Democracy by the gun - Channel Nine transcript
Title -- 4938 FIJI: Democracy by the gun - Nine transcript
Date -- 12 May 2006
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- Channel Nine's Sunday (Aust), via mosesewaqa@yahoo.com.au 7/5/6
Copyright - Nine
Status -- Unabridged
Post a comment on PMW's Right of Reply: www.voy.com/166636/
FIJI - DEMOCRACY BY THE GUN
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_1979.asp
Reporter: Graham Davis
SYDNEY: (Nine Sunday/Pacific Media Watch): Regional concern about the so-called arc of instability around Australia switches from the Solomons to Fiji this weekend as the country goes to the polls with renewed fears about the possibility of a coup.
Open verbal warfare has escalated between the military chief, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, and Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.
In an interview with Sunday, Bainimarama brands the Prime Minister a liar and expresses a preference for his main opponent in the election, Indo-Fijian Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry.
The military chief is enraged that in a speech last weekend, the Prime Minister said there was no guarantee that the coups of 1987 and 2000 wouldn't be repeated.
In a Sunday investigation, reporter Graham Davis sheds new light on the shadowy instigators of the 2000 coup, led by renegade businessman George Speight. He talks to one of the chief conspirators, Maciu Navakasuasua, who points the finger at some of Fiji's most prominent politicians and businessmen:
TRANSCRIPT
GRAHAM DAVIS: The so-called arc of instability around Australia includes places that can be very pleasant when things are stable, and nowhere more so than Fiji. It was once dubbed "the way the world should be" until the rest of the world decided some things here were best avoided.
The coup in 2000 and a subsequent mutiny in the ranks of the army were so traumatic they've left a permanent scar on the national consciousness. It was Fiji's third coup in 13 years and the bloodiest. And as the nation goes to the polls this weekend, the spectre of a re-run haunts all but the most venal and opportunistic of its 900,000 citizens.
Last weekend, Fiji?s Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase stunned the nation by saying there was no guarantee the events of 1987 and 2000 wouldn't be repeated. He later claimed to have been misquoted but while the cameras weren't there, a radio reporter was and what the Prime Minister said is unmistakable.
LAISENIA QARASE, FIJI PRIME MINISTER: It was the failure of the leadership of the Labour Party at that time that contributed to the upheavals we had. There is no guarantee that they will lead our country peacefully into the future. We must have our properties and our homes protected.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Those comments enraged military chief Commodore Frank Bainimarama, so much so that he threatened to jail the Prime Minister for incitement.
He'd already led his troops through the streets of Suva last month in a none-too-subtle demonstration of who's really boss in Fiji. Many thought a coup was already underway? the military chief said he and his men were just out for a stroll.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: We thought we'd come out in public and do what militaries are supposed to do and take long walks but at the same time assure the people of Fiji that the military is always around to protect them.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But this was a definite show of force in the continuing battle between the military and the government over the Prime Minister's desire to pardon those involved in the events of 2000.
Bainimarama says that will only happen over his dead body and after Qarase's coup comments on the weekend, the gloves are well and truly off.
When he says there's no guarantee there won't be another coup, what do you make of that as head of the military?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: I see that as a threat, I really think the Commissioner of Police should do something about that statement. He shouldn't be doing this.
GRAHAM DAVIS: He's a liar?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: He is a liar and he's done this continually from Day One. He's lied to the people of Fiji by telling them that after being nominated as Prime Minister he will do the right thing. He did exactly the opposite. He went 180 degrees the other way round.
GRAHAM DAVIS: As the military chief tells it, there will be no more coups in Fiji whatever anyone says, the PM included.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: We have determined that there will be no coup, if there is any thought of anyone coming up with any coup making in the next election, they will have to be ready to face the consequences.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And singing from the same song sheet is Fiji's Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes, the former Australian Federal Police officer Canberra provided to help Fiji get back on its feet.
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: We're not going to allow some radical elements who decided they don't like the outcome of the democratic process and they're going to take the law into their own hands and change it, no that's not going to happen.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Andrew Hughes is an outsider caught between a rock and a hard place - the rock? Australia's support for the Qarase Government - the hard place? the sure knowledge that in this quarrel, Bainimarama is right.
