Waiting for a road map

The Commonwealth will like to wait until a road map - towards restoration of democracy - is properly delineated by Fijian authorities, says P. S. SURYANARAYANA.

THE WHIRLWIND visit to Fiji by a high power Commonwealth delegation on June 16 has led to the sketching of a ``rough road map'' towards restoration of democracy in the tiny South Pacific state. Reflecting these sentiments, the Australian Foreign Minister, Mr. Alexander Downer, indicated in Suva, capital of the country, that the Commonwealth would like to ``wait'' until the road map was delineated properly by the Fijian authorities before the multilaral organisation or its key members with a vital stake in Fiji, such as Canberra, fashioned new ways of addressing the political puzzle.

Asked whether the road map as now proposed by the military ruler, Commodore Bainimarama, in his conversations with the Commonwealth delegation would mark a return to multiracial politics with a fair deal for the ethnic Indian and other minorities, Mr. Downer said the present ruler appeared ``committed to the general principles'' of a multicultural polity. The ``proof of the pudding is in the eating,'' Mr. Downer emphasised, though.

The leader of the Commonwealth delegation, Mr. Musa Hitam of Malaysia, and the other key members including the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Mr. Phil Goff, too expressed a general satisfaction with the indications dropped by Cmdr. Bainimarama. These included the setting in motion of sequential steps with an intensified effort by the Fijian authorities to secure the release of the political hostages - the now-deposed but duly- elected Prime Minister, Mr. Mahendra Pal Chaudhry, and 30 of his associates of indigenous population. The ordeal of the captivess, being held by Mr. George Speight - a self-styled `civil coup' leader and chief hostage-taker - began on May 19.

Now, Mr. Speight has consistently sought to portray his ``putsch'' as a Fijian version of the old Cromwellian action against British parliamentarians of a bygone era. But neither Cmdr. Bainimarama, who staged a counter-coup on May 29 to try and subdue Mr. Speight, nor indeed the international community has seen his action as anything other than a terrorist outrage. Yet, there is a key difference between the views of Cmdr. Bainimarama and those of the world community, as represented by the Commonwealth in particular. As Fiji's chief power-that-be, Cmdr. Bainimarama is willing to play a game of patience with Mr. Speight, despite the citing of the hostage-release as a prime and immediate objective of the imposition of martial law on May 29. The Commonwealth leaders made it clear, on the other hand, that the international community could not wait indefinitely for the conclusion of the war of attrition between Mr. Speight and Cmdr. Bainimarama.

It is against this background that the Commonwealth team has now tried to accommodate Cmdr. Bainimarama to a considerable extent. The pace of securing the release of the hostages has been left entirely to him Cmdr. Bainimarama, at least for the time being. The reason cited is the complexity of the crisis itself. Fiji is seen by the outside world as a multiracial society where the majority natives and the minority ethnic Indians are not evenly poised in their access to the instruments of power except in a demographic sense. In recognition, the Commonwealth team has clarified that there is no question of external intervention, even of the diplomatic kind, to force Mr. Speight to let his hostages go free and accept the clemency and immunity from prosecution that Cmdr. Bainimarama repeatedly offered in recent weeks.

Not surprisingly, the Commonwealth team took enormous care on June 16 to avoid even the semblance of engaging in a dialogue with Mr. Speight for any purpose.

Two significant pointers came into focus as a result of the Commonwealth's latest mission to Suva. The earlier visit by the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Mr. Don McKinnon, and a U.N. Special Representative, Mr. Sergio de Melo, cannot be compared with the latest one, as they sought to defuse a situation that had not been complicated, as seen from an international perspective, by the military's subsequent intervention. Given this, the first pointer, from the Commonwealth team but not explicitly spelt out at the end of its visit to Suva, is that there is no great urgency to press for a complete suspension of Fiji from this multilateral forum at the present moment. The option is, of course, kept open by the caveat that there is room still for considering substantive sanctions, as distinct from the current suspension of Fiji from the Commonwealth's decision- making councils decided upon recently. The reckoner will be the pace at which Mr. Banimarama delineates the ``road map'' to democracy.

The second and no less significance pointer is that the Commonwealth leaders, Mr. Downer in particular, have conveyed to the military rulers that the timeframe of two years, as spelt out by Cmdr. Bainimarama in his latest conversations with them, is being deemed too long a wait. The point made by the Commonwealth is that the patience of those who voted Mr. Chaudhry to power at the head of a coalition in a democratic poll last year cannot be taken for granted.

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