‘Race Was Used As A Weapon’: Fiji Coup Frontman Urged To Reveal Backers

Margot
Staunton RNZ Pacific senior journalist

Mahendra
Chaudhry – a former Fiji prime minister removed from power
and held hostage during the 2000 coup – wants George Speight
to name those behind the racist takeover.

The
84-year-old Labour Party leader, who became Fiji’s first
prime minister of Indian heritage in 1999, made the comment
after Speight – the coup frontman – appeared
before the Constitutional Review Commission last
week.

Speight emerged into the political limelight
in a formal suit and glasses, after spending 24 years in a
maximum security jail for treason. The ex-convict has called
on the perpetrators of the country’s past political
upheavals to own up, saying “if you want redemption, you
have to confess”.

However, Chaudhry told RNZ Pacific
it is up to Speight to name the co-conspirators involved in
the failed takeover.

“He has the answers, he knows,
because he’s always been regarded as the frontman. There
were people who were behind him but they remain unidentified
to this day,” Chaudhry said.

“He has himself said that
those who were associated with him are roaming around
freely.”

Need for closure

The veteran
politician said many Fijians still want to know who the
masterminds were behind the coup.

“He [Speight] can
help bring about closure to the whole episode because it
still remains open, people don’t said know really who was
behind the coup,” he said.

“Only he and [Josefa] Nata
know, but they are hesitant, they are reluctant to name
them.”

Nata, who was a public relations man at the
time, became one of the faces of the coup along with
Speight, and has admitted he played a key role as a
negotiator.

Fiji has been rocked by four coups since
gaining independence in 1970. The first two, in May and
September 1987, were led by then-military lieutenant
Sitiveni Rabuka, who is the current prime minister.

In
1999, Chaudhry was sworn in as the country’s first
Indo-Fijian prime minister, but the Labour Party leader’s
election stoked racial tension in Fiji.

A year later,
Speight led rebel soldiers from the military’s
Counter-Revolutionary Warfare Unit in an armed takeover of
the then-coalition government. Chaudhry and his government
were held hostage for 56 days.

He later pleaded guilty
to treason and received the death penalty, which was later
commuted to life imprisonment. However, he was granted a
presidential pardon and released from prison on 19 September
2024.

‘Bigger issue at stake’

Nata, who also
spent 24 years in jail for treason before his release in
December 2023, has declined to name those who orchestrated
the coup “for the sake of the families
involved”.

However Chaudhry said there was a bigger
issue at stake.

“The families would have supported
these people when they were involved in the coup, whether
they deserve sympathy I don’t know,” he said.

“It’s a
question of the other people, they should be thinking about
those who really suffered the pain and anguish of the
coup.”

Chaudhry has his own views about who the
perpetrators are but said no-one would believe
him.

“We know that it was our parliamentary opposition
who were involved in the coup because they wanted to get
back into power,” Chaudhry said.

“So it was them and
their associates, but I cannot name them.”

Rabuka did
not serve as the leader of the opposition after the 1999
election, before he resigned to chair the country’s highest
indigenous body, the Great Council of Chiefs
(GCC).

“We know that the GCC, in meetings which were
held subsequent to the coup, were in support of [the 2000
coup],” Chaudhry said.

Chaudhry defends Labour
govt

Meanwhile, Speight told the Commission during
his submission that the events and policies that unfolded
during the Chaudhry-led government’s first year in office
ultimately led to his actions.

Responding on
Wesdnesday, Chaudhry told RNZ Pacific that Speight’s
explanation had no factual basis.

“It is clear that
his opinion was not shared by the majority of Fiji citizens
at the time,” he said.

He cited a Tebbutt-Times poll
conducted in December 1999, which showed his approval rating
at 62 percent and a disapproval rating of 15
percent.

He said an editorial in The Fiji Times
at the time described the result as “a remarkable
performance – and a ringing endorsement by the public of his
performance as prime minister”, adding that it was the
highest rating ever recorded in a Tebbutt-Times
poll.

Chaudhry said that in just one year in office,
the coalition government had introduced a series of
socio-economic reforms, including removing VAT from a range
of staple food items, while achieving a record 9.6 per cent
economic growth rate and strong business and investor
confidence.

Race-fuelled coup

He argued that
the campaign against his government in the lead-up to the
coup was fuelled by racial politics rather than public
dissatisfaction.

“It is well-recorded that the
anti-Chaudhry agitation whipped up over the next few months
(before the coup) came from ethno-nationalist propaganda and
deliberate disinformation spread by the opposition and
others, some of whom were driven by greed,” he
said.

“Race was used as a weapon to fuel emotions and
discredit the government.”

Chaudhry said this was why
the Fiji Labour Party urged the Commission during its
submission to consider constitutional and legislative
safeguards, to prevent the exploitation of ethnicity for
political gain.

Speight has never apologised to
Chaudhry in person or asked for him forgiveness.

When
asked if he was prepared to forgive Speight, Chaudhry
replied “I can’t answer
that”.

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