The crisis in ties with Fiji will now also be an interesting early foreign policy test for whoever prevails in this week’s Australian election. For now, Australia has made clear it won’t back down over the issue, with Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith noting that dialogue with Fiji can’t be all one-way. It has also introduced targeted sanctions aimed at those responsible for the coup.
There’s a domestic political calculation in Australia’s firm approach, with the ruling Australian Labor Party likely playing to the ‘Indian gallery’—those sympathetic to the struggles on the island—in an effort to secure support among the Fiji Indian and Indian community more broadly. Following the international spat over attacks on Indian students last year in Australia it’s easy to see why Labor would be keen to try to consolidate support among Indians.
More broadly, the Labor government now under Prime Minister Julia Gillard appears to be trying to choke the ruling establishment in Fiji, not just through sanctions aimed at the regime, but also by stoking internal resentment by making it harder for Fijians to emigrate to Australia and New Zealand.
Will this work? The danger is that such moves will not only further isolate Fiji, but that they may also encourage it to step up its ‘Look North’ policy (for this read boosting ties with Beijing). For a leadership shunned by others in the Pacific, closer ties with China must seem like a win-win situation, with Fiji gaining more access to a huge market without the lecturing over democracy.
One of the problems in the case of lecturing Fiji is that civil-military relations are not yet properly demarcated as they have been in many Western nations. Back in 1957, Samuel Huntington penned a landmark study on civilian-military relations called ‘The Soldier and the State: the Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations.’ In it, he says the responsibilities of the military to the state are threefold: representative, advisory and executive. In Fiji’s case though, inept civilian administration has prompted the military to actually take the lead in setting the agenda that Huntington’s model has the military only implementing, with elected officials having either been corrupt or lacking the charisma to unify the ethnically diverse island.
The indecisiveness and inability of the civilian leadership to take a lead was perhaps most on display last April, when the Court of Appeal ruled that the military government was illegally appointed after the 2006 coup, and that democracy should be returned as soon as possible. Fiji’s president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, responded by dissolving parliament and suspending the Constitution, only to reinstate Bainimarama as interim prime minister a day later.
Perhaps most interesting though is that this battle for influence comes at a time when the role of the United States in the region is in the spotlight following its recent spat with China over the South China Sea. So far, Washington has not commented on the dispute between Fiji and Australia. But the vying for influence going on between Australia and China could have interesting implications for every country that feels it has a stake in the region’s stability—the United States included.
Balaji Chandramohan is editor of World Security Network for Asia. He can be reached at: mohanbalaji2003@gmail.com
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
SE962582C
What Discrimination?!
The Readers would actually find that and discover that any perceived inequalities, injustices and so-called “discrimination” are absolutely nothing compared to and compared with that of Bhutan, and of Assam, of the North-Eastern India/Hindustan and of Maharashtra, where that there much Discrimination indeed, and where Discrimination is of a different form and also of a whole new level, where it is not even so much and necessarily based upon Caste and/or upon religious-confessional identities and backgrounds.
It IS indeed highly unrealistic, if not highly unreasonable as well, to expect for some “special” rights, freedoms and/or privileges that are not that generally and universally available even back in India the Hindustan.
For one thing, one does not believe that there are ever any known instances of any non-Protestants or non-Christians upon the Island of Fiji and the Fiji Islands who claimed to be forcibly converted into a different religion under physical duress and under the Pain of Death, unlike “some certain other” places.
Still, be that as it may, it is always unacceptable and wrong, if not also dangerous, and at the very least inadvisable, to attack especially the Fiji-based and Islander/Insular-based local Baptist and/or Methodist Protestant Christian Churches, directly or in any way; as to attack especially the Two or 2 Protestant Christian Churches would the same as and equal to a direct attack upon the Protestant Christian beliefs, religion and faith of the Fijians.
Huang
Fiji is a very good start for all the South Pacific island nations(including Australia and New Zealand)to follow. Being in the Asian neighborhood,it is only natural to be part of thee Asian Pacific family(old colonial attitudes no longer relevant in this new age of equality,respect of others,fairness,mutual trust). China is on the path of reaching and engaging the World community. China’s sincere actions inevitably caused a few ripples in the traditionally Western controlled(from the top down)governments in the region. China’s present in the region will positively create more constructive interactions between the island nations and the rest of Asia. This is truly a win-win situation.
SE962582C
The Island of Fiji and the Fiji Islands are NOT part of Asia, and neither are Vladivostok/Vladivastok, Ussuriysk nor Khabarovsk, nor Sakhalin nor Kamchatka, either!
If Tasmania and the Commonwealth of Australia cannot possibly be part of Asia, and indeed they are NOT, then how could the Island of Fiji and the Fiji Islands, being to the EAST of both Tasmania and of Australia, could somehow possibly be part of Asia somehow?!
They are NOT one’s or my words, but the not-so-exactly-worded sentiments of the Dr. (not Ph.D.) Mahathir-bin-Mohammed M.D. the Malayan and the Malaysian no less, and a real and a true Asian all-right.
SE962582C
Let’s have a bit of more of an Intellectual honesty, instead of Conspiracy Theories with both Ultra-Nationalist and Racial undertones, shall we?!
One of the Facts are that the City of Suva is never and NEVER going to be as Indian as and/or as Hindustani as either the Cities of Siliguri or of Simla; is it?! And that the Island of Fiji is never and NEVER going to be as Indian as and/or as Hindustani as the Diu, as the Salsette or as the Minicoy Islands; is it?! As well as that the Fiji Islands are never and NEVER going to be as Indian as and/or as Hindustani as the Ladshakweep Islands, as the Andaman Islands or as the Nicobar Islands; is it?!
VVN
“stoking internal resentment by making it harder for Fijians to emigrate to Australia and New Zealand” — this actually benefits Fiji by keeping skilled people and professionals in Fiji.
Common man
Funny isn’t it?
Fiji with its racism aimed mainly at Indians because they run most of the businesses. It now wants to be a smart arse and deal with China whilst most of the other South Pacific nations such as the Solomons, Nauru etc aim their racism at the CHINESE because THEY own all the businesses, and want THEM out of Dodge!