The PM's Visit to Rakiraki: Ceremonies, Civics and Elections by Dr Chris Griffin

Former USP and Edith Cowan University social anthropologist Dr Chris Griffin explores the cultural intricacies of PM Bainimarama's visits last year to Rakiraki in Ra province, and in doing so sheds a useful light on ethnic Fijian ritual, ceremony and custom, race relations, the causes of coups, and Bainimarama's strategies to end them.

Ceremonies, Civics and Elections¹.

‘Is it not the primary duty of states, for all their imperfections, to provide external protection and internal security for their citizens? Without both society cannot flourish’. Michael White, Guardian Weekly, 18 June 2010.

‘My advice to Frank is to grasp this opportunity to stand up and rewrite the history books of Fiji for he will have the ultimate support of his people. Ask yourself what is the core function of you and your army…Your core business is to maintain peace and law and order. Stick to it and hand over politics to the politicians…You must forget about international pressure for now and resolve the issue at hand. International pressures are like a flue (sic), they come and go and there’s nothing anyone can do but wait…The army now needs strong leadership if indigenous aspirations are to be achieved and peace to be maintained in Fiji’. Asaeli Lekutu, Islands Business, July 2000.

In 2010 the Fiji government adopted the name “Fijian” for all its citizens, irrespective of their origins or ethnicity. Terms like “Fijian”, “Indian” (or “Indo-Fijian”), “Chinese”, “European”, “Part-European” (kai loma) and “Other” no longer pepper citizenship discourse. What has been instated for purposes of indigenous affairs is the term i-Taukei, meaning indigene of a traditional land-owning group; a term Capell’s 1941 dictionary renders rather interestingly: “free-born person, free-man, the owner or possessor of a thing, a native”. The former Fijian Affairs Board is today I-Taukei Affairs Board inside the Ministry of I-Taukei Affairs, which is itself separate from the Ministry for Multi-Ethnic Affairs.

I am going to use “Fijian” and i-Taukei synonymously. I will also retain “Indian” and “Indo-Fijian” and in so doing risk suggesting the very dualism and simplistic analysis the government wants to abandon, at least in citizenship discourses. For instance, “Indians” (or kai Idia in Fijian), regularly differentiate “North Indians”, “South Indians”, “Muslims”, and “Bombayans” or “Gujeratis”. Another thing, when I speak of “Indians”, I particularly have in mind those in Ra Province, in the northeast corner of Viti Levu, many or most of whom are “South Indians”. When generalizing beyond this, I trust the context will make it obvious.

For their part Fijians commonly differentiate themselves on the basis of village (koro), district (tikina), vanua, or province (yasana) membership, and dialect. What Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna once called “narrow tribalism” or “parochialism”(West 1967: 103-4) had therefore far from disappeared, as the government is aware.

I now want to recall some observations up in Ra.

Ceremonies & Civics in Rakiraki

On Thursday 1 July 2010 the small mill town and retail centre of Rakiraki, also known as Vaileka), in the district (tikina) of Rakiraki, was officially declared a “town”. In 1881 The Penang Sugar Company, owned by two resident Englishmen, the Chalmers brothers, established what is today the oldest and smallest of Fiji’s mills. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company took it over in 1916 and held it till 1973 when it passed back into local hands as the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC)². Most of the town’s population of about 5,000, and much of the district’s or tikina’s total population of over 14,5000,is made up of the descendants of South Indian labourers indentured, along with other Indians, between 1879 and 1916³. It also includes several Fijian villages or koro. Mainly cane-farmers the majority of Indians occupy agricultural Crown Leases, and to make ends meet of them also have second jobs. Vaileka also has a small but significant number of Gujerati shopkeepers of mainly free-settler descent.

The guest of honour on 1 July was the Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama, and it would probably true to say that most of the roughly estimated one and half thousand people who gathered at a sports-field to participate or witness events were probably there more to honour him than celebrate the town’s incorporation, because they were mostly i-Taukei. It was Bainimarama’s third visit to Rakiraki in five months.

