‘Democracy’ – one word that doesn’t apply to Fiji

Fiji President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau visited the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau recently as part of a Pacific-region tour in which he expects to visit all island nations in the lead up to Fiji’s scheduled national election in September.

One of the outstanding elements of his visit to Majuro was the time he spent speaking to hundreds of high school students at the country’s largest public high school about HIV/AIDS awareness. To have a person of the President’s stature communicating on an important health issue brings a higher level of interest from those listening.

The visit also gave the government the opportunity to take another stab at encouraging Fiji to authorise landing rights by Air Marshall Islands/Our Airline to directly link Majuro and Tarawa in the north Pacific with Fiji in the south.

Fiji has worked diplomatically to gain support of countries in the region for its election process, and to successfully get countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which have maintained punitive sanctions on Fiji, to lift them in light of the move toward an elected parliament.

It is interesting to look at Fiji’s upcoming elections through the lens of north Pacific nations and leaders, whose constitutions contain bills of rights that mirror—and in the case of the Marshall Islands are more explicit than—the Constitution of the United States, the world standard for democracy and individual rights. By these north Pacific constitutional standards, Fiji is not operating as a democracy in the lead up to the September election.

The media has been tightly controlled since soon after Rear Admiral Voreqe Bainimarama’s coup in 2006.

‘Since 2009, the Fiji regime’s decrees, public stance and prosecutions of media owners, publishers and editors, have effectively prevented the media from being a ‘watch-dog’ on government,’ wrote Prof. Waden Narsey in 2013. ‘Some media organisations are now largely propaganda arms for the regime.’

Fiji leadership is blunt about restricting the rights of its media and citizens to engage in election debate and discussion. The Fiji government Media Industry Development Authority recently demanded a retraction from Sean Dorney, Radio Australia’s Pacific Correspondent, who at a recent Pacific media conference observed that the Fiji media isn’t very free. The fact that Dorney and New Zealand journalists Michael Field and Barbara Dreaver are banned from visiting Fiji tells us how free journalists are to report on Fiji issues.

Consider also a military decree issued earlier this year for the election that states: ‘Following the announcement of the date of the election, it shall be unlawful for any person, entity or organisation (including any person employed or engaged by any such person, entity or organisation) that receives any funding or assistance from a foreign government, inter-governmental or non-governmental organisation or multilateral agency to engage in, participate in or conduct any campaign (including organising debates, public forum, meetings, interviews, panel discussions, or publishing any material) that is related to the election or any election issue or matter.’

Such a decree affects not only special interest non-government organisations, but educational institutions such as the University of the South Pacific, which offer meetings (classes) on a daily basis that would by their nature discuss current events, which obviously would include the election. Such routine discussion in classrooms could easily run afoul of Fiji’s regime, placing teachers, administrators and students in danger of arrest or fines, to say nothing of any specially organised debate or forum on the election.

Yet a debate or public forum is a hallmark of any free country that engages in elections and debates on the issues of the day.

Contrast that with the lead up to the Marshall Islands’ national election in 2011, when the College of the Marshall Islands joined others in sponsoring a free-wheeling debate among candidates on the college’s campus. By Fiji’s restrictive decree, which includes penalties of a fine up to $50,000 or 10 years in jail, the College of the Marshall Islands could not have sponsored its candidate debate without being subject to heavy penalty.

It is worth quoting the bills of rights from each of the three north Pacific constitutions:

• The FSM Constitution is short and to the point: ‘No law may deny or impair freedom of expression, peaceable assembly, association, or petition.’

• The Palau Constitution states, in part: ‘The government shall take no action to deny or impair the freedom of conscience or of philosophical or religious belief of any person…to deny or impair the freedom of expression or press…to deny or impair the right of any person to peacefully assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances…’

The Marshall Islands bill of rights was similarly enacted, spelling out clearly: ‘Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and belief; to freedom of speech and of the press; to the free exercise of religion; to freedom of peaceful assembly and association; and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.’

This section makes the important point that, while the government may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of conduct of peaceful assembly, any such restrictions cannot ‘penalise conduct on the basis of disagreement with the ideas or beliefs expressed.’

Sometimes democratic rights of free speech and media run counter to traditional customs in the islands that put a premium on maintaining superficial equilibrium and discouraging confrontational activity. This is an underlying and continuous source of friction in island societies that have adopted modern constitutions while maintaining and honoring their traditional leaders and centuries old traditions.

But these constitutional freedoms are an obvious necessity for democracy to flourish in countries with modern economies and with governments making decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars in donor aid and national revenue. My observation from visiting and living in the north Pacific for close to 40 years is that people have come to appreciate both the personal freedom their constitutions provide and the rules of governance they enshrine.

While the Marshall Islands has particular interests it is pushing as leadership cozies up to Fiji, and the FSM and Palau may also have national interests at stake in dealing with Fiji, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, while it is indeed welcome that Fiji has finally made the decision to hold an election, its continued muzzling of media and now NGOs in the lead up to the vote is indicative of the lack of democracy prevailing in our South Pacific neighbour.