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Shallow Coups, Thin Democracy?

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Shallow Coups, Thin Democracy? Shallow Coups, Thin Democracy? Constitutionalism in Fiji, 1987-1999 Scott Ma cWiLliam Abstract The COli duct and outcome of the May 1999 general election in Fiji, the first after the adoption of a new Constitution, were widely regarded as a substantial achievement. Praise for the return to democracy, involving the overth row of 1I govemmellt installed under the terms of an earlier 'racist' constitution, took 0/1 a triumphafist air. But, as this essay proposes, th ere is a need to examine //lore deeply the character of the constitutional reform and the subsequent election. Only by misinterpreting and exaggerating the substance of th e earlier 1987 coups and th eir effects was it possible to claim that the 1997 Constitution represented a fU/ldamental trallsformation in the institutional framework of Fiji's political economy. In stead, this Constitution as well as the 1999 election lIlId the government formed afterwa rds should be understood as con.tinuin.g /!lpressiol1s of the thin, militarised democracy that post-colonial Fiji had hecol1le. Th" jO/ll"/l{/1 oj Pacific St/ldies, Voll/me 25,/10. 1,2001, 9-44 ([) bl'lPlIcS Editorial Board (SSED, USP) 9 10 The Journal of Pacific Studies Vol. 25 110.1 , 2001 Introduction The May 1999 national elections in Fiji have been generally regarded as further substantial vindication of the country's new Constitution. Given th the 1997 adoption of this document was itself regarded as a major politic advance, signalling a return to democracy, it is perhaps un surprising that there has been acontinuing widespread mood of triumphal ism underpinning analysis of the election. Not only was it conducted under 'the best constitution Fiji ever had' (Lal 1999: 4), an improvement even beyond the Independence constitution. The election outcome, in which the sitting government was overthrown, also demonstrated: Fiji's genius [in being able] to take stock of its assets, chart a new course, and reposition itself to meet new challenges and opportunities. It has survived a change of government, the ultimate test of a democracy. Perhaps the Labour victory is a continuation of a the [sic] trend which brought it to power in 1987, witnessing a transition from a politics of race to a politics geared to human needs. Perhaps we are witnessing the first signs of the dismantling of old structures and habits of thoughts that had kept Fiji divided into ethnic compartments for so long. Perhaps it is a time to hope again. (La I 1999: 34) While the 1997 Constitution does not deal only with electoral arrangements for securing parliamentary representation, and the means of tying legislati ve to executive authority, nevertheless attention has been focused almost entirely on the electoral features of the new arrangements.' As yet, the case for the country having undergone 'a remarkable transformation' (Lal 1999: 34) has been made to rest very heavily on the conduct of one election. This paper is intended as a brief evaluation of the character of the transformation that has occurred under the rubric of constitutional and electoral reform,2with furtherexamination being undertaken in research-in-progress. There is some irony in the proposition that the successful conduct of just one election under a new constitution should be regarded unquestioningly as a sufficient indicator of democratic advance. The irony arises from the fact that during the 1990s, outside the South Pacific and Fiji, there has been a prolonged examination of a related proposition when applied more Shallow coups, thill democracy? II to a large number of countries and after successi ve elections. The gener ally , . 'ty even primacy, of elections was the central theme of Samuel centra II , H ntington 'S early 1990s depiction of the wave-like advance of democracy l~ballY (Huntington 1993). Even from the outset this depiction was g ali fied by his admission that uti lising elections as the defining criterion of ~~mocracy produced a minimalist account. The minimalist character of the m hasis upon elections is now widely recognised and dissatisfaction with eP h 'd .. f . uch 'thin' democracy a constant t eme In escnpllons 0 many countnes, including the United States of America itself. According to Huntington, the most recent of these waves, the third, commenced in Portugal on 25 April 1974 when a coup led by young officers of the Movimento das Forcas Armadas (MFA) overthrew the long running alazar-Caetano dictatorship. By his reckoning, during 'the following fifteen years this democratic wave became global in scope; about thirty countries shi fted from authoritarianism to democracy, and at least a score of other countries were affected b.y the democratic wave' (Huntington 1993: 5). While allowi ng that there are signs the