In February as one in a series of visits to the various provinces, Bainimarama came to Rakiraki to hear people tell of their economic difficulties, their suggestions for improvement, and listen to their gripes with local government agencies. Accompanying him were nine or ten government ministers and senior national executives, among them the Governor of the Reserve Bank, CEO of the FSC, and Commissioner Western -an army officer. Also present were several local government agency heads who in the course of the morning the PM called on to respond directly to people’s complaints. The two principal ethnic groups were fairly evenly represented, Indians perhaps slightly outnumbering Fijians, but a mere handful of women; in all about 150 people.

The meeting began shortly after ten with Bainimarama, flanked by his key officials, explaining there’d be no speeches or formalities. This was to be a “consultation”. He at once invited everyone to move forward so they could all hear each other properly. The front-row shuffled to within a few metres of him. There was no obvious security guard. The Commodore is famously accessible. For the next three hours he encouraged people to talk out and when there were lulls (which were few) urged particular types to say their piece. The cane farmers needed no encouragement, but the small Indian fishermen and vegetable growers, Fijian villagers, and beekeepers of both groups sometimes did. Two Fijian woman among the handful present, both small businesses women, complained about slack service from certain government authorities, including the Ministry of Lands down in Suva. A businessman with several interests in Vaileka, including offices leased to government, expatiated on his woes and wishes, before being thanked by the PM and reminded he’d not come to listen to “politicians”. The crowd cackled appreciatively. Dialogue throughout the rest of the morning remained robust and I admit the sight and sound of these ordinary men and women standing up to speak, moved me. Towards lunch and the meeting’s end the PM then quite casually announced, almost as an afterthought, that as step towards developing the province he’d approved Rakiraki’s go-ahead as a ‘town’ -in March. Twice before in recent decades this idea had been floated before being shelved as financially unviable. Now it was ‘on’. The eager businessman could not hide his delight. Other feelings in the room were more difficult to gauge.

When the PM made his second visit in March, it was not to declare the place a town (as originally planned), nor to have more grassroots consultations. Perhaps one reason for his return was to fulfil an earlier promise he had made of checking whether government services in Ra had addressed complaints made against them, however more certainly he came to finalize arrangements for the town’s incorporation, now postponed till July 1 to meet certain statutory requirements. The delay also allowed more time for Vaileka to have a makeover and organizers make suitable preparations.

Come inauguration day, July 1, at a field close by the town, labourers had erected a covered grandstand for the PM’s party and principal hosts. A more modest structure stood alongside it for lesser dignitaries, including some American Peace Corps decked out in uniform navy-blue

T-shirts. In front and on both sides of these stands at distances between a few metres and fifty ranged an arc of still simpler shelters for members of the public, mainly Fijian village groups. Fijian labourers with time away from work wandered about the perimeter. A few local European residents were evident, and a large group of young white tourists, well instructed in dress and decorum, had been brought in from one of Ra’s few resorts. But most conspicuous, by far, was the simple fact that the majority of those gathered to witness events were i-Taukei, even though the town and district’s economy depends on sugar and thus on Indians. Their relative absence prompts the question,why?

Sure, cane harvesting had been in swing a month so hard-pressed Indian farmers and their gangs were working, and so were the Penang mill labourers. Tradesmen, shop-workers, and taxi-drivers (of whom there are plenty in Vaileka), again almost all of them Indian, were also about their business. In fact when the idea was mooted of making the day a local public holiday, the PM himself insisted the shops remain open so shop-workers’ incomes were affected. Moreover, as taxi-driver said to me, “Nobody’s going to put food on my table if I go”. Clearly, therefore, there were several practical reasons behind the relative absence -I hesitate to say ‘exclusion’- of Indians, and yet this still doesn’t seem to adequately explain the relative dearth of Indians. Indians could have been involved, but weren’t. The question remains, why not?

In 1981 when the Penang Mill celebrated its centenary a committee of Indians, Fijians (among them the paramount chiefs of Tavua and Rakiraki), and ‘part-Europeans’ organized a day and a half of celebrations. They included an opening yaqona ceremony, thirty minutes of “religious services”, and more than five hours of what was called “cultural programmes”, these included an inter-primary school sports tournament involving Fijian and Indian boys and girls alike. Admittedly the chief guest on that occasion was a local European resident, Mr (later Sir) Ian Thompson, the Independent Chairman of the Fiji Sugar Industry, so ethnic Fijian ceremonies were presumably not the imperative they would have been had the chief guest been i-Taukei, nevertheless it seems July 1 2010 could not have been more different.⁴

