In Niue where the 39th Forum Summit was held last week, Tuilaepa said Commodore Bainimarama’s “mental attitude” does not help his cause.
“What he is doing is ridiculing the independence and integrity of all the members of the forum,” Tuilaepa said.
Speaking to Samoa Observer, Tuilaepa said Pacific island leaders agonized for hours over the use of the word “suspension” while debating their response to Fiji’s boycott of the summit in Niue.
Tuilaepa said in the end, his fellow leaders felt: “It is better for the Fiji military regime to know exactly, to understand the thinking of the Forum Leaders.”
Forum Leaders decided last week they might suspend Fiji from their organization if Frank Bainimarama’s military-imposed government did not allow his country to return soon to democratic rule.
Tuilaepa, a member of the forum’s ministerial contact group negotiating with Fiji, said Forum Leaders did not use the word “suspension” lightly.
“It does not really help Bainimarama continuing to play that tactic of attributing decisions of the forum to the influence of either New Zealand or Australia,” Tuilaepa said.
“That kind of mental attitude from Bainimarama does not help his cause. What he is doing is ridiculing the independence and integrity of all the members of the Forum. That is how we arrived at a compromise to keep on engaging Fiji by [via] the group of ministers whose recommendations would be seriously considered by the leaders,” the Samoan leader said.
His analysis and comments on the Fiji issue were described by some officials as having a strong influence on the Forum Leaders’ ultimate message to the Fiji regime.
He said his forum counterparts did not overlook the fact that the Fijian people had to take eventual responsibility for a solution.
People in Indonesia and the Philippines had shown that, in spite of the rule of a gun, they rose up using “people power” to solve their political situations, he added.
Tuilaepa said the ministerial contact group would monitor events in Fiji, hopefully revisit the country in the next month or two then prepare recommendations which could include suspension.
Last Friday, Bainimarama said New Zealand and Australia “seem to have usurped the moral leadership of the region” and described the two countries as having an “emerging and threatening dominance of the Forum.”