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: If you look at this and then you try to overlay the way it works in Australia, this would be bizarre to have a military commander being quite outspoken at times about the government and the policies of the government, very unusual, it would be unthinkable, but in Fiji the role of the military and certainly the way the military themselves see their role, edit, that it is the well being of the people that is part of their mandate.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In his meetings with Bainimarama, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer keeps telling him to stay out of politics &Mac247; what you'd expect him to say in the Australian context but which falls on deaf ears.
Do you think he understands the complexity of things here?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: I don't think he understands.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Does that make you annoyed?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Well yes, in a way, for someone from outside to come and tell me that I should refrain from doing what is best for this nation, I think I should be annoyed.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And those Australians who've been on the ground in Fiji can sympathise, for a quietly acquiescent military on the Australian model simply doesn't address the current reality in Fiji.
PETER RIDGEWAY, FORMER FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: I think to the extent that Frank is saying to the Government and people of Fiji coups are wrong, coups destroy lives, coups destroy economies he's absolutely right.
GRAHAM DAVIS: That message was never more needed than now, for something extraordinary is happening in Fiji. The elements that produced the 2000 coup are again coalescing in this election. Indigenous extremists pitted against an Indo-Fijian they say they will never tolerate as Prime Minister.
Even the indigenous extremists are conceding that the man most likely to emerge as Prime Minister this time is the man they deposed last time, the Indo--Fijian Mahendra Chaudhry. They're again determined that his reign will be brief. The big difference this time is a military commander equally determined to enforce democracy with the gun.
The Nationalists are saying they will never accept an Indian Prime Minister.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: That's what the Nationalist said.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Will you accept an Indian Prime Minister?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: We will accept anyone, we don't fear anything from the Labour.
GRAHAM DAVIS: On the contrary, Bainimarama expresses a preference for Labour.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Let me tell you that anyone can be a better Prime Minister than what we have had in the last five years.
GRAHAM DAVIS: For his part, Mahendra Chaudhry returns the compliment.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: I think Commodore Bainimara has a very hard job, it's a hard job but he's a brave man and he' trying to get the country back on track you know, on a stable footing. Australian should understand where Commodore Bainimarama is coming from. We all want law and order in this country, we cannot have a coup, we cannot have terrorists running this country.
GRAHAM DAVIS: To understand what's happening in Fiji, one needs to grasp a simple fact. That for all the talk of Fijian fears of being dominated by the Indians the British brought to work here in the mid 1800s, Indians are merely scapegoats for a power struggle between the Fijians themselves.
The three coups were essentially triggered by shadowy groups of elite Fijians lunging for the spoils of power, their poorly educated kin hoodwinked into blind support. That's certainly what happened in 2000, the renegade businessman George Speight masking his own ambition by telling the world it was all about Indians threatening the Fijian way of life.
GEORGE SPEIGHT: We don't eat the same food.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Speight's particular target at the time was Mahendra Chaudhry, who endured 56 days of captivity in the nation's parliament with much of his cabinet.
He did so with dignity and courage, helping to convince many that he more than deserves the top job.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: They threatened to kill me and I said 'you can go ahead and do it but I'm not resigning' and then they tried to intimidate me, to terrify me and you know, to get me to submit but, I'm made of stronger stuff than that.
GEORGE SPEIGHT: He was roughed up twice, I have to confirm that, but beaten in the sense of what that term suggests, definitely not.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: Yes, they damaged this knee, I had to get surgery done on it in Australia a year later and there was also a cracked rib on the left hand side.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You were the democratically elected Prime Minister of Fiji and you were beaten by a mob of thugs?
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: Yes.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Thanks to Bainimarama, in the end, Speight lost the military and police didn't join the uprising. He was captured, brought to trial and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason.
Yet while he languishes like Napoleon on the small island of Nukulau off Suva, the true story behind the coup has never been told. Until now.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Now you were one of the chief conspirators weren't you?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Yes, Graham.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In fact, you recruited George Speight.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: A day before the takeover.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Today, the remarkable story of Maciu Navakasuasua, convicted bomber and hostage taker, speaking out from the relative safety of Australia, where he's seeking refuge.
He spent three years in jail for his role in the events of 2000 and is now breaking a six year cone of silence to reveal what really happened.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: George Speight, he didn't know anything. He just came in at the 11th hour.
