The Greek dramatist Euripides (480 – 406 BC) was reputed to have befuddled his contemporaries with a request that he be buried face down upon his death. He anticipated that the world would, in a little while, turn upside down hence making him face the right way up again. As history would have it, the world did undergo this transformation beginning with the period that became known as the Renaissance. One of the more salient aspects of this epoch was how it changed conventional ways of knowing and thinking to one that was more in sync with the times.
It is my view that what we are faced with in Fiji today is not far off from what confronted the ancient Greek. We are indeed on the frontier of a new world; a world that has been looming large over our collective horizon since Independence. A world whose definitive features suggest, at the very least, that nothing short of a collective resolve will suffice to meet the new set of challenges that awaits us and which can no longer be held at bay.
Yet despite all the political rhetoric towards this end, the leaders of this country are carrying on as if these were still the heydays of pax Britannica. The style of leadership that they bring onto the national arena is reminiscent of the ‘divide and rule’ that was predominantly used in colonial Fiji. One could even dare say that the impetus behind ‘divide and rule’ then is the same one that informs the leadership pattern that currently is in vogue with our leaders; that is the retention of power, through the deployment of exclusionary tactics, in the hands of the elite be they colonial administrators, planters, political/church leaders or chiefs. The politics of exclusion that has become the contemporary hallmark of our political affairs, at best, suggest a disturbing degree of ignorance, on the part of our leaders, to the ways our society has changed over the years. At worst, it reeks of malicious designs.
The latest episode between the supporters of the Interim Regime and those who are against it yet again highlights the lack of visionary leadership that is needed in these critical times.
On Wednesday the 27th of August, three prominent chiefs representing the three confederacies in Fiji presented a Tabua to the Methodist Church to show their support of the stance adopted by the church against the Interim Regime sponsored Charter. The main point of contention that both parties agreed on revolved around the Charter being an illegal document spawned by an illegitimate administration. If it was only limited to the question surrounding the legality or otherwise of the document and its sponsor, then one would happily come to the conclusion that our leaders, infamous for actively supporting the coups of 1987 and 2000, are finally on the road that leads to their Damascus. Indeed they raised important points pertaining to Fijian institutions that should be taken seriously if only to allay the fears of ordinary men and women in Fijian society. But the story does not stop there.
In their joint submission, they lamented the fact that the interim regime seems bent on weakening Fijian Institutions; that is, the establishment that perpetuates their chiefly influence all over the ‘Vanua o Viti’. They also pointed to the word ‘Fijian’ as a signifier for all that is sacred within the i taukei population. Honourable as their intentions may be, a rudimentary understanding of the contingent nature of the relationship between a ‘signifier’ and its ‘signified’ in the construction of meanings would have shown that to vehemently argue for the word ‘Fijian’, as if the identification of the entire indigenous population hinges on it, can be ill advised to say the least.
Their insistence that the English word ‘Fijian’ be reserved for the i taukei also suggests that these chiefs, contrary to their acknowledged status as chiefs of Fiji (a status they purportedly wanted to preserve, amongst other things, as could be evinced from their lamenting of the demise of Fijian institutions) have never moved away from their parochial preoccupations to embrace the plurality of our contemporary realities.
The term ‘Fijian’ which is at the centre of this never-ending controversy seems to me, by its usage, to be primarily an economic category. Like all categories it conceals as much as it illuminates. For instance it highlights the fact that all who belong to that category are resource owners but suppresses the issue of the growing disparity that divides Fijians economically. It clarifies the fact that Fijians on the whole rent out their land but hides the social exchanges that take place between lessor and lessee as a result of this contract. The list goes on. In fact groupings such as ‘Fijian’ or ‘Indo-Fijian’ work, as a rule of the thumb, on a categorical principle that suppresses differences within as well as commonalities between the communities concerned. It has been our unfortunate fate to use the categories delineated above as the basis from which to spawn an insidious form of politics that over time has filtered down to all levels of society. The fragmentation that we see today is the result of our own handiwork. All is not lost however. Indeed we can reverse this categorical principle in order to open up avenues for mediating between the groupings. Reversing this principle is not a new idea nor is it without precedent.
Jai Ram Reddy’s watershed speech to the GCC a decade ago readily comes to mind. The defining moment of that speech was when Reddy, the first Indo-Fijian to enter the hallowed halls of the GCC in more than a century of its existence, asserted that the council is not only for the Fijians but for Fiji. In other words its members are not merely chiefs of the Fijian people but of everyone else who has made Fiji their home.
That moment, so pregnant with historical significance remained a pipe dream for two predominant reasons. The first was because Fijian chiefs were not ready to extend the boundaries of their respective Vanua to include Indo-Fijians and other communities, while the second has to do with Indo-Fijians, long kept by their political leaders on a staple fare of fear and suspicion, placing their trust on bent narratives that basically reaffirmed their deepest anxieties in Fiji. This is to say that leaders on both sides of the ethnic divide are equally to be blamed.
The historical moment that was trumpeted by Reddy was not, by any stretch of the imagination, our only opportunity to unite.
The days of the Big Four, Ratu Mara, Ratu George, Ratu Edward and Ratu Penaia may have long gone but the lessons from that period are as pertinent now as they were then. Each was a colossus in every sense of the word, their mana reaching out to every man, woman and child irrespective of ethnicity or creed. They with their Indo-Fijian counterparts such as AD Patel and Siddiq Koya were able to forge a vision, of a unified Fiji, where everyone had a comfortable place in. Their struggle was basically to craft a vision that was to be a basis for a country where everyone would have the same entitlement to dignity, justice and, one would add, compassion. Fiji was really to be the way the world should be. Granted that this earlier attempt was not a perfect one, the seed of a plural society was nevertheless sown. The retention and harnessing of this vision that would allow succeeding generations of leaders to carry on with the important task of unifying the people of this country into a nation became an ideal worthy to strive for. Judging by what transpired last week during the Methodist Conference, our current crop of political, religious and traditional leaders have yet to learn this basic lesson.
On this count, it is hard to imagine these three high chiefs as belonging to the same anti-regime leadership provided by the likes of Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Shamima Ali, Tupou Draunidalo and Wadan Narsey to name a few. They are strange bedfellows, politically speaking. To know the differences between their political agenda is to understand why a lot more is needed than a simple return to the 1997 constitution with or without a charter. This is if we are to exorcise our ghosts from the past once and for all.
Fiji’s future has never been realised because we have allowed the past to overwhelm us time and again. What we need are visionary leaders who can forge a new dream from the ashes of the old one when faced with a set of unique conditions; leaders who are prepared to redraw the boundaries of their domain if the future of their society warrants it. As long as we have leaders who behave like ostriches when confronted by the unknown, our quest for democracy is doomed even before we start.
Tui Rakuita
Lecturer – School of Social Sciences
University of the South Pacific