Space forbids a detailed account of all that happened that day following an opening march through town involving bands and groups with banners, a good number of them Indian. Suffice it to recall just the main events, reiterate the fact of i-Taukei dominance and linked to this, the centrality of Fijian ceremony. Not that anyone I spoke to on the day or in the days immediately afterwards remarked to me on this dominance. To the contrary, a Fijian lead seemed taken-for-granted on both sides, though more rigorous questioning on my part would almost certainly have proved otherwise. Three weeks later, for instance, a member of the Indian majority Ra Chamber of Commerce told me members had been very annoyed at not having being more fully involved, other than as financial backers.

While it is true a Hindu pandit and Muslim priest (maulvi) were in the front row of the side-stand, and other Indians were visible, there was no evidence of Indian involvement in the day’s actual organization. Events were instead articulated according to traditional Fijian ritual politics and the conventional Methodism that invariably accompanies Fijian gathering, plus an evangelical post-script by way of the ‘New’ Methodist Church.

As with most other parts of Fiji Rakiraki has a small Indian mainstream Methodist congregation whose services are run separately from those of Fijians. The origins of the division go back to the early days of Wesleyan missionaries when Indians and Fijians lived largely apart and spoke little of the other’s language. And in all that time there has only been one kai Idia President of the entire Church. The so-called New Methodist Church, by contrast, is not organized on ethnic lines, but nor does it need to be, for its impassioned services (often held in public places) pay little heed of Indian sensibilities.

The day’s main activities involved three public declarations, all them involving ritual. The first stood apart from the other two in being unambiguously embedded in traditional Fijian ceremonies. The second built on the first and stood within the frame of Methodist liturgy that invariably accompanies all ‘traditional’ Fijian gatherings. However it also reflected the innovative methods of the Police Commissioner himself. Declaration three also followed the orthodox Methodist lead and government’s message on civic involvement and responsibility, but it also echoed the Police Commissioner’s personal involvement, and this became particularly evident when the message morphed unexpectedly with the Pentecostal message of the New Methodists. To summarize, the main events were these:

1. A declaration enclosed in Fijian ceremony and Methodist prayer of Rakiraki as a new town,
2. A declaration of Rakiraki as a “Crime-free” province, feted by the government, but also linked to the ‘born-again’ Christianity and novel policing techniques of the Police Commissioner.
3. A Christian declaration of “Ra for God” tied in to Methodism, government, and the person of the Police Commissioner. Part of it included renouncing churches or “cults” whose activities contravened government policy.

The first and most important declaration was embedded in several ceremonies involving the traditional oratory of guests and hosts; the latter included an address by one of the province’s four paramount chiefs, the Tui Nalawa (Lord Nalawa), through his traditional priest or bete⁵.

Draped in tapa cloth (masi) and kneeling, face towards the PM, the Tui Nalawa’s herald (mata ni vanua) beside him, the bete nursed the tooth (tabua) in prescribed fashion. One hand cradling the precious ivory, the other delicately fingering the sennit chord, he orated for all the chiefs and vanua of Ra, expressing gratitude to the government for the improvements it had brought to i-Taukei lives, and humbly requesting the PM to delay fresh elections beyond the promised 2014 to 2019. Replying through his own herald and later, more prosaically, for himself in English, Bainimarama advised the new townspeople to pay their rates, become civically involved, take responsibility, and not to expect handouts from government.

Ra was not the first or only province in 2010 to pledge allegiance to Bainimarama. Through their vanua and provincial councils all but a few of Fiji’s fourteen provinces have now formally lent their support. Tailevu in the Central Division province followed Ra in August; Naitasiri⁶ did so in September. Cakaudrove of the Northern Division has yet to make up its mind in view of its paramount chief’s earlier hostility to Bainimarama. Meanwhile the Lovoni of Ovalau, in Lomaiviti, closely involved in the 2000 Speight coup, have sought the Commodore’s ritual forgiveness, a step the Lomaiviti Provincial Council later acknowledged. In December, Bua’s provincial council pledged its own support to the government and passed a resolution saying it was unconcerned whether or not there would be elections in 2014.