GRAHAM DAVIS: He was the fall guy, is that what you're saying?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Yes, to be our mouthpiece, to be our leader on that special, specific appointed time
GRAHAM DAVIS: So you're saying the whales got away and the sardine ended up in the can?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Yes. Definitely, yes.
ILIESA DUVULOCO: Not all laws are right, not all laws are correct, some laws are wrong.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In the heart of Speight territory in Tailevu, we confront the man Maciu Navakasuasua maintains was the biggest whale of all.
He's Iliesa Duvuloco, a vocal indigenous activist and leader of the Nationalist Party. Having served time for a relatively minor role in the 2000 coup, Duvuloco's now free and is contesting this election with the same strident message against the Indians.
GRAHAM DAVIS: I've been told you were the mastermind of the coup.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: Of the coup?
GRAHAM DAVIS: Yeah.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: Well the investigation is not over, that's what everybody is blaming me, especially the commander.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Were you the mastermind of the 2000 coup?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: I don't believe so.
GRAHAM DAVIS: On all counts, Duvuloco's denials are less than emphatic.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Did you tell Navakasuasua to recruit George Speight?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: Navakasuasua came later.
GRAHAM DAVIS: He says that on the morning of the coup on May 19th he came to your place and George Speight was there?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: On the morning of the coup?
GRAHAM DAVIS: Yeah.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: I can't recall.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Were you the coup mastermind?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: No, no I don't think so.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But emphatic about Duvuloco's guilt isn't just Maciu Navkasuasua but the man Australia sent to prosecute the coup leaders.
Peter Ridgeway went to Fiji as deputy director of Public Prosecutions with the specific brief to track down the conspirators but was expelled last year when he evidently got too close.
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: A leading figure, a dominant figure, in the genisis of it was Iliesa Duvuloco.
GRAHAM DAVIS: The leader of the Nationalist Party?
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: The leader of the Nationalist Party. He was was vocal, vigorous, he was one of the organisers, the dominant figure in the execution of the coup.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Two of Fiji's most prominent indigenous businessmen have now been dragged into these allegations. The first is Watisoni Nata, who heads the Strategic Air Service company at Nadi Airport. The second is Navitalai Naisoro, the head of Western Union in Fiji and a close advisor to Prime Minister Qarase.
You absolutely swear that they were behind the 2000 coup?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: This is the truth Graham I was there, I've been there, done it and these people were with me all along.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In Fiji, Navakasuasua's account is being taken seriously, so much so that Nata and Naisoro were last week taken in for questioning by the police.
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: They've been interviewed and in due course we will be presenting to the DPP our brief of evidence and he will adjudicate on the quality of the evidence and charges may arise from that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Nata and Naisoro have yet to make public statements on these allegations. Although Navaksuasua has given the police a statement, he isn't keen to return to Fiji.
For he's been told that Navitalai Naisoro has made a specific threat against his life. The allegation has come from another of the coup conspirators, Jo Waqabaca who, in the topsy turvy manner of Fiji politics is now an election candidate for Mahendra Chaudhry, the man he once held hostage.
JO WAQABACA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Navitalai Naisoro, he told me that Matthew, the moment he lands in Fiji, he's got a gang ready to slit his throat.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you think he would be killed if he comes back?
JO WAQABACA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Yes, definitely.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Well he has information that could take a lot of people down and because of that information he is a threat to a lot of people, the opportunists.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Would they kill him?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: I can't say that but he would certainly be a threat and they would go all out to ensure that he doesn't continue with his stories.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What undoubtedly places Maciu Navakasuasua most at risk is his remarkable account of the complicity in the 2000 uprising of politicians who are still at the centre of Government?cabinet ministers in the current Qarase administration.
Some of them, like the Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation have already served prison terms for coup related activities. But today, the finger is pointed at new faces. The Minister for Fisheries and Forests and the Minister for Works and Energy.
Then, fresh allegations against the former military spokesman now working for the UN in the Middle East, and most intriguing of all, the leader of the 1987 coups and former Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka.
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: It's known that he was a person of interest to our investigators, that's common knowledge.
GRAHAM DAVIS: That investigation's proceeding?
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: We're consulting with the DPP on that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: The file's open?
