The Always Enligthened Jean D’Ark

This post was a comment by Jean D’Ark on HydeNceek’s blog, in response to Interim Attorney General Aiyass Khaiyum’s constitutional blunder in the appointment of Koila Nailatikau in accepting the position of Constitutional Boundaries Commissioner. As always the thinking behind Jean D’Ark’s comments show a level of maturity and objectivitythat is sadly lacking in the current Interim Regime. Go on Jean tell them like it is, we need more people like you!!

If the Military Council was really interested in dealing with Fijian development problems, they would approach it in a different kind of way that didn’t alienate the very people they were trying to help.

No – the recent divisive and provocative statements by the Military Council and Frank against Fijians, points us to who their real audience actually was.

That audience was the FLP support-base (and the Diplomatic Corps), and the reason was to make sure they stay “on-side” with the IG while the economy continues to struggle and the Sugar Restructure remains under a cloud. I also think it strongly points to the likelihood that some “bad news” is on the way in next month’s budget. So this is probably just an advance propaganda campaign to pacify a possible FLP revolt (or split) beforehand.

As we know, FLP supporters have always been more sensitive to economic pain than the broader Fijian electorate. FLP supporters were always the loudest critics of the ousted Government even when small things went wrong with the economy. So in light of that more sensitive and hardnosed FLP attitude, the Military Council needs to make sure they’re distracted with political “sleights of hand” like this, since things are clearly worse post-coup on the economic front.

The IG already has little real Fijian support to speak of! So once the FLP grass-roots support-base begins to equate the downturn in their own personal circumstances with the false promises and poor performance of the IG, many Indo-Fijians may also begin to turn on it, too. Then the Regime will start to become truly isolated, unpopular and untenable. So it will be “divide and rule” all the way by the MC as long as the economy stays sick.

It’s not hard to follow the Military Council’s cynical propaganda plotting in all this since 2003.

Their coup history and their refusal to re-install the then-elected Government post-2000 meant that they had badly alienated the Indo-Fijian population by that time. On the other hand, their handling of the 2000 coup and its aftermath, also alienated a significant chunk of the Fijian population.

So when Frank decided in 2001 that he was going to remove Qarase, the first problem he had to deal with was the military’s political isolation from most Indo-Fijians and many conservative Fijians.

No problem! A change of political persuasion is a cinch for someone who has no real political convictions (or whose ethics extend only to “ends-justify-the-means”). People like Poseci Bune, Jim Ah Koy, Kavekini Navuso, Epeli Ganilau and the late Isireli Vuibau do it all the time when there are opportunities to be had.

So the military leadership re-invented itself politically, and all of a sudden we started hearing strident political statements from Frank about a host of nameless and obscure “national security” dangers related to certain Government policies which nobody else could really perceive or appreciate. These public shenanigans carried on sporadically for years, damaging economic confidence and the military’s professional reputation, but also slowly “turning” its PR fortunes amongst its former political enemies amongst the Indo-Fijian electorate.

By November 2003, the Indo-Fijian electorate had almost entirely “fallen” for the military’s propaganda campaign designed to woo them. Additionally, the internal purge and sidelining of possible opponents in the officer corps was complete by then, too.

Now all they needed for their coup was to either neutralize Fijian opposition, or possibly even recruit Fijian support.

Time for a new propaganda façade then!

And so after almost four years of public military attacks on the Government of the day that related almost exclusively to national security concerns, all of a sudden we started hearing about the anti-corruption “clean up” and nearly nothing else.

Let me just re-state here that the clean-up theme was chosen solely because of its propaganda value to the military. Not because they really cared about clean-up, but simply because that is what they calculated was their best chance of getting Fijian support after having already “pocketed” the support of the majority of the Indo-Fijian electorate.

That “clean up” propaganda campaign theme continued unabated until just recently – the military leadership sticking doggedly to it despite being unable to turn up any “smoking gun” evidence of corruption against any member of the ousted Government. Again, they could ignore reality like that because their original decision was entirely a propaganda policy one which had nothing to do with reality, or of what they actually thought about it!

Well, not that this mattered because the expected backlash from the Fijian community never eventuated anyway. And besides, now they had a new and greater problem – the International community!

So, you guessed it – time for another propaganda re-invention! This time, their coup message was re-engineered to the egalitarian and anti-racist “tastes” of the Diplomatic Corps in an effort to “gloss over” the illegality of the coup and garner international support regardless. And so yet again, the public of Fiji suddenly started hearing a new propaganda emphasis from the IG/MC – this time a “non racial” one which had only ever been mentioned in passing prior to that.

Frank’s speech to the UN was a classic example. It was well-written and noble and would have been well-received at home if it had even the tiniest connection what actually transpired in Fiji over recent years (or with the actual major motivations of the MC/IG). However as I said before, these political re-inventions have more to do with the military imperatives for the “success of the coup mission” (and staying out of jail) than they do with what these people actually believe.

Despite the very clear cynicism in the military council’s contrived propaganda artifices, such “spin doctoring” is not unusual in politics. What is unusual though, is the bald-faced audacity of trying and spin their way out of such blatant crimes as treason, murder, torture and wrongful-dismissal, etc. Intelligent people in Fiji and abroad do not appreciate having to put up with such horror in the first place, let alone the insult of dimwit military propaganda conspirators telling them brazen and shameless lies that a coup is not a coup!

