SUVA (Pacnews) — Fiji’s constitutional lawyer John Apted believes the granting of immunity to military chief Frank Bainimarama and his soldiers will arguably infringe on the human rights of others who want to sue them for wrongs they may have committed since the takeover on Dec. 5 last year.
“If you grant civil immunity for the men and women of the (Republic of Fiji Military Forces) and you deprive somebody of the right to sue them for something wrong that they might have done, arguably you are infringing on that person’s human rights,” said the Munro Leys lawyer.
“Even if somebody made a law granting immunity, the immunity that has been promised is criminal and civil immunity prevents a person, whose rights have been breached, from suing in a court for damages,” he said.
“And, of course, this was one of the issues that made the (Promotion of Reconciliation Tolerance and Unity Bill) which was in one sense, an immunity bill, controversial and a lot of people were claiming it was unconstitutional.”
He added, “So there are a lot of conundrums and it remains to be seen how all of the things in the speech can be achieved within the constitutional framework and the rule of law, so we need to wait to see how things develop from here.”
He said the “other interesting thing about the immunity bill is that the immunity is only necessary if what has taken place was illegal.”
Apted expected legal and constitutional issues to soon arise if issues mentioned by the military commander and the president were to be all met.
“There are a number of challenging constitutional and illegal issues that will arise if all of the points that were covered in the two speeches are to be achieved,” he said.
“A key part of both speeches was a commitment to the constitution. What happened on Dec. 5 was the commander assumed executive authority and today he said he handed executive authority back,” Apted said.’
“The first issue that arises is where legislative authority lies. executive authority means the powers of the state usually exercised by ministers in running government departments. Those are the day-to-day powers of running ministries, and ministers and civil servants do that everyday. A different form of state power is legislative powers and those are the powers to pass laws.”