third wave may be running out of momentum, Huntington expressly foreshadows a subsequent fourth wave, as ifelectoral democracy is an almost irresistible tide in global affairs. Huntington's history and prognosis have been subject to extended and widespread criticism, though-perhaps typically-this influential if controversial view and its concerns do not seem to have been brought into accounts of South Pacific countries.' For some of the critics, confining democracy to the changing of governments by elections, however free and fair, has seemed excessively reductionist (Schmitter 1995; Diamond 1996, 1997; Linz & Stepan 1997; Hadenius ed. 1997). This largely liberal unease ha ' been extended to trying to explain what it is about contemporary cxi ·tence that forces even conservatives, including Huntington, to defend democracy in such minimalist terms. Robert Putnam tries to provide a parlial explanation with an account that in the USA at least there has been a reduction in 'participant citizenry' (Putnam 1997: 27-70) of the type highly regarded by Alexis de Tocqueville. Implicitly, because of the reduction in other forms of political participation, voting gains an increased Significance as a political act, even though voting, at least in national elections, has been a declining activity for adults in the USA. For the USA 12 Th e lournal of Pacific Studies Vol. 25 /l 0. 1, 2001 again, there has also been a renewed emphasis upon the 'growing crisis of American democracy', a crisis that has been linked to 'the constitutional stranglehold' impeding democratic reform (Lazare 1998; Lind 1999; Lazare 1999). In order to extend debate about constitutional reform and the 1999 election in Fiji, this paper questions the predominant wisdom through the lens provided by the category of militarised democracy. This democratic form is especially ' thin', part of a global movement that has had, in Diamond's words, 'greater breadth than depth' for 'outside of the wealthy industrialized nations it tends to be shallow, illiberal and poorly institutionalized' (1997: xv). The category is employed initially to examine the character of the 1987 coups. The shallowness of the first coup-led by the third-ranking officer in the Fiji armed forces, Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka and carried out in a manner designed to preserve lives and private property-did not lie primarily in its relatively peaceful character, with few if any lives lost (Dean & Ritova 1988; Scarr 1988). Rather, the shallowness of the May coup and the subsequent September intensi fied military intervention is declared by its proclaimed purpose, as well as by the speedy manner in which constitutional reform was reasserted as a principal objecti ve of all the contending parties.4 The initial purpose was transparent: to preserve, even reinstate, an imagi ned prior social order against the perceived threat posed by the newly elected Coalition (Labour Party-National Federation Party) Government. That is, the coup was driven by radical conservatism. Subsequently, in the second military intervention carried out four months later to overturn the Deuba Accord, a similarly conservative character remained, even though it was dressed up in a new disguise, republicanism. Yet almost from the outset, between May and September, moves were already afoot to undermine the initial direction of the radical conservatives and to reassert liberal constitutionalism as the principal ideological thrust. Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, long-serving pre- and post-coup Prime Minister and subsequently Fiji's President, has noted, in his partly autobiographical account, one consequence of the coups. They made possible what had not been carried out previously in terms of reduci ng union capacities, pri vatising state activities and shifting the balance of class power even further against labour (Mara 1997: 181 ). Shallow coups, (hill democracy? / 3 That is , the coups prepared the ground for what has been regarded elsewhere as a typica.l n~oliberal reform agen~a of the period. The fact that this radical 'right Wing e~on~ml~ a,nd politIcal agenda continued to be sociated with a conservatIve socIal drive only served to demonstrate the ~ypicality of the moment in Fiji . Governments h~aded by Britain's former rime minister Margaret Thatcher, US ex-presIdent Ronald Reagan and present Australian prime minister John Howard have each, at separate ~oments over the last two decades, aligned economic radicalism­ sometimes dubbed neoliberalism and social conservatism-in their political agendas. The second section of the paper deals with the part played by militarised olitics in securing constitutional reform, of both the 1990 and 1997 ~arieties. Contrary to the frequent suggestion that these reforms-particularly the second, the 1997 Constitution-led away from
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