A CLIMATE OF INTIMIDATION PREVAILS IN FIJI

Jon Fraenkel
Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University

In the five years since Fiji’s military strongman, Voreqe Bainimarama, seized power in a coup, he has liquidated parliament, banned meetings of the Great Council of Chiefs and the Methodist Church, dismissed the judiciary and transformed the media into an obedient servant of his government. In September, an Essential National Industries Decree severely curtailed trade union rights, and several trade unionists have been taken into custody.

Could it be that, despite that poor track record of repression, Bainimarama is gaining public support? In September, the Lowy Institute released a poll claiming that 66 percent of Fiji citizens now approve of Bainimarama. ‘Twice as popular as Julia Gillard’, crowed Fiji’s chief censor, Sharon Smith-Johns. Civil society activists within Fiji have condemned the poll as inappropriate, misleading and methodologically flawed. Australian government parliamentary secretary for Pacific Island Affairs reasonably asked ‘If you are sitting at home, in a country where a repressive regime has stripped you of human rights and where people do get taken off to barracks and you get a knock on the door and a stranger asks what do you think of the government, what do you think you’d say?’. Writing in The Australian on October 6^th, the Lowy Institute’s Jenny Hayward-Jones defended the poll as conveying an authentic voice of the Fiji people.

The 2011 survey, financed by Fiji-born Lowy board member and investment banker Mark Johnson, was carried out by Tebbutt research. It entailed interviews with 1,032 people in urban areas on Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island. The previous such poll, conducted by Tebbutt for the Fiji Times in December 2008, asked respondents to pick their favoured Prime Minister. Deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase emerged as the most preferred leader (with 31 percent approval) while Bainimarama ran second (at 27 percent). By contrast, the current poll asked a more loaded question: ‘how good a job do you personally think Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama is doing as Prime Minister?’ The resultant disapproval rating of 8 percent was way below what most surveys of this kind would expect.

How was it possible to conduct such a poll under conditions of severe media censorship? Hayward-Jones claims that Lowy itself did not seek any direct permission from the Fiji government, but doubts remain about whether the survey was devised in such a way as to avoid responses that might prove politically awkward. Had the poll yielded a negative verdict, Tebbutt Research – a Fiji-based market research company - would probably have been hounded out of business, and the pollsters incarcerated. Former editor-in-chief at the Fiji Times Russell Hunter - himself a victim of Bainimarama’s deportations of foreign journalists - alleges that during his stewardship Tebbutt Research often declined to conduct surveys where the results might prove contentious.

Respondents were also asked how ‘good’ a job government was doing as regards education (82 percent good), transport (71 percent good) and health (69 percent good). It was even reported that 59 percent thought the government was doing a ‘good’ job on the economy, which has contracted by 7.4 percent over the past four years and which has seen investment grind to a virtual halt. Respondents reported that government was doing a ‘good’ job in ‘preparing to draft a new constitution’ (53 percent good) and ‘reforming the electoral system (51 percent good), both tasks that the government itself does not intend to commence undertaking until 2012.

Those responses either show a giant gulf between perception and reality, or that respondents concurred with whatever was put before them, or that they felt intimidated. The headline 66 percent approval rating was broken down into 75 percent Fiji Indian support and, more dubiously, 60 percent backing amongst indigenous Fijians. Only 19 percent of indigenous Fijians chose Bainimarama as preferred Prime Minister in the 2008 poll. Since then, the constitution has been abrogated, and public emergency regulations have become a permanent fixture. Critics of government have been hounded from their jobs, and for the most part silenced. In one notorious case, a senior military officer was overheard denouncing the government while in South Korea, and charged with sedition on his return. In May, he dramatically escaped from Fiji by sea and sought political asylum in neighbouring Tonga.

A climate of intimidation prevails in post-coup Fiji. What was once a frank and straight-talking society has now become a place where people are very guarded about what they say, and to whom they say it. Yet, five years after the coup, there probably is more support, or at least grudging acquiescence, than many of the critics would like to concede. After all, there is no obvious alternative to Bainimarama on the horizon. Deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has never looked like a politician capable of recapturing power. His predecessor, Fiji Indian leader Mahendra Chaudhry is before the courts on corruption charges. Even the 2008 Tebbutt poll suggested that Chaudhry’s support had slumped.

But if there genuinely is such popular support, why is the Bainimarama government so scared? Why the need to continually renew the public emergency regulations? If Bainimarama and his information secretary believe that they have extensive backing, why not hold immediate elections? In fact, it was awareness of popular hostility that in July 2009 led Bainimarama and his Attorney General, to cancel all dialogue with political parties and put off elections until 2014. At that time, they also promised resumption of dialogue towards a new constitution in 2012. And 2012 is now nearly upon us. So soon there will be a fresh test of whether Bainimarama again reneges on his promises (as he did in mid-2008) or whether his government can effectively handle some kind of transition towards elective democracy.

Jon Fraenkel is a senior research fellow at the Australian National University