Fiji: A Second Grenada?
Stevenson, Matthew
Matthew Stevenson FIJI: A SECOND GRENADA? There's no hiding that the antinuke, neutralist government overthrown in 1987 was playing directly into the hands of the Soviets and their plans for the...
...But he still faced the opposition of the governor-general, who sought to resolve the crisis within the framework of the existing constitution...
...Indeed Rabuka's speech is not the clipped growl of a Stroessner or Somoza so much as it is an echo of the homilies and allusions to the Lord usually heard on the stump or perhaps in postgame interviews...
...He perceived little respect for the army, and that was sufficient reason to act...
...In the United States, Bavadra made even less headway...
...Little was forthcoming...
...Bavadra wanted to declare Fiji a nonnuclear zone and pursue a foreign policy detached from traditional alliances with New Zealand, Australia, and the United States...
...Ambassador Gen...
...For the United States, his presence invites the suspicion, whether it is deserved or not, that it is prepared to play the Great Game even here, on coral islands better known for their fair weather than their threats to American security...
...He launched an investigation into the financial practices of the previous government...
...In my mind, I wanted two questions answered: Why didn't anyone care about the fall of the Bavadra government...
...In less than a year, Fiji again had the government that had ruled prior to Dr...
...He can arrange everything...
...The picture published the following day shows the money-green and gold airplane, its flaps extended and its wheels down, just above the tree tops...
...After the second coup, it appeared that Rabuka might compromise, if only to keep Fiji a member of the Commonwealth...
...Finally, Dr...
...In the meantime Rabuka secured the cooperation of Ratu Mara to serve in an interim government...
...Instead he believes influence in the coalition government comes from India, which in turn is allied with the Soviet Union, or from Libya, where Labor party officials traveled while in opposition...
...25...
...Such a course was intolerable to the U.S...
...Across the street from the Grand Pacific are the government buildings, including Parliament—which has as its front yard an expansive parade and cricket ground, making the connection between this group of coral islands and the British Empire...
...Rabuka says he intervened to prevent a civil war on Fiji...
...Lastly, he says he intervened to make Fiji a Christian state: "If this land is run by Christians, or Fijians who are Christians, everything will be in place...
...Articles published in Britain and the U.S...
...Bavadra someone with little use for the Great Council of Chiefs, Fiji's traditional ruling bloc...
...His eloquence was appealing, and he raised a simple, telling point: Why had none of the major democracies aided his government when it was overthrown by the military...
...In the eight years of the Reagan presidency, it was the only democracy toppled by a coup...
...But Rabuka would agree to nothing less than Melanesian supremacy, and he led a second coup on September 25 to have his opinion heard...
...ccording to George, the press got the story wrong...
...Primitive cranes had sited long oak trunks in two lines, which gave the foundation the air of a Greek ruin...
...Walters also met with Fiji's third-ranking officer, Lt...
...Bavadra, a Fijian who previously ran the Public Service union...
...The parlor floor would be elevated from the ground...
...But in recent years his rise to power had been checked...
...Bavadra...
...The prime minister and his cabinet were placed under house arrest for a week...
...Other reports mentioned in the film describe some black American troops landing on Fiji several days before the coup...
...It has Sikh temples, mosques, Hindu shrines, Protestant churches—even the Church of the Latter-Day Saints...
...Herman Melville, 7J'pee (1846) rr hree times weekly, an Air Pacific 1 747, with markings the color of a rainbow, lumbers off the runway at Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney and sets a northeast course for the four-hour flight to the Fiji islands...
...They treated their guest to a luncheon and later a display of traditional firewalking—a ritual of penance and cleansing, not another hardship for Indians under the Rabuka government...
...To look back, we have to apportion blame...
...And along the way, he found himself at last promoted, not just to full colonel, but to brigadier and then major-general...
...Fiji had other political points of interest...
...In the days leading to the coup, it appeared as if the islands had as many operatives as honeymooners...
...In one corner of the picture is a palm...
...Ratu Mara had proved a good friend to the West...
...It wasn't a sight I had expected on what had been described as a racially divided island...
...Pacific Command...
...Five days prior to the coup, Rabuka was spotted at Nadi International Airport, chatting with five Americans...
...Bavadra had won other than fairly...
...Having ignored the South Pacific for so long, why would the U.S...
...Nevertheless, the charges were serious...