The obvious exception to this trend of Fijian support, is Rewa province (Central Division) whose paramount chief is Ro Teimumu Kepa, the Roko Tui Dreketi, a former minister in the Qarase government that Bainimarama removed. Yet even this province has its government supporters, notably Ro Kepa’s late-brother’s son, her nephew, whose father before him was often critical of Ro Kepa’s sister and sister’s spouse, the late Adi Lady Lala Mara (a previous Roko Tui Dreketi) and her husband, the former PM Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, now deceased.

Declaration number two held Rakiraki province to be “Crime-free”. This concept, already activated with community support in other parts of Fiji, traced back to the methods of Fiji’s Police Commissioner, Esala Teleni. As it also closely matched the “Ra for God” theme promoted by other Christians, Methodists especially, whose services as I have said almost always accompany traditional Fijian events, and because any crime reduction strategy is generally welcomed without comment, this declaration might have passed off without controversy. However so indelibly associated was it with Teleni’s own ‘born-again’ Christianity, with his membership of the ‘New’ Methodist Church (established, I believe, by his brother), and with the evangelical fervour he brought to policing, that when Pentecostal style singing erupted later that evening in Rakiraki, it shattered the norms manifest earlier that day.

Teleni was a high-ranking naval officer and Deputy Commander of Fiji’s Military Forces before he became police chief in 2007. In 2009 he devised the idea of getting places declare themselves “crime-free” as a form of “community-based” policing. Yet what could have passed off without much comment ran into difficulties on account of Teleni’s own born-again commitment, which identified crime as “sin” and his campaign as a “crusade” that his officers irrespective of their faith or ethnicity were expected to endorse and execute, even to the point of having to participate in evangelical musical routines, including one aimed at curbing rape and other sex crimes. More contentiously still, when some senior Indian officers objected, and went to the media about it, the Commissioner threatened them with dismissal (Fiji Times, 18 February 2009).

Unlike the army and navy, which are overwhelmingly i-Taukei, and can afford to be, the police service requires an ethnic mix to operate anything like effectively. Consequently Teleni’s approach appeared to undermine this and at the same time run counter to the government’s explicit commitment to multiculturalism, equity, and rational modern management “service-delivery”.

Declaration three also came towards the end of the day’s official proceedings and like the first took ritual form. Here a choir of twenty or so i-Taukei men and women intoning chant (vucu), made their way in slow procession from one corner of the ground towards the PM’s grandstand. Behind them crawled a twin-cab, bearing a uniformed Fijian policeman on the back, who at intervals struck sonorous blows on a split-drum (lali). It was the province’s way of avowing “Ra for God”. Or to put it more precisely: “for Christ”. And along with it went a renunciation of the false Christian tenets and cult like practices said to hold in certain villages, including the preventing of children from attending school, contrary to the government’s push to have all children in and remaining at school as long as possible. In a word, the trifecta embodied in this declaration was commitment to old time Methodism, respect for the rule-of-law (village and nation), and support for the government. The group then presented the PM with three plaques to be cemented later on in the town centre. One in English recorded the town’s declaration; another in English declared Ra “crime free”; and the third, in Fijian, longer than the other two, quoted Chronicles 2, Chapter 7: 14-16, part of which runs: “If my people, which are called by name, shall turn…from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land”.

With its solid Christian declaration, its dignified chant, lali, clear structure and formality, this third declaration sprang from ‘old’ Methodism and slotted seamlessly with the day’s civic purpose and traditional ritual performances. By comparison the second declaration mixed ambiguously with ‘New’ Methodism and some of the Commissioner’s controversial new work practices. I confess here that I am not terribly familiar with New Methodist religious practice, but from the little that I have seen I would venture to say there little ambiguity about its style of services, which seemingly borrows from a mix of American style Protestant tele-evangelism and Black gospel. In the case of Rakiraki it was long after most people had dispersed, PM included, that amplified preaching and singing belted out from the direction of the field across the town and surrounding countryside, disturbing the peace and annoying non-Christians and many Christians alike. Why did the police allow it? Presumably, because it came with Teleni’s brand stamped on it. Why did the PM tolerate a commissioner whose activities were, if nothing else, embarrassing? That is not so easy to answer, but as it turned out that tolerance was close to breaking, for two months later, on 28 August, Teleni announced he was resigning for “personal reasons”⁷.

