Note the uncertainty: even if Fiji were to acquiesce to our demands, Canberra reserves the right to change its mind, and add new hoops for Suva to jump through.
Democracy 101 will get us nowhere
- by:RICHARD HERR and ANTHONY BERGIN
- From:The Australian
- March 05, 201312:00AM
- http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/world-commentary/democracy-101-will-get-us-nowhere/story-e6frg6ux-1226590253096
FOREIGN Minister Bob Carr doesn’t expect to lift Australian sanctions against Fiji until 2019, at the earliest. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the minister’s recent statement outlining our terms for re-engaging Fiji’s government. The terms appear reasonable: they’re ones a first-year political science student might use to define democracy.
The conditions that Carr has listed for Fiji passing his basic democracy course are an independent elections’ office; unrestricted participation by opposition political parties and civil society; freedom of expression, association and the media; and an election so free and fair its results will be acceptable even to the losers. Carr has emphasised that once Fiji’s government achieves all this, Australia will “hopefully lift its targeted sanctions”.
Note the uncertainty: even if Fiji were to acquiesce to our demands, Canberra reserves the right to change its mind, and add new hoops for Suva to jump through. Here we’re open to the charge that we’ve laid against Frank Bainimarama’s government: shifting the goalposts for Fiji’s return to democracy.
Do we apply Carr’s democracy standards and apply sanctions to ASEAN members such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam? And what of China, where muted protests on human rights violations seem linked to our booming resources trade. Perhaps we don’t need countries to meet these standards, if we know they aren’t, in our view, democracies.
Contrast our Foreign Minister’s approach with that offered by US President Barack Obama when he visited Myanmar last November. Obama said that he wasn’t somebody who thought the US “should stand on the sidelines and not get its hands dirty when there’s an opportunity for us to encourage the better impulses inside a country”.
Australia’s position on Fiji appears to be that we shouldn’t get involved until after Fiji no longer needs our help or encouragement. Lecturing Fiji on democracy from the sidelines isn’t helpful: it creates a diplomatic impasse where we win only if Fiji backs down.
That’s been the key weakness in our policy towards Fiji since the 2006 coup. We’ve never provided for graduated disengagement from sanctions, as US President Barack Obama supported when he visited Burma.
There’s little chance Fiji will meet all of the democracy criteria set out by Carr. If Fiji doesn’t score an A grade on its election next year, then the only grade we’ll give will be an F. So the region’s dunce will attract our sanctions until Fiji’s next election in 2019. There’s to be no tutorial assistance or mentoring, no chance of a supplementary exam. That’s Fiji’s lot in our democracy 101 course. No wonder Fiji is enrolling in another class somewhere to the north of Australia.
Richard Herr and Anthony Bergin are co-authors of Our Near Abroad: Australia and Pacific Islands Regionalism, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Military Brutality in Fiji:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=101284890061214
http://www.fijileaks.com
BAINIMARAMA-KHAIYUM’S BRUTAL ARMY AND POLICE OFFICERS
Video strips police lie about escaped prisoners – they are captured, police dogs unleashed, brutally beaten up, stripped naked, humiliated, filmed on mobile phones and one loses foot
I watched only a small part of the video; I could not watch all of it. There is no excuse whatever for such behavior.
Regarding Australia’s decision not to restore normal relations with Fiji, there is a difference between countries that show clear evidence of moving towards having a democratic government, such as Myanmar, and countries that show no such evidence, such as Fiji. In Fiji, it is clear that the dictatorship is only pretending to move towards democracy.
Richard Herr and Anthony Bergin
Two more wannabee white men writing from the comfort of a truly Democratic Country where the wrath of torture is out of reach. See the latest story on Fiji leaks wannabees and join GD and Grosbie in the Sahara with their big ego head stuck deep in the hot sand.
Hurry up Boci Davis and Gandu Walsh. Put a spin on the video. Bloody wankers!!
Vinaka vakalevu Victor Lal and Fijileaks
Does this junta groupie Herr really believe we should embrace this terrible human rights abusing regime and give it legitimacy? This junta under its deranged leadership has a history of abuse and murder. It took over a legitimately elected government using brutal thugs with guns. Enough of the softcock bullshit and spin – time to exterminate this cowardly Fiji military regime. These thugs are acting with total impunity – this brutal dictatorship belongs somewhere in the middle east – not the Pacific!!
These two dimwits make a big fuss about small targeted sanctions which are aimed at punishing the coup perpetrators only. If anything Australia should intensify its sanctions and apply more pressure on the regime to give up its unlawful hold on power. Its because of soft sanctions that the regime is there. I don’t see the need for lifting sanctions as only the military people and cohorts are targeted. The reason the two give for lifting sanctions as to lower the regime’s hard stance is not logical. The regime only knows the game of hard ball so they also should receive the same as they gave.
These smartarses lecture the Australian government on ‘Democracy 101′? Perhaps the junta dancing girls shpould lecture Bainimarama and his cowardly regime on ‘Torture 101′??
Yet more “racism of low expectations” from Richard Herr.
Herr seems to have forgotten that Fiji is now a rogue state that does what it wants anyway – regardless of what its friends or enemies say.
“Improved” relations against that backdrop are not only deceptive, they are quite over-rated and not worth the effort or embarrassment of capitulation.
In the end, only Fiji can decide if it wants to be respectable and mature again. Australia and NZ may have their preferences in that. But they have no final say and so must look to their own respectability and integrity instead.