...He used the Fijian word for chief, rata, to describe Dr...
...Amidst this exemplary record, only Fiji lost its democracy...
...What responsible commander would want to lose calling privileges or landing rights on the largest islands between Hawaii and New Zealand...
...He was convinced that the Australians and the Americans had a hand in overthrowing the Bavadra government...
...At the top of the page is the headline: "Festivity Forbes Style Hits Fiji...
...Perhaps in New Zealand it was local politics that caused the rift in the joint-security agreement, but elsewhere Washington senses invisible red hands behind the agitation to ban nuclear warships...
...Further, covenants assured that Fiji's land would always be controlled by native Fijians, who owned 83 percent of the islands, even though many of Fiji's prominent businessmen are Indian...
...He had a broad, round face and clear, determined eyes...
...How difficult would it be for the U.S...
...After some discussion, Rabuka abruptly suspended the constitution, sacked Ratu Sir Penaia, and named himself head of state...
...We headed back through the late afternoon showers...
...Bavadra...
...Numerous countries—Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador, for example—replaced military rule with free elections...
...outlined the American complicity...
...Some press accounts had described him as a bellicose liberal, determined to push Fiji to the left...
...embassy official in Suva...
...Malcolm Forbes, the owner and publisher of Forbes magazine, made Fiji a port-of-call on his fourteen-nation goodwill tour of the Pacific...
...Or as U.S...
...Navy Admiral Ronald Hayes, commander in chief, Pacific Command, said to Simon Winchester of the Guardian prior to the coup: "Of all the problems that I see arising in the South Pacific in the coming months, the formation of the Fiji Labor party seems the most pressing...
...To the left was the Beqa Passage, a palm-fringed strait like many in the Caribbean...
...Other than Forbes himself, the only celebrities of note were the editor of Architectural Digest and Liz Smith, the gossip columnist, who presumably was the voyage's Darwin...
...Since immortalized as Fiji's declaration of independence, OPORD 1/87 nonetheless reads more like notes for a military briefing than Thomas Jefferson's "On the Rights of Man": • "Our mission is to overthrow the govt...
...Forbes arranged for the Capitalist Tool to fly low over the beach on Laucala...
...I had a number of reasons for wanting to visit Fiji, beyond the obvious wish to touch down in Paradise...
...It could lead to all kinds of instability...
...His strongman persona, however, contrasts with what are obviously streaks of geniality...
...Bavadra would not even consider the notion that racial differences on Fiji had led to the coup...
...No one had ever charged that Dr...
...But his manner was more deferential than I expected, and as we stood watching the men from the village move about the foundation, he spoke about the coup without a trace of rancor...
...Finally that rumor proved unfounded...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 23 siders...
...On the issue of mercenaries participating in the coup he says: "Everybody involved in my coup of 14th of May were people I personally picked and trained . . . no foreigners came into the country to help...
...Our allegiance to the Crown is threatened...
...His involvement with the government was a result of his friendship with Dr...
...George explained that Dr...
...It began in the restaurant and ended in his living room, where we watched an underground video cassette that provided a history of the coup...
...Rabuka feared that Fijians would wind up a minority in their own land, as happened to the Maoris in New Zealand or the aboriginals in Australia...
...At one point in the ceremonies, Mr...
...After his defeat in the April 12 elections, Ratu Mara traveled to Honolulu to meet with the U.S...
...I was the only guest at the Travellers, which was a hotel overlooking Nadi Bay...
...Under those circumstances, it is easy to see how the U.S...
...Rabuka has the look of a mail-order dictator...
...At the time the coup took place, retired American Maj...
...Nor can he understand the opposition from Australia and New Zealand to the coups: "We wanted to strengthen the links with [them] especially, yet they were the first ones to go...
...It's no problem...
...If the local political establishment also wanted Bavadra out, so much the better...
...Forbes added: "We hope to get the word to the rest of the world, particularly our neighbors in the Pacific Basin . . . that the sun shines on Fiji...
...Not often on my trips does Fate intervene so efficiently...
...The U.S...
...Nearby are the thatched roofs of Fijian huts...
...nuclear warships in its ports...
...alone had toppled his government, but U.S...
...I had no introduction, nor did I think he would be as accessible as Dr...
...He joined me toward the end of dinner...
...I had expected a bolder, more stri- .1...
...Fiji's political turmoil continued through summer 1987...