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: Yes
GRAHAM DAVIS: When do you expect the DPP to make a determination?
ANDREW HUGHES, FIJI POLICE COMMISSIONER: Very soon I think.
GRAHAM DAVIS: To understand the full picture of how deep this conspiracy goes, we need to go back to 1999, the year Mahendra Chaudhry first won office.
Were you aware as the chief investigator of the events of 2000 that the year before, in 1999, that the then head of the Nationalists Sakiasi Butadroka had asked Frank Bainimarama to carry out a coup then?
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: No. I wasn't aware of that.
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Yes he did.
GRAHAM DAVIS: He did?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Yes he did. Yes, it was the day after the Labour Government was sworn in and he turned up in my office. It was basically to come and tell me to remove the Chaudhry Government and I said that was not going to happen.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right from the start the Nationalists were intent on dislodging the Chaudhry Government. What hasn't been revealed until now is an extraordinary attempt in 1999, a full year before the Speight Coup to stage a popular uprising under the cover of darkness in the streets of Suva. ..
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: I was assigned to go down to Lami power station in 1999 to blow the big transformer there, the plan was to cause a big blackout to the city of Suva.
GRAHAM DAVIS: As soon as that happened, according to Navaksuasua, a mob would rampage through the streets of the capital causing the kind of damage that would eventually occur a year later.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: That was the plan, to justify the actions of the military to intervene.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So you guys were trying to get the military to intervene by causing mayhem on the streets of Suva?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: That's, that's the plan Graham.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But according to Navaksuasua, he'd been given the wrong information and blew up the wrong transformer.
Who in the military knew about this?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: I was told by Navitalia Naisoro that ah Lieutenant Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini would intervene as soon as we caused that big uprising.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Tarakinikini was the dashing face of the military to the world during the 2000 coup, justifying its decision not to side with Speight. Many in Fiji have wanted to ask him about his precise role in the events of 2000 but he's currently out of reach, working for the United Nations in the Middle East.
Why isn't he back here facing an investigation over this?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: Well, he just doesn't want to come back.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What you've asked him?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: We've told his lawyers that he needs to come back and answer questions and answer charges
GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you think it's strange the UN has given him a job?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: It is, after all our participation in the United Nations peacekeeping areas.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In the Middle East?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: In the Middle east.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And one of your fugitives is over there on the UN payroll?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: That's right.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But as Alice famously said "it gets curiouser and curiouser," not least the alleged involvement in the conspiracy of two current Government ministers who've never been brought to justice.
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: There was later plotting of a coup to occur in April 2000, a month before the May coup.
GRAHAM DAVIS: There was?
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: There was and in that planning, there was discussion of Molotov cocktails being used and thrown around the streets of Suva, the Westpac and ANZ banks being torched in order to bring out street riots and to incite the breakdown of law and order
GRAHAM DAVIS: Around this time, claims Maciu Navakasusua, he saw the current Minister for Fisheries and Forests in the Qarase Government, Konisi Yabaki, at a gathering where coup plans were being discussed.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: I was surprised to see Konisi Yabaki there, I asked Jo Waqabaca about it and Jo Waqabaca said don't worry, he's one of us.
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: I know Konisi Yabaki but in terms of him being linked to these events that's new to me. It's a serious allegation and you certainly can't take that sort of allegation lightly and you'd think now that being appraised of it, the Fiji Police would want to take it on board.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But there's another current member of the Qarase cabinet whose alleged role in 2000 evidently escaped the attention of the deposed chief prosecutor, Savenaca Draunidalo, a former military officer, now Minister for Works and Energy.
Were you aware that Savanaca Draunidalo was actually the Nationalists' choice to carry out the coup before George Speight?
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: No, I wasn't, that's another piece of new information that I find fascinating but it's news to me.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You didn't know that he was told to wait in the Holiday Inn hotel and be summoned to the parliament?
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: No I didn't.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: He's the man, was the man. He was on standby at the time we took over the parliament.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: He was waiting here on the morning of the coup.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And he was to be the mastermind of the whole thing? He was meant to carry it out not George, is that right?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: I don't really know, maybe Suasua has more information.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What happened in the end?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: He decided to leave us because well as soon as he see the march and all the lootings and breaking in of shops in the city, he must have thought no, this is not the right place for me
GRAHAM DAVIS: And he took off?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: He took off so from there, George Speight bulldozed his way in and become leader.
