New statute to cover 'all Fijians'

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SUVA, JUNE 17. Fiji's interim military Government today pledged to uphold its moral obligation of taking into consideration the interests of all the people in this country while continuing to sympathise with the cause of the indigenous Fijians so as to ``make sure that their aspirations (and) fears are covered in a (proposed) new Constitution''.

Offering this explicit undertaking in the wake of the interim Government's ``very positive'' interaction with a team of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group here, Col. Tarakinikini, chief spokesman of the military regime, said, ``We cannot surrender the fate of the country to Mr. Speight (the civil coup leader) and his group.''Mr. Speight described the Commonwealth team's visit as a waste of time and gave no indication about his plans regarding the Prime Minister, Mr. Mahendra Pal Chaudhry, and his associates, held captive at the Parliament House since May 19.

As a sop to Mr. Speight and his group, the military government's spokesman said: ``They have made their case. They have stood up for the indigenous Fijians' aspirations. We sympathise with that.'' At the same time, Col. Tarakinikini made it clear that the military regime's first priority still was the ``immediate release of all hostages and the recovery of all weapons'' deployed by Mr. Speight's squad.

Acknowledging that ``we do not have a properly mandated government under democratic process'' at this juncture and noting that ``we took the government by force out of necessity,'' Col. Tarakinikini said, ``We must now look for the next best moral authority, that is, the Great Council of Chiefs'' - the moral- political conscience-keeper of the majority native population. The idea was to ``hand back the executive authority of government to the GCC and to a (new) president'' to be selected. To accomplish this task, the military regime would institute a new civil administration and convene the GCC.

Concurrent with this planned process, which might take at least three months from the date the hostages are released, ``a constitution review team'' would be formed. The proposed review panel might encompass all shades of political opinion in the country, including those of the ethnic Indians and those being articulated by Mr. Speight, it was said.

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