Two weeks afterwards Teleni’s interim replacement announced an end to all religious-based policing. A fortnight later his permanent successor, another senior military officer, who previously as Commissioner of Prisons had liberalised Fiji’s prison regimes, reiterated the end of doctrinaire policing. Which brings me all the way back to my original question: why the conspicuous absence of Indian participation at Rakiraki on 1 July given government’s commitment to multiculturalism and end to racial politics? The answer is no doubt multi-faceted and complex but I will try to provide some of the answer. First, though, I need to remind you of three things pertaining to conservative or ‘neo-traditional’ orthodoxy.

• How Bainimarama having seized power in December 2006 disbanded the Bose Levu ni Turaga (Great Council of Chiefs), an institution originally set up to aid in colonial indirect rule.
• How in 2010 he banned the Methodist Church from holding its annual conference, a large grassroots fund-raiser. Later that year the DPP charged twenty-eight Methodist ministers with holding meetings in contravention of the Public Emergency Regulations decree. The charges levelled at the majority of those ministers were later dismissed, leaving just four men to answer for -who till now have managed to have their hearings delayed. In recent months the frosty relations between Bainimarama and the Methodist Church have somewhat thawed thanks to the government’s change of mind on the annual conference, which this year will go-ahead on a much reduced scale.
• That in 1987 and 2000 it was Methodist Church leaders (including at least one among the four who still has to answer on the assembly charge) who with significant chiefly approval lent political and moral support, and probably material support also, to the Rabuka and Speight coups and subsequent social disorder.

Chiefs and Political Authority

Chiefs are the sacred heads of their bodies politic and by the efficacy that proves their mana they mediate on behalf of their commoner fellows with the ancestor gods (vu), and increasingly and inevitably with the material world at large. To this extent their principal duty is not to ‘rule’, as such, but to gather and redistribute resources on behalf of the group. Yet here is the rub.

A chief represents a particular people or polity and these polities exist, according to circumstances, at different levels of inclusion. At the lowest level this means the i-tokatoka (extended family), which is then embraced by the mataqali (sub-clan or lineage) that is principally located in the village (koro) and in turn is a component of a yavusa (clan), which though important in village affairs, usually has many members outside. Clusters of contiguous koro constitute vanua (states/kingdoms) whose villagers give allegiance to a paramount chief, and beyond this vanua belong to one of three matinitu or confederacies or matanitu, though there were more in pre-colonial times.

The English descriptor, “chief”, is thus a contingent term whose meaning is clarified by context and a leader’s title. In daily village life the head of the senior clan is usually the village chief and the one who counts most by because it is in the village that governance and ritual most readily interlock.

Buell Quain (1938)⁸ was of the same opinion as A.M. Hocart (1952)⁹ in holding that there was no government within or between vanua. Village chiefs only united governmentally in the face of a common enemy (1938, p.41). Aside from relations between village chiefs and their commoner subjects there were no other lasting political ties. “Despite the wide extension of some titles to kingship”, Quain wrote, “the supernatural sanctions which support a chief’s status are usually of local nature only and place strict limits upon the chief’s executive authority” (ibid, my emphasis). Even suzerain/ vassal relations among vanua were of a ritual rather than governmental kind (Hocart, 1952), so apart from the ritual obligation to pay dues to higher order chiefs, villages acted –and still act- quite independently (Quain 1938,p.39). I’ll return to this in a second, after I make this point.

Namely, that against the background etched here it should now be clear why in 1987 and 2000 some chiefs (especially ones in the Central and Eastern Divisions where rural Indians are fewer and urban ones simplistically generalized and stereotyped as “affluent”) succeeded, along with certain leaders of the Methodist Church, in casting kai Idia as “enemy” and in the process providing themselves a new but phoney basis for i-Taukei solidarity¹⁰. That they were able to do so, so easily, says something about traditional hierarchy and childhood socialisation. So let’s go back to rank and hierarchy.

When Fijians talk of their chief or turaga they usually mean their village chief, or on other occasions their vanua chief, and this goes for a great many (perhaps the vast majority) of urban adult Fijians¹¹. One’s koro, land (vanua), chief, fellow villagers, mataqali and so on, are integral to personal identity, even if other factors are also important. Being able to locate yourself in a complex social cartography is the key to correct behaviour.