GRAHAM DAVIS: May 19th 2000, the day of the coup, the conspirators gathered at the home of Iliesa Duvuloco, the Nationalist leader.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: I went over to his place, I was surprised to see George Speight sitting there with him. They were talking and I could see George's face, he was worrying about something. And I asked 'what's happening George?' and he said, 'no we can't do this because the boys are drunk, some of the boys are drunk.'
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well was Speight at your house, were some of the boys drunk?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: As I said, you know.
GRAHAM DAVIS: This is what he says.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: Not in my house, there was nobody in my house, I was live in Ragg Avenue, that could be my office because my office is separate.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But by now the die was cast. Drunk or sober, the assault on the parliament began, the mobile phone records speak for themselves.
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: On the day of the coup when Speight and his gunmen entered the parliament, in very short order, they got Chaudhry on his knees, they tied their feet up with gaffer tape, whatever, and Chaudhry was on his knees in front of Speight with a gun at his head and Speight was on the phone, he was on his mobile phone and he made a whole series of phone calls to one number and that was Iliesa Duvuloco's mobile phone, the leader of the Nationalist Party and at the evry time those calls were made, Iliesa Duvuloco and a number of other failed candidates from the 99 election, were holding hands walking down the street in Suva, singing nationalist songs, patriotic war songs and announcing they were going to take over the parliament.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So that march and George Speight entering the parliament were a simultaneous act.
PETER RIDGEWAY FORMER, FIJI DEPUTY PROSECUTOR: Totally simultaneous act, absolutely.
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: Well I'm flattered (laughs) I'm just flattered.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well is it true?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: No no, I was at the march, the march was my?
GRAHAM DAVIS: Were you the coup mastermind?
ILIESA DUVUCOLO, NATIONALIST PARTY: No, no. I don't think so.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Fiji burned that day, 13 years of hard work to recover from the previous coups went up in smoke, justice is yet to be fully served. Yet the man who goes to the polls this week seeking re-election wants to pardon all the coup conspirators, whether convicted or not. To understand why he might want to do so, take a look at this man, Simione Kaitani, so close to George Speight in 2000 he calls for a round of applause. Kaitani was eventually charged with taking an oath of office in Speight's illegal government but was acquitted when there was no video record to prove he'd done so.
In the buildings behind, ministers in a democratically elected government were being held at gunpoint, an Indo- Fijian Prime Minister was being beaten.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: Well, he was very prominent during our incarceration here. I believed him to be you know one of the mob.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Where is Kaitani now? Well, at the right hand of Laisenia Qarase, the current leader. Minister in the Prime Minister's office.
Only Australia, it seems, wonders why the military chief who gave Qarase the job in the first place is so upset.
Have you been tempted to stage a coup yourself?
COMMODORE FRANK BAINIMARAMA, FIJI MILITARY COMMANDER: No I have not but ah throughout the last five years , the military has been the bastion of law and order, ensure that this country remains peaceful and provides security for the people of this nation so we've moved away from that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But if not a coup maker then certainly a ferocious watchdog, determined to enforce the will of the people with the gun.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: The people who have been critical of Commodore Bainimarama must understand where he's coming from.
GRAHAM DAVIS: He's a guarantor of democracy.
MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY, FIJI LABOUR PARTY: If we don't have law and order here we won't have democracy.
GRAHAM DAVIS: As we've seen, many of the big fish in Fiji seem to have got away, leaving the small ones caught in the net. George Speight must rue the day he allowed himself to become the biggest catch. So it comes as no surprise to learn of a sea change on the part of the stooge with the swagger doing life for bringing Fiji to its knees.
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: One day he called me, 'Mat just come, I want to tell you something, I regret what I've done, what we did was wrong.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Speight told you that?
MACIU NAVAKASUASUA, 2000 COUP CONSPIRATOR: Speight told me.
GRAHAM DAVIS: At senior level, the military and police in Fiji are united in their determination that the country's coup culture will finally be broken. But regrettably for everyone, that doesn't guarantee there won't be trouble in the days and weeks ahead.
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