(+o) Forum Deadline: For Whom The Bell Tolls; it Tolls for Thee ...

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."John Donne (1572-1631) Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

Fiji is downplaying (and Australia and New Zealand "up-playing") the effects of tonight's "automatic" suspension of Fiji from the Pacific Islands Forum. If the suspension goes ahead, both are likely to be proved wrong.

For Fiji, the suspension could well lead on to suspension from the Commonwealth, the termination of EU aid for its ailing sugar industry, and UN sanctions, including possibly the termination of existing Fiji soldiers' contacts as UN peacekeepers. It is, however, unlikely to face trade sanctions, at least from NZ whose exports are worth five times more than its imports from Fiji, or actions that will further impact on NZ-owned tourist businesses in Fiji. Suspension will also further strengthen the hand of Qarase's SDL party and others in Fiji hostile to the Government, perhaps with deadly consequences. As one person put it: "The Pacific’s failed policies will simply ratchet up the response and counter-response until what … a counter-coup and ruin for the region?" For Australia and NZ, Fiji's suspension will demonstrate just how badly they have misread the Fiji situation, and expose the total failure of their "diplomatic" responses to the 2006 Coup.

For the Forum itself, it may not be the end of the road. Phoenix-like, it may relocate to Samoa and reinvent itself without Fiji's crucial representation, but it is unlikely to be quite the same ever again. When further dialogue was desperately -- and obviously -- needed, Melanesian leaders in particular will have noted Australia's and New Zealand's total inflexibility. As David Robie says in Cafe Pacific: "The Forum has never taken such drastic action against a member in almost four decades of virtual “Pacific way” consensus. If it does so this time – excluding the most influential and crossroads island nation of the region – the isolationist policy will come back to bite the Forum in most unpredictable ways. It will also open the door to a dramatic rise in Chinese influence in the region, at the expense of Canberra and Wellington."

The supposed unanimity of the Forum's decision should not be taken as total agreement with the two Pacific “super powers."Click here. In mid-April Kiribati President Anote Tong spoke of the need for "a new approach" and ‘talks [that] should proceed without input from New Zealand and Australia, because the two countries' foreign policies have failed on many levels. Pacific leaders may have a better understanding of how to reach Commodore Frank Bainimarama." On April 15 Radio NZI reported that “some leaders in Pacific nations are calling for more dialogue with Fiji’s interim government but they say input from New Zealand and Australia won’t be helpful, and the failure of the two countries’ foreign policies in bringing about a return to democracy needs to be taken into account. Cook Islands Deputy PM, Sir Terepai Maoate, said: “Fiji’s Cdre Frank Bainimarama feels cornered and bullied…and talks should be pursued. You only have to find a process where there will be trust in the two parties to sit down and go through the process of dialogue." Two days later, Tonga’s PM Dr. Feleti Sevele said, “Fiji needs help and the Pacific Islands Forum countries should engage and maintain an ongoing dialogue with the Fiji regime and help them to find their way back to normality." And on April 20 Solomon Islands PM Derek Sikua said: “The Pacific Islands Forum should not rush into implementing sanctions against the Fiji government." On tonight's TV Barbara Dreaver said PNG's Sir Michael Somare was coming around to the Australian position. Niue and Samoa support NZ's position.

As Rajendra Prasad, author of Tears in Paradise and a Indian Newslink columnist, put it in a recent article which offers an individual Indo-Fijian perspective with which, naturally not all Indo-Fijians would agree :"Country Needs Understanding, not a Shotgun."

So how has our (NZ) government got us into this mess? Why has our diplomacy failed? Why did we not have a Plan B? I doubt it started with the events of December 2006, or Helen Clark's pique at the failure of the Wellington talks she hosted with Winston Peters when they thought they had brokered a Qarase-Bainimarama deal. No doubt it had something to do with Helen Clark's personal intransigence, reinforced by her Western liberal good v. bad views on democracy, elections, and military coups, wherever they occur, irrespective of background or circumstance. There can also be little doubt that Bainimarama's personality, image and angered statements did not help.

It was probably also influenced by an Australian-NZ concern about political stability in their "backyard". For over a decade they had been promoting and funding "good governance" in the Region, while generally ignoring or closing their eyes to bad governance, in Fiji and elsewhere. They could not allow the Fiji "disease" to spread. There was also NZ's international good image to protect: we could not be seen to be lenient to a coup in a small neighbouring country.

One wonders what advice Helen Clark received from MFAT, and whether she took it? This is an important question, but my gut feeling is that most such advisers would think similarly, and those who differed kept quiet or were marginalised. I certainly felt marginalised at an NZAid meeting in early 2007 when I said our consultancy team about to visit Fiji should not prejudge the situation. The official NZ position was already set in concrete.

And, however distasteful it may be, we must also ask how much it goes back to our undoubted feeling of cultural superiority, less changed than we may wish from the days when Europeans "protected the 'natives' from the Indians", and knew what was best for all of them. Tonight's TV news said Fiji is heavily dependent on aid. All the Pacific nations have been tarred with this brush since we accepted the notion of MIRAB* economies, a useful term to describe the smallest PIN but not Fiji, where NZ aid plays only a small part. But aid seen as "charity" fits the superior image.

All of these factors, to differing degrees, no doubt played a part, and still influence our actions.

Diplomacy, the art and practice of conducting negotiations between states, to be fair and effective, requires states of equal power. NZ never saw Fiji as its equal. This is why from Day One Helen Clark among others could speak in such derogatory terms of Cdre Bainimarama. Why our High Commissioner, until he was deported, could ignore the Interim Government while consulting the deposed Qarase Government, and why we continue to support Bainimarama's opponents. It is why we are so short of diplomatic and academic expertise on the Pacific, a region considered hardly worth studying. Why we continue to accept such sloppy journalism. Why we could impose such inflexible travel bans. And why, even now, we appear not to have adopted so-called Track II diplomacy where informal, behind-the-scenes efforts are made, by academics, think tanks and others, to suggest diplomatic ways of resolving the impasse that Fiji presents. We have closed our eyes to coups and human rights abuses in bigger countries, but not in Fiji, a small and less powerful country.

Do I hold New Zealand primarily responsible for the way things have developed? Yes, but obviously not entirely. Bainimarama staged the Coup. His Government dug itself ever deeper into mud, much of its own making. Australia has also played an important role but seems, in most matters, to have taken its lead from us. Regretfully, I think we are the more culpable. I expected us to do better. Fiji's string of crises need not have come to this. We have been the most insistent on an election deadline that, for technical reasons alone, most probably could not have been met on time. Australia still has a High Commission in Suva, and has offered technical and other support. We have no High Commissioner and only skeletal HC staff.

We have offered nothing to help Fiji out of its mess-- no forsensic accountants, no judicial or electoral expertise, no progressive easing of the travel bans, not even an air accident inspector. We, more than any other country, in our direct attacks and support for his opponents, drove Bainimarama back into a corner, provoking retaliation. Other Forum countries merely followed our lead, some with extreme reluctance. Let us hope dialogue continues, with or without the Forum. In a year or two, looking back, we may have cause to recall that it was at this Midnight we "send to know for whom the bell tolls." We will then know whether is was Bainimarama, Qarase, Fiji, Australia's and New Zealand's mana, or the Forum we helped create and destroy.

Meanwhile, in displays quite uncharacteristic of good diplomacy, we have bailed ourselves and Bainimarama into a corner leaving neither a way to escape with dignity intact.

* MIRAB Migration Remittances Aid Bureauacy (small countries' major sources of income).