...But race was not the issue that deposed Dr...
...Below this photograph is another showing schoolchildren in native dress, performing what Fijians call meke, which is an epic set to song and dance...
...I didn't think of them as facts so much as articles of faith, similar to what one hears from any such aggrieved party...
...When his papers cleared, he was leaving for New Zealand...
...Indians first came to Fiji in the late nineteenth century as coolies to work in the sugar fields...
...Those were the only things I wanted...
...Rabuka needed little prompting to overthrow Dr...
...He wanted Congress to investigate the charges that the U.S.had played a role in overturning his government...
...An Australian multinational, CSR, controlled the sugar fields, he said...
...Paupe is one of those larger-than-life government figures whose work for AID began in Vietnam in 1967 and continued in South Korea from 1977 to 1981...
...But along the way the passenger list would include Roger Smith, chairman of General Motors, Sadahei Kusumoto, president of Minolta, and the exiled King and Queen of Bulgaria—not to mention Liz Taylor...
...to turn a blind eye if it learned of plans for a coup on a remote Pacific island...
...Certainly it was disturbing to Hindus and Moslems that Rabuka had declared Fiji a Christian nation...
...The Grand Pacific Hotel, a splendid colonial retreat, overlooks the harbor where the modern version of tramp steamers swing at anchor, awaiting a turn dockside...
...An Australian operative on the island, Rod Kelly, who had been featured in last night's video, had once been photographed with Australia's prime minister, Bob Hawke...
...As he writes in his autobiography: "It will be a big challenge for us to convert them to Christianity...
...But it would be imposing to arrive without a gift, and what would be most appropriate would be kava, a drink from yagona roots that George wanted to go to Suva to find...
...Thirty-eight years old, he had started his military career with a flourish, was a rugby player of world stature and a Commonwealth Games decathlete...
...Pacific Command—this time to request arms for Fiji...
...He met with an aide, who temporized...
...Ridges of high mountain jungle cover the spine of Viti Levu, so international flights land at Nadi, a flatland on the western coast more than a hundred miles from the capital, Suva...
...My uncle, who owns the hotel," he said, "knows him well...
...I chose a beachside room that was already occupied by a large family of mosquitos...
...It seemed implausible that the driver might know how I could find Dr...
...Most of all, I wanted to meet the deposed prime minister, Dr...
...Instead he was given perfunctory hearings at the State Department and before a congressional committee...
...Native Fijians ceded the islands to the Queen...
...Once clear of the New South Wales headlands, the trip to Fiji is a lazy run, entirely over azure seas that only here and there flicker with whitecaps...
...The islands' governor-general, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, asserted that he was the legitimate head of state and attempted to organize a coalition government that would reconcile the differences between native Fijians and those of Indian descent...
...Bavadra needed a grander house to recognize his position as the leader of the Indian community...
...Often during the evening George would rummage through stacks of paper and return to the conversation with a magazine clipping, usually something published in the United States or England...
...As of October 10, 1987, he proclaimed, Fiji would become a republic and withdraw from the Commonwealth, odd as that may sound...
...It's hard to look at the collage and not think that, once again, the natives are being instructed in the ways of civilization...
...There's no hiding that the antinuke, neutralist government overthrown in 1987 was playing directly into the hands of the Soviets and their plans for the South Pacific...
...He recited some of the litany that George had outlined the night before...
...According to the film, he was sent to Fiji to coordinate efforts against South Pacific trade unions that favored a nuclear ban...
...Timoci Bavadra, whose Labor government had been overthrown in May 1987...
...As for outside involvement in the coup, he didn't believe that the U.S...
...For the last several years I have read numerous accounts that the Pacific Ocean is no longer "America's lake," that the Soviet navy is filling a vacuum created by U.S...
...We spent the morning searching several markets for the yagona that would please Dr...
...In late September, he put forward a caretaker government that would represent all ethnic groups on the islands...
...the rest were Indians...
...Party members do not trust RFMF...
...Others show him commissioning a patrol boat or greeting schoolchildren—playing the role of a father to modern Fiji...
...is their basic spiel...
...In many photographs, if you didn't know he had seized power and suspended the constitution, you would get the impression he was running for local office...
...He exudes a boyish enthusiasm, especially for the camaraderie of sport...
...Tkvo months after the first coup, Ratu Mara was again in Honolulu, meeting with the U.S...
