Pacific analysts warn the political and financial position of the largest Polynesian nation is more fragile than ever, and more serious than many realize.
“Things are really heating up in terms of violence and threats on the media, and moneywise the place is in dire straits,” Professor Brij Lal, a specialist in Pacific issues at the Australian National University, said.
“It’s the military’s doing but it’s the Fijian people that are really going to start hurting.”
In Washington, t Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, backed a deadline imposed by the Pacific Islands Forum for a 2009 poll to restore democracy.
“We join New Zealand in encouraging Fiji’s interim government [of Commodore Frank Bainimarama] to abide by the Pacific Island Forum’s benchmarks and timetable to restore democracy to that country,” she said after meeting New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, Murray McCully.
“We share a common determination that democracy must not be extinguished there.”
Bainimarama has been in power since staging a bloodless coup in Dec. 2006. He has since failed to hold an election to restore democracy.
Bainimarama argues that before going to the polls, the electoral system must be overhauled to make it fairer for the country’s Fijian Indian minority.
And while most of his critics agree reforms are needed, the slow pace and unclear intentions of the regime has increasingly frustrated Australia, New Zealand and smaller Pacific nations.
In January, via the Pacific Islands Forum, they handed Fiji a May 1 deadline to announce an election date. But the interim government is refusing to budge.
The problem, Professor Lal and other commentators say, is that in the meantime the coffers are running low.
“The economy is in a desperate state,” Dr. Jon Fraenkel, also of the ANU, said. “Fiji’s government revenue has virtually collapsed because exports are down, business confidence is down and foreign investment is low.”
