Margot
Staunton, Senior Journalist
Fiji’s
coalition government is putting its political survival ahead
of the people’s needs, the country’s former attorney-general
claims.
Speaking with RNZ Pacific for the first time
since losing power in December 2022, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum
said Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s administration is
doomed unless it deals with the nation’s social and economic
crisis.
Sayed-Khaiyum hit out after one
of Fiji’s deputy prime ministers said the nation was
recovering from a “sixteen year
dictatorship”.
Sayed-Khaiyum was widely regarded as
the right-hand man of convicted former prime minister Frank
Bainimarama for 16 years.
Critics have labelled him
the architect of the highly controversial 2013
Constitution.
Bainimarama seized power in a military
coup in 2006 and took the top job a year later. However, he
returned Fiji to democracy with a general election in
2014.
The former military leader’s now deregistered
FijiFirst Party had a landslide victory after the first
election in eight years.
But the party was viewed as
being dictatorial due to allegations of bullying and
intimidation of opponents, human rights abuses, and
suppression of the media.
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Deputy Prime Minister Manoa
Kamikamica told RNZ Pacific last month that changing the
2013 Constitution was a priority because it “effectively
legalises dictatorship.”
“One of the main reasons
Bainimarama’s regime is not in government now is the
imposition of a constitution that was foisted on the people,
with little consultation.
“I am told that only a
handful of people were involved in the drafting of it, then
it was brought in by decree,” the deputy PM
said.
However, Sayed-Khaiyum described Kamikamica’s
comments as “idiotic” and “factually false”.
“[To] say
that the 2013 Constitution has had no input from ordinary
Fijians and was drafted by a handful of people in some
closed room in secrecy is a complete lie,” he told Pacific
Waves on Thursday.
He said the document was the
product of widespread consultations after the interim regime
was formed in 2007, through the process called the National
Charter for Building a Better Fiji, the People’s Charter,
and extensive discussion with people in villages and
settlements.
“It is a cliché to say we were
dictators. We were elected by the people and I would argue
that people had far more freedom to speak than ever before,”
Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“Kamikamica’s narrative is a bit
like Nazi propaganda, when you keep on saying something
repeatedly people start wanting to believe it,” he
said
“The government knows it will not survive [the
2026 polls] and, in fact, it is being run like there is only
one person heading it.”
He said the country needs
stability, otherwise it will face a socio-economic
crisis.
The government’s inability to govern
effectively and implement credible policies meant the gap
between rich and poor was growing, he said.
“Poverty,
crime, drug use, and unemployment was high and thousands of
Fijians were leaving.
“If Rabuka is concerned about
our economy and the welfare of ordinary Fijians, then he
must direct all the government’s energy and resources
towards dealing with the issues faced by the people, our
business, and investors.
“If he can do that and not
listen to the political opportunists and extremists around
him, then he will gain the political ascendancy that he
seeks.”
He said if Kamikamica claimed FijiFirst lost
the 2022 elections because people rejected the Constitution,
they voted overwhelmingly for Bainimarama in 2014 and
2018.
“That had nothing to do with the Constitution.
In fact, the document allowed people to vote on policy-based
issues for the first time. It did not divide people along
ethnic lines.” he said.
“Previously, people had two
votes, one for an ethnic group and one for an open seat. The
2013 Constitution got rid of that.
“One person, one
vote, one value. The electoral system under the 2013
Constitution also gave women more representation than ever
before.”
Sayed-Khaiyum believes that the government’s
moves to alter the document are “underhanded” and
“unconstitutional”.
“Every government has the right to
change the constitution, it is a two-step
process.
“You have to have three-quarters of
parliament approving the first, second, and third
reading.
“The amendment is then referred to the
Electoral Commission, which has to put in place a referendum
and three-quarters of registered voters must agree to
it.
“What is being proposed by this government is a
carte blanche amendment that does away with a referendum and
only requires the approval of a two-third majority of
members of parliament to carry out amendments.”
What
they mean, he said, is that they can change the constitution
every month should they wish. He said the constitution was
the supreme law of the land and needed stability.
The
government
recently failed in its bid to win enough support in
parliament to amend the document and has now sought advice
from the Supreme Court.
Rabuka could not get the 75
percent support needed to amend the 2013 Constitution during
the Constitutional Amendment Bill’s second
reading.
Meanwhile, Sayed-Khaiyum is facing a raft of
criminal charges, which he described as “bogus”.
They
include 11 counts of unlawful carriage of a firearm on an
aircraft, 11 counts of receiving a corrupt benefit, 11
counts of breach of trust by person employed in the public
service and 11 counts of abuse of office.
“Everyone
knows I did not carry a gun on a plane,” he
said.
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