...We parked in front of a Methodist church, covered in white clapboard, similar to what one might find in New England...
...If only a few were true, who could blame the Indians for coming to their conclusions...
...John Singlaub, of Iran-contra fame, was in Fiji attending a conference on democracy sponsored by the Pacific Democrat Union...
...As it was a two-and-a-half hour drive to the capital, it was decided that we would leave at six-thirty the following morning...
...The men waved each time we passed and seemed to be joking with each other, in that Miller-time manner, about the day just past...
...She would be joining the Highlander later...
...Pacific Command might have reacted to the election of an opposition, nonnuclear party on Fiji...
...We either go that way, or they will convert us, and we all become heathens...
...The last chapter of the story, which continues, began on December 5, 1987, when Rabuka convinced Ratu Sir Penaia to serve as Fiji's first president...
...He arrived on the yacht Highlander about the same time as his Boeing jet, Capitalist Tool, set down at Nadi, bringing along additional passengers for that segment of the journey...
...For some time the U.S...
...Bavadra give many interviews on Australian and New Zealand television...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 When he arrived, the local press spent several days examining the possibility that Elizabeth Taylor might be on board...
...When the conversation broke up, it was arranged that we would visit Dr...
...Like so many others, he spoke openly of his plans for emigration...
...Coalition is based on Labour Party [Trade Unions] and NFP [Indian Party] supported by WUF [Western United Front] —dissident group...
...Even his thesis at staff college had been on the role of the military after seizing power in a developing country...
...Rabuka insists that his goal is not unlimited personal power, but simply Fijian control of the government, which would respect the rights of Indians and other outsiders: "The only thing we wanted is to give Fijians 40 seats [in the new one-house Parliament], Indians can have their 22, the General Electors [Europeans and other races] can have their 8 . . . Fiji is to be a Christian country...
...Into the opposition went the Alliance party of Ratu Mara, which had been in power since independence from Britain in 1970...
...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 be run only by a general, and what he introduced was the precedent of military intervention in the South Pacific...
...I hoped he would be accessible...
...Frequently we came up behind trucks carrying workers home from the fields...
...Another, Burns Philp, ran the stores and imported most of the consumer goods...
...Nonalignment will mean pulling out of Sinai-500 (+) unemployed...
...Our conversation lasted several hours...
...Sitiveni Rabuka, a staff officer responsible for training, led a bloodless coup against the Bavadra government...
...In London, he hoped to meet with the Queen...
...He continued to deny the Soviets an embassy...
...He described the Fijian economy as if he were reading from a case study on Third World underdevelopment...
...He was not a politician, he said...
...Bavadra's village...
...Perhaps because of the heat, which was about to give way to a late afternoon thunderstorm, I was agreeable and followed a young Fijian of Indian descent to a hotel van...
...Vernon Walters showed up on Fiji to urge Foreign Minister Datt to drop his plans of nonalignment for Fiji...
...The average wage was $3.50 a day, hardly enough to support the large families that were typical on Fiji...
...As he was later quoted in No Other Way, his as-told-to autobiography: "I told the governor-general that I had to remove the government and re-write the repugnant constitution to give Fijian people control of their own country . . ." More cynical accounts of the coup note that Rabuka may have acted more for personal than political reasons...
...Communist influence spread by Labour, Peace Movement, Church movt...
...complicity in the coup or listening to complaints that it was no longer a friend in the Pacific, but a colonial master, another American came ashore on Fiji...
...That's something made up in the foreign press...
...he was a front man...
...This one brought along his own Boeing 727 aircraft and 151-foot-yacht, in whose wake floated enough celebrity gossip and photo opportunities to satisfy even the grouchiest Hollywood press agent...
...Nevertheless, it was jarring for a military putsch to succeed in the South Pacific, where coups have never been a way of life...
...What happens in or to any one of us affects all of us...
...Did I know this man, Ramsey Clark...
...The sun had nearly set when we found Dr...
...He was willing to speak at length about the coup that toppled the Bavadra government...
...Nevertheless, I was able to get a copy of No Other Way, which he dictated to an Australian and a Fijian journalist after the coups, no doubt to soften his image as a strongman...
...No wonder, he concludes, Dr...
...The earnest, plodding qualities of the book point against an international conspiracy bringing down the Bavadra government...
...They had, after all, lost their say in government after winning a freely contested election...
