Who knew

[Bubba]

that Fiji even HAD a military?


Fiji's Military Overthrows Government

Updated 2:22 PM ET December 5, 2006

By RAY LILLEY

SUVA, Fiji (AP) - Fiji's military overthrew the government Tuesday after weeks of threats, locking down the capital and putting the prime minister under house arrest in the fourth coup in the South Pacific country in 19 years.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the armed forces chief credited with resolving Fiji's last coup, announced in a nationally broadcast statement that, "As of 6 o'clock this evening, the military has taken over the government, has executive authority and the running of this country."

The takeover, like the previous three coups, has its roots in the ethnic divide between the descendants of ancient Melanesian warrior tribes and those of Indian laborers brought by former colonial power Britain to work in sugar plantations.

Bainimarama said he had assumed some powers of the president and was using them to dismiss Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. In the 2000 coup, Bainimarama set up an interim government and hand-picked Qarase, a former banker, to lead it.

Bainimarama named Dr. Jona Senilagakali, a military medic with no political experience, as caretaker prime minister and said a full interim government would be appointed next week to see the country through elections that would restore democracy sometime in the future.

Qarase's leadership has gained the legitimacy of two general elections, but Bainimarama grew increasingly frustrated with his nationalist leanings, in particular legislation that offered pardons to the 2000 coup plotters and handed coastal land rights _ lucrative to the tourist industry _ to indigenous Fijians.

Bainimarama demanded the government kill the legislation or be forced out. Qarase offered to suspend the bills but said he could not agree to demands that went outside the law.

"The government they want to set up will be totally illegal," Qarase said at his house in Suva, where he said he was under effective house arrest. "What the military commander has done has raped our constitution."

The United States suspended $2.6 million in assistance to Fiji, most of it for financing of military sales to Fiji and the training of service personnel.

New Zealand announced it was suspending defense ties with the country and would ban its military officers from traveling to Fiji. Bainimarama is believed to have children living in New Zealand.

"This is an outrage what is happening in Fiji," Prime Minister Helen Clark told reporters in Wellington, New Zealand's capital.

Britain also announced it was suspending military aid to Fiji, and Don McKinnon, the secretary-general of 53-member Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies, said Fiji was likely to be suspended from the group.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard revealed that Qarase had asked him early Tuesday to send troops to Fiji to try to stop the coup. Howard refused.

"I did not think it was in Australia's national interest to become involved. The possibility of Australian and Fijian troops firing on each other in the streets of Suva was not a prospect that I for a moment thought desirable," Howard said.

As tensions built in recent weeks, Australia sent three navy ships to waters off Fiji that Australian officials said would be used only to evacuate Australian citizens in the event of a coup.

Last week, Bainimarama accused Australia of planning an invasion, and troops fired mortar flares over the harbor and set up security checkpoints around government buildings in a show of force.

Fiji is among the richest and most developed nations in the South Pacific, attracting up to 400,000 tourists a year to resorts built on idyllic beaches. It also exports sugar and gold.

But it has lurched from one political crisis to the next since the military twice grabbed power in 1987 to ensure political supremacy for the 51 percent majority indigenous Fijians, cutting out the 44 percent ethnic Indian minority.

Bainimarama, an indigenous Fijian, said his actions Tuesday were "undertaken with a great deal of reluctance."

"We trust that the new government will lead us into peace and prosperity and mend the ever-widening racial divide that currently besets our multicultural nation," he said.

Fiji Police Chief Andrew Hughes, an Australian who left Fiji when he became a target of the military's ire, said he believed Bainimarama's coup would fail.

"He doesn't have the support of the government, of the president, of the police, of the churches, of the chiefs, of the people of Fiji," Hughes told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. "I can foresee a popular uprising."

Newspaper, radio and television outlets said Tuesday they had been ordered not to show video of Qarase and to allow officers to vet stories. One newspaper decided not to publish rather than submit to censorship.

"They wanted to put somebody in the newsroom to vet ... editorial content and control any propaganda favorable to Qarase," said Tony Yanni, publisher of the Fiji Times newspaper. "We said you can't come in and the editor decided we can't publish under these circumstances."