Fijian strongman to pick military successor

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The National, Thursday February 27th, 2014

 Nearly 40 years of military life about to end for Fiji’s military strongman Frank Bainimarama, pictured, as he transforms himself into a politician. 

The 59-year-old who ousted a democratically elected government in 2006 in a military coup is now the front-liner in democracy-restoring elections in September. 

“These old politicians are part of Fiji’s past,” he said this week. 

“They have no fresh ideas to take the country forward. They are locked in the same mindset that created our national traumas in the first place. 

“They are bogged down in the same old politics of sowing suspicion and discord.” 

Bainimarama says he has staged a “revolution” in cleaning up Fiji. His coup, he says, was to end Fiji’s culture of coups. 

Like anybody with a tiger by the tail, Bainimarama has some issues letting go. 

In the next week or so he will name a successor as commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF). Its 3500 active soldiers and 6000 territorials have played key roles in all four coups. 

If Bainimarama’s revolution fails, the next coup will inevitably come from one of the colonels. 

With self-censorship strong in Fiji’s media, there has been little speculation on who will take over Bainimarama’s military role. 

Two of his fellow coup plotters and strong critics of New Zealand, Colonel Mosese Tikotoga and Commodore Esala Teleni, are in the picture. 

Another name there is Brigadier-General Mohammed Aziz who provided the legal structures for Bainimarama’s coup. That he is virtually the only Muslim Indian in the entire indigenous Fijian RFMF probably counts against him. 

And there is the question of what role he may have had in a 2010 colonels’ attempt to seize power and kill Bainimarama. One colonel escaped to Tonga and another is in jail and claimed Aziz was on their side. 

The reality will be that Bainimarama will still be the strongman in Fiji and the new military commander will be answering to him. 

As 1987 colonel and RFMF number three Sitiveni Rabuka showed, coups don’t need to be staged by the man in charge. 

Bainimarama joined the Fiji Navy in 1975 as an able seaman, rising to midshipman within a year. 

He served with the Chilean Navy, serving on exchange on the sailing ship Esmeralda at the time it was being used by Augusto Pinochet’s regime as a base to torture political opponents. 

Unlike the bulk of the RFMF, Bainimarama never served in peace-keeping operations or in combat. 

The only hostile fire he experienced was in November 2000 when, in the wake of the George Speight coup, his soldiers mutinied. He escaped being killed by running down a bank. Three of his soldiers died and five rebels were killed – most of them after they surrendered. 

At a military farewell church service last week he recalled the mutiny, noting the deaths of the three loyal soldiers. 

“We are lucky that five (rebels) died in the process,” he said. 

“I don’t care about the rest. There have been talks about human rights regarding this. I don’t want to know about that.” 

The new Bainimarama has tough criteria for creating political parties but a number have been formed with their ranks likely to include coup-deposed former prime ministers Mahendra Chaudhry and Laisenia Qarase. There is academic Tupeni Baba, who had the misfortune of having his parliamentary speeches interrupted in both the 1987 and 2000 coups. 

Bainimarama, who has not yet formed a party, is likely to easily win September’s election, if only because he has created the electoral rules that are to be finalised in the next few weeks. –  Fairfax NZ News