...Only a third ever went back, and an open immigration policy after World War I brought thousands of Indians to the South Pacific...
...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 American Free Labor Institute opened in Suva to campaign against the proposed nuclear ban...
...From press accounts, I knew he lived in a small village, Viseisei, which I located on a map as north of the airport...
...The constitution to be reviewed after every ten years...
...many were being forced out of the civil service...
...The night before the coup he sat up until nearly 5:00 a.m., outlining his reasons for a military takeover...
...Bavadra to follow the lead of the New Zealand government in wanting to declare Fiji's ports off-limits to nuclear warships...
...In the vastness of the Pacific, Fiji offers a strategic deep-water port at Suva...
...Bavadra...
...His foreign minister, Krishna Datt, pursued a nonaligned foreign policy and announced that under certain circumstances he would agree to technical and commercial agreements with the Soviet Union...
...He wore a native shirt...
...From the air the reef first appears as a thin white line, separating the darker ocean from the turquoise waters so evocative of the tropics...
...If anyone fit the intelligence handbook description of a military officer who might be amenable to leading a coup, it would have been Rabuka...
...George appeared to be in his mid to late forties...
...Bavadra described a hopeful meeting he had at the end of his trip with a well-known lawyer, a man who used to be in government, who promised to investigate the charges...
...Tourism didn't put much money into the local economy because the hotels and airlines were owned by outGeorge believed that the reason for the coup was the decision by Dr...
...Bavadra was watching impassively as we approached...
...Bavadra's Labor party was a coalition of trade unions and Fijian Indians, who now were a plurality on the island...
...During the coup, Rabuka and his mysterious lieutenant—known only as Captain X and hooded, like the rest, throughout the operation—spoke to their men only in English, not Fijian, leading to speculation that mercenaries were among the rebels...
...D uring the time that I was hearing about U.S...
...Bavadra sided with other Pacific islands in supporting the lead of New Zealand, which opposed U.S...
...Bavadra, who was supervising the construction of a new house...
...RFMF morale will nose-dive...
...Nevertheless what he got was a nation that for the moment can Rabuka scoffs at the notion that he was a stalking horse for the CIA...
...The shore is also edged with coral, as many unsuspecting tourists have discovered, and behind the beaches, sugar cane undulates in the afternoon breezes...
...T he chronology, in abbreviated form, is this: On April 12, 1987, the voters of Fiji—its population is 750,000—elected a coalition government, led by the Labor party of Dr...
...The uncle's name was G. K. Guddy Karan, known as George, and I met him in the hotel's screened dining THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 21 room...
...Sitiveni Rabuka...
...Crammed into the back and sitting on piles of straw or dirt would be groups of native Indians and Fijians...
...He had been passed over for promotion to brigadier and appeared stymied by a senior commander only a year older than he was...
...On the right was tropical vegetation and, in the background, sharp mountainous peaks...
...W hen I landed at Nadi, I had neither a hotel reservation nor did I know how I might make contact with Dr...
...What I didn't expect to discover was that Fiji is a religious polyglot...
...But his request was denied, because it was pointed out that he was not the head of state—that was the governor-general, Ratu Sir Penaia...
...Bavadra's position, even though it was the chief system that, as prime minister, he had opposed...
...India is a great friend of Russia...
...Hey, mister, hotel...
...His mood was one of subdued resignation...
...As soon as he was released from house arrest, the Indian community on Fiji raised money to send Bavadra and his wife first to England and then to the United States...
...rr he Queen's Road winds along the 1 southern Coral Coast to Suva, the kind of Pacific port etched many times in the writing of Joseph Conrad...
...has believed that the Soviets are behind much of the movement in the South Pacific that would declare the region a nonnuclear zone...
...had wanted to keep Suva as a port for its nuclear warships...
...Certainly the evidence suggests that, odd as it may sound, events in Suva mattered to Washington...
...Although he was a medical doctor before entering government service, his handshake implied that heavy stints of manual labor were part of his background...
...His hair, eyes, and skin were dark, making me think his Indian ancestors were Bengalis...
...Second, what did this silence mean for our relations in the South Pacific...
...Bavadra's election...
...The term `savage" is, I conceive often misapplied and indeed when I consider the vices crueltie.% and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar matter...
