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10 Heartbreak Islands Reflections on Fiji in Transition
- SAR Press
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Fiji is a paradox and a pity.1 A paradox because this island nation is endowed with wonderful natural resources, a talented and multiethnic population with a high literacy rate, and a sophisticated (but now crumbling ) public infrastructure where drinkable piped water was once guaranteed, public roads had few potholes, poverty and crime and squatters were visible but contained, hospitals were uncrowded, children went cheerfully to schools, and respect for law and order was assured. But this nation is tragically prone to self-inflicted wounds with crippling consequences. One coup is bad enough for any country, but three in thirteen years—two in 1987 and one in 2000—staggers the imagination. Fiji is a pity because no genuine resolution of the country ’s deep-seated political and economic problems is in sight as its leaders dither and the country drifts divided. The battle lines are clearly drawn in a deadly zero-sum game. The militant nationalists, happily unconcerned about the destructive implications of their actions, threaten violent retribution if their agenda for political supremacy is marginalized in mainstream public discourse. Compounding the problem , on top of all this is a manifest lack of collective political will to exorcise the country of the demons that terrorize its soul. 261 10 Heartbreak Islands Reflections on Fiji in Transition Brij V. Lal Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates —Matthew Arnold 261 The tragedy of modern Fiji politics has been that rosy rhetoric for global consumption has always won over the hard realities on the ground, blinding its people to the deep-seated problems that beset the country. At the least, this has caused them a sense of slight unease about probing too deeply into the darker recesses of national body politic, lest they discover some discomforting truth about themselves that they would rather ignore (Lal 1992; Scarr 1984; Sutherland 1992). If the emperor had no clothes, it was better not to find out. Fiji therefore portrayed itself as a model of functioning multiracial democracy, largely free of the ethnic tension and conflict that plagued many developing countries—the way the world should be, as Pope John Paul II intoned after a fleeting visit to the islands in 1985. Few publicly acknowledged inter- and intraethnic tensions, the deep reservations the different communities had about the structure of power relations in the country, and the deeply contested struggle for a definition and clarification of Fijian political identity that preceded independence. The illusion of harmony and amicable understanding in the postindependence era was just that, an illusion, and just as misleading and fraught and dangerous as the impression of balance and equilibrium and harmony conveyed by an earlier metaphor of Fiji as a three-legged stool (Sukuna 1984). RACE AND PUBLIC MEMORY The brutal truth, of course, was that Fiji never had a genuinely shared sense among its citizens about what kind of constitutional arrangement was appropriate for it. It was an issue that had bedeviled the country’s politics since the late 1920s. Indigenous Fijian and European leaders, with active official support, argued for separate racial representation. For them, primordial loyalties were paramount. The Indo-Fijians, on the other hand, championed a non-racial common roll, privileging sectarian ideology over ethnicity. The issue dominated political debate throughout the 1960s, leading to boycott of the Legislative Council and tense elections and by-elections (Lal 1992; Norton 1990; Mara 1997). The communal voice won in the end, largely because of Fijian and European opposition but partly also because of the Indo-Fijian leaders’ lack of genuine commitment to the idea, following the death of A. D. Patel, the tireless advocate of common roll Brij V. Lal 262 [52.90.181.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:31 GMT) (Lal 1992). Their compromise—in truth, compromised—agreement was enshrined in the secretly negotiated independence constitution, which retained ethnicity as the principal vehicle of political participation while making a halfhearted commitment to non-racial politics as a long-term national objective (Lal, ed. 1986; Ali 1977). Unsurprisingly, race dominated post-independence politics. The two main political parties, the Alliance and the National Federation, were essentially race-based, the former among Fijians, Europeans, and a sprinkling of Indo-Fijians, and the latter predominantly among IndoFijians . In time, virtually every issue of public policy came to be viewed through racial lenses: affirmative action, poverty alleviation, allocation of scholarships for tertiary education, opportunities for training and promotion...