Update. FijiLive reports the PM as saying "a national roadmap" to be launched in the "next couple of weeks" will replace the Presidential Political Dialogue Forum. A political leaders' meeting will be used as "a forum for government to launch a roadmap” and the United Nations and Commonwealth will be invited to sit in the political forum discussion.
I will delay detailed comment on this latest Government release on its "way forward" but as it stands it does not look good. The absence of UN and Commonwealth participation is not as great a concern as the suggestion that the whole Dialogue and People's Charter process has been put aside. Government cannot surely intend to "go it alone" on the reforms, but that's what this "half" release infers! We'll have to wait and see.
Fiji Village June 12 2009
The Government will not go back to the United Nations and the Commonwealth to try to continue with the Political Dialogue Forum. PM Bainimarama said the Government will now work on the timetables and reforms before elections are held.
Bainimarama had earlier written to the UN and Commonwealth to facilitate the Political Dialogue Forum talks.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has confirmed they have not received any communication from the government of Fiji since the 9th April meeting of the interim government and the political parties in relation to the President's Political Dialogue Forum. The UN said it remains available to discuss Fiji's return to constitutional democracy through early elections.
However, the UN added any form of future engagement in assisting a dialogue process can only be based on the fundamental principles outlined by the UN and Commonwealth and that is, that the dialogue be independent, inclusive in participation, time-bound and without prejudice as to its outcome.
I will delay detailed comment on this latest Government release on its "way forward" but as it stands it does not look good. The absence of UN and Commonwealth participation is not as great a concern as the suggestion that the whole Dialogue and People's Charter process has been put aside. Government cannot surely intend to "go it alone" on the reforms, but that's what this "half" release infers! We'll have to wait and see.
Fiji Village June 12 2009
The Government will not go back to the United Nations and the Commonwealth to try to continue with the Political Dialogue Forum. PM Bainimarama said the Government will now work on the timetables and reforms before elections are held.
Bainimarama had earlier written to the UN and Commonwealth to facilitate the Political Dialogue Forum talks.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has confirmed they have not received any communication from the government of Fiji since the 9th April meeting of the interim government and the political parties in relation to the President's Political Dialogue Forum. The UN said it remains available to discuss Fiji's return to constitutional democracy through early elections.
However, the UN added any form of future engagement in assisting a dialogue process can only be based on the fundamental principles outlined by the UN and Commonwealth and that is, that the dialogue be independent, inclusive in participation, time-bound and without prejudice as to its outcome.
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In 1957, when the Governor of Arkansas refused to admit black students into a white only Little Rock High School, American President Dwight Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to enforce the desegregation of public education following the ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown versus Board of Education. This vignette from American history is instructive in illuminating the nature and logic of constitutionalism as we plod our way through our current troubles.
While many will share Graham Leung and Brij Lal’s lament for the demise of Fiji’s constitution, few I suspect will reflect deeply about the tenuous relationship between electoral politics, institutional legitimacy, enforcement and the supreme law of the land.
Constitutions, in its ideal forms reflect the universal aspirations of the nation-state and therefore act as a bulwark against particularistic claims of individuals and groups. For example, the government of the state of Arkansas insisted on maintaining its racist and discriminatory policies by denying the right of Black children to have access to education in the city’s public high school, contrary to the constitutional ruling that forbid racial discrimination in public education. The ruling by the High Court made it impermissible for governments on any level to legislate policies amenable to racial discrimination in the public education of children.
Constitutions, in Isaiah Berlin’s inimitable phrase could properly be construed as negative liberty, or what people and governments cannot do, and must through law and force be denied the right to do. Could the constitution in Fiji impose limits on the troubling policies under consideration by the Qarase government? How was it even possible that those policies could even be considered within the framework of the much-lamented constitution? What good is a constitution if it is unable to circumscribe political ambitions of individuals and groups?
Again, constitutionalism failed contra Leung and Lal, not circa 2006 but in 2000 following the Chandrika Prasad ruling by the High Court of Fiji. Laws are really nothing but parchment unless there are mechanisms for enforcement. Brown versus Board of Education would only have been a nice sentiment by the United States government if individuals States could have simply ignored them (they tried) thus diminishing the legitimacy of the American Constitution. Subsequently in Fiji, the Qarase government should have vacated office immediately following the ruling by the High Court or face the real threat of enforcement. The governments of Australia, New Zealand and the United States should have demanded nothing less under threat of sanctions, expulsions and travel bans on the Qarase regime. This would have sent a clear signal that constitutions are more than paper, courts are more than committees, and governments are not beyond the law.
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