...He had denied the Soviets an embassy at Suva, spoke against granting the Russians fishing rights among the Pacific islands, and tempered the views of his Pacific colleagues who wanted to declare the South Pacific a nuclear-free zone...
...We don't want to look back on what has happened in Fiji," he said...
...Following the coup, he had traveled to the United States to make a case for support...
...According to a Bavadra cabinet member, one of these men was among the masked gang that stormed Parliament and seized power on May 14...
...Taukeis had support from native Fijians who were angry that Indians had better jobs and material comforts...
...Admittedly, it lacks the population or size of Brazil, and the interim government is led by the former prime minister, Ratu (Chief) Sir Kamisese Mara...
...Hence, in 1970, when Fiji was granted independence, the land belonged once again to those who had originally ceded it: the chiefs and native Fijians, not postwar Indian immigrants...
...Bavadra...
...On May 14, Lt...
...I had seen Dr...
...He wanted to meet Secretary of State Shultz, but he was out of town...
...Rabuka sees in Dr...
...As I was hunting at the airport for Avis or Hertz, and in one of those indecisive moods that can overcome jet-lagged travelers, I found myself in conversation with a hotel tout...
...His sunglasses were tucked into his vest pocket, in the manner of a golf pro...
...Bavadra, who liked to visit the resort...
...A necklace of coral surrounds Viti Levu, Fiji's main island...
...At dusk we drove north of the airport to Viseisei, Dr...
...concerns had mixed well with local interests...
...When I asked what he had wanted to do in office, he said flatly: "We wanted to tell the truth...
...Did I think anything would come of his investigation...
...Nevertheless, in the words of the Economist, Bavadra was "no radical...
...Ironically, Bavadra got the most sympathy from the Black Caucus in Congress—ironic because it was blacks on Fiji who in the cause of ethnic purity had overthrown his largely Indian government...
...This is the time to look forward...
...The government of Fiji turned out to greet Forbes as though his were a state visit...
...Why had Rabuka acted...
...W hile on Fiji, I made no effort to speak with Major-General Rabuka...
...Another concern to Rabuka is the 1874 Deed of Cession, the agreement under which the chiefs gave Fiji to the British Empire...
...Forbes returned the hospitality with an elaborate party held on the offshore island of Laucala, which he owns...
...We have no problems," he said...
...But why would he welcome wholeheartedly a strange American determined to meet him...
...Rabuka had not thought up the coup on his own...
...The man said that the government had made life difficult for Indians...
...Needless to say, the array of allegations was difficult to assimilate...
...They are good friends...
...Here is a summary of the allegations that were made on the video and in articles I was encouraged to track down: • In 1984, something called the Asian In the eight years of the Reagan presidency, Fiji was the only democracy toppled by a coup...
...He has a firm, somewhat rounded black face, a full mustache, and a toothy, almost Kennedyesque smile, the kind usually worn by victorious athletes...
...Half were Fijians...
...and install a new regime that will ensure that the RFMF [Royal Fiji Military Forces] and national interests are protected...
...The evidence for such a case might be circumstantial, he admitted, but its volume made the verdict incontestable...
...I had expected Indians to be Hindu or Moslem...
...Fijian Indians would never control the country, George believed, because the 1970 constitution had mandated a balance of power between the races...
...It was a ten-minute ride to the Travellers Beach Resort...
...We chatted about what I might do while I was on the island...
...Most were trying to coax the last timbers into position, and Dr...
...indifference to the region...
...Countries rimming the Pacific," he told his guests, "are increasingly where it's at these days for the businesses of America and for every multinational corporation...
...He gestured toward the men working on his house...
...Generals like Vernon Walters or John Singlaub don't turn up anywhere on a whim...
...Nevertheless, when the coup happened, George was detained for three days...
...The president took the opportunity to assure the rest of the world that tourists no longer had anything to fear on Fiji...
...and Australian military services, which conveniently found themselves in agreement with local interests also in opposition to the Bavadra government...
...Bavadra, but when I said that what I really wanted to do was to meet the deposed prime minister, my new friend got very excited...
...At the time Dr...
...What interested me most was to hear his account of how the rest of the world reacted to the coup...
...Not more than fifty-five years old, he wore a white polo shirt, slacks, and thongs...
...Rabuka scoffs at the notion that he was a stalking horse for the CIA: "I do not know anything about them, and I think they know very little about me...
...On April 30, two weeks before the coup, U.N...