There are times when despite their normative grounding in social hierarchy, Fijians question the legitimacy of their own or another’s chief. To use the jargon: agency intrudes on structure. It can happen, for example, if they see unacceptable disparities between a chief’s wellbeing and their own¹², in which case status, privilege and power may be judged illegitimate; mana doubted. There may be talk of supernatural sanctions. In the past what amounts to ‘abuse of office’ was not only sanctioned supernaturally but by the war club. Contrary to cliché “coup culture” is not new. It was usually executed by bati (tooth or edge: a warrior caste) and consequently conferred legitimacy. To this extent it was a ‘traditional’ (if extreme) means –of conferring that (ritual) authority that colonial governments and missionaries would later redefine and rigidify and in the process make some leaders less accountable than was previously the case (See Peter France’s The Charter of the Land, Melbourne Uni. Press, 1969). I am not, by the way, advocating coups as a sound path to governance.

When it came to governance at supra-village level in pre-colonial times, intra-vanua warfare did not usually result in outright political supremacy. Enemy individuals could be beaten, eaten, killed, enslaved or otherwise humiliated, but entire groups were not governed as such. One of the outcomes of this today is that rank or ritual status differences between vanua (and thus villages) do not alter the fact these bodies generally consider themselves equal. We see this quite clearly, for instance, in historically based suzerain/vassal relations like those between Ra (or part of it) and Rewa, where the former is vassal to the latter (Quain, 1938). Or in the case of Bau (or some of it including the high chiefly isle of Bau) which is vassal to Vuna, whose own paramount village lies in southern Taveuni, an island of the Northern Division. The ritually inferior in each pair is governmentally equal to the other.

To close this part, let me make myself clear. Despite their socially collective differences, indeed arguably because of them, Fiji’s i-Taukei enjoy an extraordinary large degree of social cohesion, thanks largely to the binding effects of custom, ritual, marriage and historical narrative. The social boundaries are like perforation lines that connect but can also tear. It is because they usually don’t tear, however, and when they do, are eventually ritually reconstituted, that their boundaries are potent demarcators of all things non-Taukei. Yes, colonial rule played its part in bringing about ethnic Fijian unity, and in so doing help mark them off deliberately from other “races”, but it would be wrong to think that that capacity for ‘othering’ was entirely imposed, just as it would be wrong to think Fijians today are incapable splitting themselves into opposing groups. Indeed it is precisely because of this that Bainimarama has insisted on prioritising i-Taukei unity through the material improvement of life at the grassroots, for without it the chances of achieving lasting political stability are much reduced.

Ceremony and Bainimara

Rural-urban migration, urbanization, urbanism, and globalisation involving among other things individuals’ use of mobile phones, foreign travel, work abroad (including military service) and access to a great array of visual media, have all contributed to changes in personal-cum-collective sensibilities, including ethnic Fijian identification with village, vanua, and ritual knowledge. It has even led some i-Taukei journalists to write of an i-Taukei identity crisis. Nevertheless, ritual or ceremony in some form or other remains plays not only an important role in village life, it is by no means absent from urban lives, for out-migration and urbanization do not automatically entail severance from the root. What may be in retreat, though, (and this statement must be treated with caution) not just among younger urban Fijians, educated or otherwise, but rural ones as well, where poverty and boredom prevail, is knowledge and respect for ritual authority, custom and protocol. And that is why in 2010 Bainimarama moved to reinforce village by-laws and the authority of elected village headmen (turaga ni koro).

At first glance the village by-law move could appear to run counter to the PM’s national modernisation program that in some places anticipates modern management courses for traditional village leaders¹³. The move has also sparked concerns among feminists and other human rights activists¹⁴. Whatever the merits of such criticisms, however, the initiative is congruent with Bainimarama’s long held view that there can be no progress towards elections and a return to democracy until i-taukei life improves, and until villages and vanua can rest assured their “life-giving” rituals (Hocart, 1970)¹⁵ and other cultural practices will go on being respected, something the Qarase and Chaudhry governments appear to have failed to do in one or both respects.