Keeping the Peace Abroad? Try and Make Peace At Home First!!

This contribution from a blogger who goes by the name of YB, thank you very much YB for spotting this article in the Economist and the subsequent reply by the United Nations Under Secrtary General for Peace Keeping Operations. In the article the author goes on to describe the problems that befall our country due to the presence of an unecessarily bloated National Army. Read on and see the UNSGPKO response at the bottom and judge for yourself whether it is necessary for us to have an Army.

Fiji
The utility of peacekeeping
Sep 27th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Without it, the army would be less prone to coup-making
FRANK BAINIMARAMA, Fiji’s army commander and coup leader, was in New York this week to boast to the United Nations General Assembly about his eight-month-old government’s achievements. Now serving as interim prime minister, he has good reason to be grateful to the UN. In the days before he seized power on December 5th, Kofi Annan, then the secretary-general, raised questions about the future involvement of Fiji’s soldiers in UN peacekeeping operations. But under Mr Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-moon, blue-helmeted Fijian soldiers are still being flown to the world’s trouble-spots.
Without peacekeeping missions overseas, it is unlikely that Fiji’s army would ever have become strong enough to seize power. When the British left in 1970, there were only around 200 serving military personnel. UN peacekeeping operations in Lebanon and Sinai generated a tenfold increase by 1986. The next year, Fiji witnessed its first military coup. Some 20,000-25,000 Fijians have been deployed on UN missions since independence—a lot for a country of fewer than 1m.
Peacekeeping has also provided an escape-route for disgruntled senior officers. In May 2000 Fiji saw its second coup, led by a civilian, George Speight, but backed by a faction from an elite army squadron. Other senior officers, including Viliame Seruvakula and Filipo Tarakinikini, rallied troops against Mr Speight and defeated that coup. But both men then fell out with Commodore Bainamarama. They enlisted with the UN. Much of the senior, often Sandhurst-educated, officer corps left or were dismissed from Fiji’s armed forces after 2000, enabling Commodore Bainimarama, a naval officer who has served with the UN in Sinai, to promote his own placemen. (Even these loyal officers have been redeployed since the latest coup, to senior positions in the civil service.)
The UN does not prohibit successful coup-leaders from attending its meetings, and the commander’s New York trip is a chance to improve his regime’s standing. Suspended by the Commonwealth and under scrutiny by the European Union, his government responded by agreeing to establish a clear timetable for fresh elections.
That was cast in doubt, however, by the reimposition of emergency regulations on September 6th, by the continued suppression of dissent, and by a statement from the shadowy Military Council that the deposed governing party will not be allowed to contest future polls. The commander recently said that politicians were “not ready” to run the country. As a result, Fiji risks losing around $254m in promised EU aid, badly needed at a time when tourist numbers are declining, the gold industry has collapsed and the country’s main export industry, sugar, has stagnated.
All of which gives even greater importance to peacekeeping. Remittances from peacekeepers now make up a big chunk of Fiji’s foreign-exchange earnings. And with the demand for their services growing, there is understandable reluctance to limit recruitment. Yet in Fiji, as in Nepal and Bangladesh, two other big contributors to UN peacekeeping, keeping the peace abroad has big repercussions at home.

And Mr. Jean-Marie Guéhenno’s ,the Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, response.

14:08 GMT +00:00
The Utility of Peacekeeping, September 27th
SIR—

Your article inaccurately implies that service with UN peacekeeping forces encourages an attitude of impunity and exceptionalism within national military structures. In fact, the opposite is true. Troops from all over the world serve within UN operations with honour, courage and distinction, far from their home soil, helping to nurture a fragile peace and provide breathing room for a viable political process to take hold. Service with UN peacekeeping also provides other benefits, exposing militaries to key international norms and standards including human rights training, gender parity, support for elections and a doctrine of civilian control. This is not to argue that the role of national armies in politics is unimportant, however your article misses a wider point: UN peacekeepers provide an unique and intrinsically positive contribution to the maintenance of international peace and stability.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations
United Nations
New York

Fuggedaboutit has this to say to Mr Jean-Marie Guéhenno. While I do believe that the majority of UN Soldiers have most probably served with disticntion, honour and valour in war torn areas and have nurtured peacekeeping intiatives, I think that it is hypocritical of the UN to employ an armed force that has acted in defiance of the democratic principles that the UN is meant to embody.

It’s simply a matter of practice what you preach, the former UN secretary General Kofi Annan had the right idea. This was when he informed the Coup Monger, Frank Bainimarama, that the UN would have to look at the Fiji Military Forces role in future peacekeeping operations if he persisted with carrying out his threat to remove the SDL Government.

Unfortunately we have seen what happened when the UN did nothing and Annan’s successor Ban Ki Moon still allowed the FMF to participate in UN Peacekeeping missions. By not cutting off one of the lifelines to this Interim Regime’s jugular veins they have allowed them to stay in power a little longer…. but the the Army Command and Interim Regimes’ actions will lead to their own demise, people are seeing through their lies each day.