...Bavadra...
...I assumed that Iwould rent a car, find a hotel, and then drive to the village and ask around for Dr...
...He asks how he could be the marionette of Australian intelligence if Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was so opposed to the outcome of his coups...
...They were from his village...
...He was the mediator between the left-wing fanatics of the Bavadra government and the Taukeis, the nationalist movement of the right that threatened violence to remove the Labor party from power...
...Its principal mandate was to draft a new constitution that would guarantee the rule of native Fijians...
...Once in office, Dr...
...I had eaten a meal that made me think I was in Bombay or Delhi: curried chicken, rice, somoza, and chutney...
...When he was a boy, the United States had freed many of the islands from Japanese occupation...
...How many Americans wanted to see him at all...
...The papers showed President Ratu Sir Penaia and Prime Minister Ratu Mara leading the magazine publisher to elaborate welcoming ceremonies...
...now decide that Fiji mattered...
...His story became a cautionary tale that crystallized the unease in the South Pacific about U.S...
...Less prominent, but still on hand, was a smiling Brigadier Rabuka...
...He writes: "I had [to take] over the Government, not for power or personal gain, but to save my people from bloodshed...
...He often wears a militaryuniform and a beret, and appears more comfortable in a barracks than at parliament, where pictures taken of him express a forlorn impatience with the tedious aspects of democratic government...
...relations...
...The former governor-general, in turn, appointed Ratu Mara to act as prime minister...
...Bavadra believed his government had been overthrown by the chiefs, who feared his investigation into the past government's financial dealings...
...Bavadra...
...So the Bavadras took what sounds like high tea with the secretary of the Commonwealth, who, while sympathetic, delivered one of those "tough luck, old chap" messages...
...His goal was to raise the standard of living on Fiji, which may be Paradise to tourists, but is still a Third World Paradise...
...Bavadra to follow New Zealand's lead in wanting to declare Fiji's ports off-limits to nuclear warships...
...Afterwards we ate lunch in a small Chinese restaurant with an Indian civil servant...
...He said the tour was to strengthen the friendship between the United States and the Far East...
...He believed that the reason for the coup was the decision by Dr...
...Bavadra the next day...
...When he had enough money, he would send for his family...
...Now it was abetting military coups and tyranny...
...In the new government, Rabuka kept internal security as his portfolio, just in case...
...At the start of the Second World War, had the Japanese won at Coral Sea and later Matthew Stevenson has written for a number of national magazines...
...Rabuka was a stalking horse for the chiefs and the Americans...
...George finally found roots to his liking at a market several miles north of Suva...
...Most press reports spoke of the tensions between native Fijians, who are Melanesian, and Fiji's Indian population...
...Otherwise the bay was empty, save for a few seaplanes, which used the calm waters as a runway...
...Words like comrade had drifted into his speech during the short time he was prime minister...
...The institute spent more than $1 million, which was funded by the Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy, which in Fiji is assumed to be a handmaiden of the Central Intelligence Agency...
...The hotel could arrange fishing, mountain tours, or, if I wished, some pig hunting—none of which interested me...
...His tone of voice was that of a middle-aged man who for the first time had confronted what he decided was evil, and it made him angry...
...taken the islands, our supply lines to Australia and New Zealand would have been cut, making the war in the Pacific that much more difficult...
...All the men in the village were milling about the construction site, as if part of an Amish barn-raising...
...Apparently every group of seamen who visited the islands left behind one of their churches, a condition that may bode poorly for a nation officially declared Christian...
...A fishing trawler and a rusty steamer were anchored close to shore...
...A stock photograph shows him in jungle fatigues, reviewing the troops...
...There he was seen in the company of various Asian American Institute officials, including William Paupe, a U.S...
...To be sure, it is full of asides such as: "I believed I was acting in the best interest of Fiji as a nation" or "I thought to myself 'God is telling me to do this.' " But the book has the fresh quality of a long conversation with Rabuka, who speaks with few doubts about the righteousness of his effort to save Fiji for Fijians...
...Race relations were not the major issue on the island—not sufficient to bring down the government, anyway...
...Bavadra was ousted, Fiji was a member of the British Commonwealth, but neither Britain nor its South Pacific allies nor the United States opposed the coup, except with futile diplomatic language so familiar on evening newscasts...
...dent man...
Vol. 22 • July 1989 • No. 7