Ever since Independence more and more village and vanua chiefs have gone to live or spend more time in Suva. Some found jobs in the public service, some established business connections, and some went as elected parliamentarians. It is hardly contentious or original, then, to say that quite a few of them benefited personally through pervasive social networking, sometimes at their group’s expense. What is new is the realisation among growing numbers of ordinary rural Fijians that over the years many of their ‘leaders’ had become not life-providers but life-takers; not in a literally sense, of course, but an economic one; among them those chiefs who advised them not to renew their cane leases, and as a result caused productive fields to go to weed and village incomes dry-up. To reverse this the PM over the past year has spent time visiting koro to get villagers to change their minds: for their own sake, the cane-farmers, and all those others whose livelihoods indirectly depend on sugar, and to do so promptly before the industry collapses.

Because chiefs are thought sacred on account of their ritual office, they usually continue to be respected by followers, even if considered self-serving. In the meantime the business of government and delivering ‘life’ is left to Bainimarama who, beyond a certain amount of infrastructure improvement and other assistance, is adamant that villagers and vanua have to become more adept at self-help and un-learn the dependence on the State that some have come to expect. This surely helps to explain, then, what is evident in Fiji but not clear to some people abroad. Namely, that the majority of people in Fiji, i-Taukei, Indians, and the rest, are actually in no hurry for elections. For a great many of them elections in 2014 is quite soon enough, and for some even that is too early. In saying this I hope I won’t be misunderstood or misconstrued as being hostile to democracy. All I am trying to do is analyse the facts of as I see them, to the best of my ability, and what I see is a great many i-Taukei who have lost faith in the ‘democratic’ process because of what since Independence it has delivered or failed to deliver; or perhaps because democracy doesn’t always rate highly in the village. As for the Indians I have yet to meet one in Ra, however indigent, irate with FSC bosses, or frustrated with the government over the rising cost of living who basically does not condone the PM’s intentions.

As for the PM himself, I’ll risk summarizing his views like this:

1. Until i-Taukei ‘life’ improves by creating decent infrastructure, ensuring better educational outcomes, and encouraging more rationality in certain areas of ‘traditional’ life –which raises doubts about the compatibility of modernity with ‘traditional’ norms and social structures- the prospect of long-term political stability will remain in doubt.
2. These changes also demand the rooting out of corruption, as far as possible, and end to the laissez-aller mentality that has long been tolerated in the public sector. It is essential Fiji cultivates notions of efficiency, transparency and accountability.
3. Only then can Fiji move to elections under a new electoral system and Constitution¹⁶.
4. Indians, generally speaking, approve the government’s program. (And from my outsider’s perspective, one might say a politics of hope has replaced the politics of domination). Racism is no longer tolerated. Government services, including education and welfare benefits, are based on need not ethnic status. (And here again, from an outsider’s point-of-view, the big problem is keeping the hopes of 20,000 rural Indians alive by saving the ailing sugar industry from collapse).
5. Notwithstanding the urgent need to improve the hopes and quality of life of its poorest citizens, government recognizes the satisfaction and meaning that most Fijians in towns and villages derive from family and kin, and from ‘life-giving’ traditional ceremonies, and from their Christian practices. Working with this cultural framework, not against it, the government wants to encourage change and innovation.
6. Delay, failure to deliver or nurture these things risks opening lines of ‘tribal’ perforation and reinstating racial politics on a new and maybe more dangerous scale than hitherto. The government’s program comes not without risk. Frustrated promises of ‘revolution’, better lives, can usher in extremism.
7. To make reforms and have elections in 2014 as promised the government must continue to make new foreign alliances, such as that with China, rather than wait for older partners like Australia and NZ to wake up and change their jaded policy tunes.¹⁷

If history teaches us anything about Fiji it is that elections incite ethnic tension and that ‘democracy’ till now has delivered ‘life’ to a few at the cost of ordinary people of every ethnic group. Moreover, elections in Fiji have not been democratic, at least in the Westminster sense of a secret ballot and one-person-one-vote. In rural and urban villages i-Taukei have frequently voted according to their chief’s instructions, which is perhaps hardly surprising given the culture’s emphasis on deference and quiet acceptance, its dislike of independent speech, critical thinking, internal competition, and lack of opportunities for young men and woman (especially women) to learn leadership through experience. It is also not surprising given the numerous ways Fijians connect with one another that can then be used to generate self-advantage, localism or cronyism. This is not to imply Indians and others lack similar network opportunities and occupy the moral high ground. Nor do we overlook the fact that class interests frequently count for more than ‘community’ interests; that people across the ethnic range sometimes act in cahoots with each other. Added to these things we see electoral systems that have given voters two votes: one for a national seat and the other for a ‘communal’ or ethnic seat commensurate with the voter’s own ‘race’. Further mix into this a Senate weighted in favour of i-Taukei thanks to the powers of nomination accorded the Bose Levu ni Turaga, its nomination of an i-Taukei President, and one sees why Bainimarama knows he has more levelling of the ‘playing-field’ to do.

