prof Zimbardo also pointed to the “power of one” when all it took was just one individual (“whistleblower”) standing up for what was right often at great personal cost, to become the catalyst to right an enormous evil taking place.
Who knows, perhaps Mr Rabuka’s “power of one” in the Fiji Parliament may be a similar catalyst.
Historical need for the RFMF apology
While there has been an orgy of empty national apologies since the 2022 elections, the sadly missing elephants in the room have been the RFMF officers and rank and file who have been directly responsible for the coups of 1987, 2000 and 2006 and all their evil consequences.
Also missing have been all the active coup plotters and supporters whose identity the public well know, but will never reveal because of Fiji’s “cancerous culture of silence” (Reading 98 in my Volume 3, pp. 305-313).
Maj Gen Kalouniwai might enlist the support of Defence Minister Pio Tikoduadua and a small funding from the Coalition Government to pay for a magiti and salusalu for the RFMF’s matanigasau, and its pledge not to do any more coups in the future.
This is one apology which might be worth the cost, if it actually works. But the real future benefits for themselves if RFMF banished Fiji’s coup culture, is opening up with service with the Australian Defence Force.
The ADF opportunities for RFMF
David Van is an extremely influential Liberal Senator for Victoria, a member of the Defence Subcommittee and the Deputy Chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs and Aid of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.
In a recent article (May 4, 2023) in the influential Lowy Institute journal The Interpreter, David Van list all the mutual benefits for Australia and Fiji: “The case for opening ADF to citizens of Pacific Island nations”.
“The benefits to Australia include strengthened people-topeople links, tighter security relationships, diversity in the ranks, soft skills such as cultural awareness and languages, in-country knowledge, which is important for HADR, as well as providing the ADF with deeper recruitment pool.
The benefits to Pacific Island countries are even more significant, including monetary remittance back home to support families and communities.
ADF training would enable skills transfer back to countries which will augment vocational and tertiary educational institutions. ADF training covers many disciplines that Pacific family members may otherwise have to travel to another country to learn, including engineering, health, management and leadership skills.” Some of us economists have been arguing for this for more than a decade.
Reading 95 in my Vol. 1 The Challenges of Growing the Fiji Economy) is a 2009 article published in the NZ journal Pacific Connections (A Visionary South Pacific Community) where I wrote: “Australia and New Zealand both face dwindling demand from their civilians for military and naval positions.
Several FICs have faced instability because their military and naval personnel have not followed the highest ethics of their service codes. So why have Australia and New Zealand not fostered a revolving deployment of FIC military personnel in the dwindling Australian and New Zealand defense forces?
The FIC personnel would be taken off their strained FIC budgets… such returned personnel might also be totally resistant to overturning civilian governments…. FIC seafarers in the Australian and New Zealand navies… [could be useful] policing marine boundaries, controlling over-fishing, whaling, monitoring under-sea minerals including oil and gas, and defending ‘Fortress Pacific’.”
If large numbers of RFMF personnel are seconded to the ADF, they will come off the budget of the Fiji Government effectively reducing the deficit, a current headache for the Minister of Finance.
These personnel working for the ADF at Australian salaries would also effectively become a valuable “export industry” earning remittances back to Fiji. But there is a bigger picture the RFMF should think about.
The Pacific community dream
Although the reader might think that the proposals here are purely focused on the current problems of the RFMF, that is not so.
From 2004 onwards, I have been arguing (eg “PICTA, PACER and EPAs: where are we going”, in Islands Business, April 2004) for Australia and PICs to move towards a genuine Pacific Community (like the European Union) of common interests in mobility of labour (all happening now), closer ties in Super Rugby (all happening now), arts (happening sporadically), Australian aid for investment in infrastructure and industries (all happening) and military cooperation (just starting).
Maj Gen Kalouniwai might wish to harness the services of reputable former RFMF officers with impeccable records, like Viliame Seruvakula.
With his inner knowledge of the coups of 2000 and 2006, he is well placed to advise RFMF with a personal clean conscience, what the officers and rank and file needed to do when coup plotters came to them.
With his recent work experience for UN in Timor and PNG, Seruvakula can also convince RFMF personnel about the wonderful opportunities that can be available to them with the Australian Defence Forces, if and only if they banish their coup culture forever. Is it too much to hope for?
• PROF WADAN NARSEY is one of the region’s senior economists and a regular commentator on political and economic issues in Fiji. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of The Fiji Times.