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1 An extended version of this paper was presented to a symposium of the Anthropological Society of Western Australia, University of Western Australia, 1 October 2010.

2 In 2010 following repeated mechanical breakdown at the mills, and massive financial loss, the FSC’s CEO resigned, and the government appointed a temporary replacement. In January 2011 the company was delisted from the stock exchange. International advertising for a new CEO appears to have borne fruit with an expatriate anticipated to be appointed.

3 1996 figures from Crosbie Walsh, Fiji: An Encyclopaedic Atlas, U.S.P. 2006.

4 Information taken from FSC: 100^th Anniversary Penang Mill 1881-1981, a Fiji Times & Herald publication, which included centenary photographs and a short history of the mill by Dr.Roger Frazer.

5 Ceremonies included: vakasobu, qaloqalovi, vakamamaca, sevusevu, wase ni yaqona vakaturaga, and vakatale.

6 As well as the provincial council’s pledge, the elderly paramount chief of Naitasiri, Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, serving a gaol sentence for conspiring in the mutiny and attempt on Bainimarama’s life in December 2000, got his vanua to present the PM with a whalestooth in ritual atonement (matanigasau). Because Takiveikata was shortly due in court to appeal his sentence some saw this move as ultra cynical; even so, the PM accepted it and the court later dismissed his plea.

7 In early 2011 Teleni became Fiji’s Ambassador to China.

8 Fijian Village, University of Chicago.

9 The Northern States of Fiji, Royal Anthropological Institute.

10 By contrast, some Western Division province leaders in 2000 spoke of splitting from the three matanitu (Kubuna, Burebasaga, and Tovata) and establishing a new confederation, Yasayasa ni Ra. There was even rumour (see fn 11) of ceding from the rest. of Fiji.

11 Legitimate ‘belonging’ to a land-holding group such as a mataqali (sub-clan), and thus village, is recognized by having one’s name registered, ideally at birth, in the Vola ni kawa Bula or i-Taukei land-registry.

12 The unequal distribution of lease money among members of traditional land-holding groups, distributed by the Native Land Trust Board, which used to deduct 15% as administrative costs, has long been a reason for behind-the-scenes questioning of chiefly authority. As a result, it is little short of ‘revolutionary’ that the NLTB (today chaired by Bainimaramma) recently decreed that as from 2011 lease money will be divided up equally, irrespective of individual status differences.

13 Fiji Times, 13 July 2010.

14 The Ministry for i-Taukei Affairs is currently hearing submissions on the by-laws from villagers and NGOs.

15 Kings & Councillors, University of Chicago.

16 Among other things this would, presumably, include removing the Bose Levu ni Turaga’s Senate nomination powers, possibly its power to nominate the President, and maybe the Great Council entirely.

17 Australian High Commissioner, James Batley, and his replacement Acting High Commissioner were expelled in 2009 and 2010 respectively, for alleged interference in Fiji’s sovereign affairs. Short of a Wikileaks’ revelation the truth or otherwise of these allegations is, of course, impossible to say, but the expulsions do remind me of how a former Australian diplomat in Suva once tried to pass off as ‘fact’ to me, gossip about Bainimarama and certain members of his cabinet that had absolutely no basis in reality. It is true, of course, that ‘rumour’ is a sociological fact in Fiji, just as it is anywhere, so assuming for a moment the diplomat’s words were not served up as deliberate lies, it is possible they were genuinely held beliefs based on rumour. The lesson is obvious: social ‘facts’ dished out by those who claim authoritative knowledge of Fiji, be they diplomats, journalists, politicians or social scientists –myself included- should always be considered sceptically.