Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi, the secretary of the Fiji Labour Party and an unrepentant pujari of his leader, responding to the first part of my article on "Failed Leadership", (20/09/08) labelled me as someone who fled the country following the first coup of 14 May 1987. This appears to be a common attack by the FLP on those who left Fiji and who criticise it for any reason.
Yet, it feels quite justified in collecting funds from those who have left the country and, not even account for its usage, but when they say any thing against it, they are abused and accused of fleeing the country. In leaving Fiji, I was driven by vision, wisdom and sacrifice, accepting my immediate obligation to my family.
However, if I was a leader of the community, I would have endeavoured to fulfill my obligations, as deemed appropriate.
Further, at the time of the coup, I could see, communal rifts intensifying, a gradual degeneration of race relations and, with Mahendra Pal Chaudhary's advent in Fiji politics; I could visualise turbulent and chaotic times ahead. I decided to leave Fiji, like many other desperate compatriots, fulfiling our personal and familial obligations.
Further, Vayeshnoi accused me of arrogance when the use of the word 'ignorance' may have been intended. I firmly believe that word 'arrogance' is not transferable in Fiji's political context, as it remains a perfect badge of identity for the FLP leader.
It is his weapon of choice that has given the Indian community successive defeats at the national level. Nevertheless, he is the ultimate winner, wallowing in wealth while his community drowns in poverty.
On the quality of leadership, the FLP has always compromised quality in favour of loyalty of members to the leader. A few able, articulate and eloquent members, who became part of the multi-party Government, following the 2006 elections and broke the sacred loyalty code, were cruelly removed, when they decided to cooperate with Prime Minister Qarase and make the multi-party Government work. It received a thunderous applause from the nation but it was short-lived.
In the process of becoming part of the multi-party Government, Chaudhary became a king without his subjects. He could not become a minister in the multi-party Government, as Prime Minister Qarase would not have him and also, he could not work under him.
However, he had hoped to become the Leader of the Opposition but it became untenable because, with FLP members in the Cabinet, he had become part of the multi-party Government.
Without his subjects to lord over and a rich pasture, Chaudhary was incensed. He bared his fangs and instructed his nominees on the multi-party Government to abide by the FLP directives, giving due regard to its election manifesto. Vayeshnoi, as was expected, cringed.
Those few in the multi-party Government who had remonstrated with him, had their membership of the Party terminated, but the coup of December 5, 2006 rendered their dismissal from Cabinet obsolete.
Indeed, this was a cleverly orchestrated campaign by Chaudhary to oust his adversaries and re-negotiate the composition of multi-party Government or withdraw from it to make it possible for him to qualify for appointment as the Leader of Opposition.
In all these machinations, the interests of the community or the nation did not feature but only the interests of one person Chaudhary.
With his rivals removed, Chaudhary restored his authority and began to flap his wings and crow again. Desperate to grab power and perks, he swiftly made his way into the interim Administration with Vayeshnoi in tow.
His unprincipled decision shocked the nation and the world and, Indians unnecessarily copped the blame for being behind the coup. It is the Indian community's great misfortune that Chaudhry projects their image like himself.
He escapes retribution but the community has consistently borne the consequences. Today silent and deserted villages in the cane belt still show scars of needless eviction of Indian farmers who tragically lost their homes and farms as retribution for supporting him.
Victims became homeless and destitute overnight and moved to live in squatter settlements.
Funds purportedly collected for their rehabilitation from abroad never reached them. No one wants to talk about these collections.
The silence over the issue invites more questions but is often followed by threats of legal action by those who are implicated. Sadly, very sadly, there are no true champions for the poor in Fiji but there are people who have used them to enrich themselves.
Many of the poor who lost their land spend their lives in utter despair, deserted by their leaders for most of the time, except when the time comes for their votes. To rob their votes, they are told exactly what they want to hear and, once the robbery is accomplished, they are left to their struggles until the following elections. In the FLP den, under regimented conditions, people are expected to follow their leader with sealed lips.
Indeed, Chaudhry does not like leaders who are independent thinkers but those who follow his dictates and become willing members, promoting his designs.
Vayeshnoi has excelled in the art of weaving the web unfailingly for his master and has earned due recognition, serving him rather then his community.
Without any cause he attempts to humiliate me, claiming that I have not been able to exonerate myself as a writer of substance.
Indeed, I have no wish to prove my ability as a writer to the likes of Vayeshnoi; sufficient to say that I do not have others writing for me and then pretending to be the author of such articles. Vayeshnoi unashamedly boasts about the feat of his colleagues, resisting the onslaught, following the 2000 coup, when he, with few others, opted to flee while their colleagues were held captive in the Parliamentary Complex for 56 days.
I am truly sorry they suffered but for a person who betrayed their colleagues and fled the scene, it is obscene for Vayeshnoi to imply that he was there and took the arrows on his chest.
There is no dispute that Chaudhry is the undisputed leader of the Indian community.
The crown of glory that the king relishes failed to bring peace, security and prosperity to his community.
His crown of glory became the crown of thorns for the Indian community.
Today, the exodus of Indians to foreign shores proves they have no confidence or faith in their leader to provide them a safe and secure future.
His style of leadership has remained constantly aggressive and abrasive, when only assertiveness and humility would have sufficed.
His game plan prioritised his dominance, which was gained at the expense of the community.
In this regard, the Indian community was divided and kept divided to ensure that Chaudhry's position was not under threat. One wonders that if a leader cannot unite his own community how could he could be expected to unite the nation. Yet, Chaudhry lauds promotion of multiracialism, unity, understanding, tolerance and love the mantras ritually chanted to project himself as 'mahatma' of Fiji politics. In this double talk, Chaudhry does the opposite to what he preaches.
Amusingly, Vayeshnoi claims FLP candidates are selected by the grassroots people but hides the truth.
The candidates represent the choice of the leader on merits that ensure that they are no threat to his leadership. They are then presented to the 'grassroots' people not for consideration but for approval.
Vayeshnoi lauds FLP manifestos as visionary. It is a universal truth that manifestos of most political parties are visionary but few are achieved or achievable.
President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara's claim that Chaudhry would have been the best Prime Minister for Fiji has been constantly used by the FLP to promote Chaudhry.
Frankly, it was the mis-statement of the century. This statement would have haunted him until the sunset of his life. He left the world, disillusioned and sad because people, in whom he had faith and trust, eventually betrayed him. He had advised Chaudhry not to raise the land issue. Chaudhry defied it and invited a vicious response from Fijians that left his empire in ruins and Indians suffering a terrible backlash. Even Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara was tragically deposed in this fiasco.
Surprisingly, Vayeshnoi suggests that my entire article was a plug for the National Federation Party and that I am an unapologetic sympathiser of the NFP.
How he can come to such a conclusion is beyond my comprehension. I would like to clarify that I have never been anyone's pooch and I detest those who are because they crawl their way into positions where they must never be.
I have never been a member of any political party in Fiji but had served the then Alliance Party (nine years) and NFP (six years) as Town Clerk, Ba with honesty and integrity that is the benchmark for others to emulate or aspire to.
Both the parties held me in high esteem for my honesty, sincerity and integrity and I continue to be the recipient of the love, affection and friendship of those with whom I worked.
I would like to clarify that, in writing these articles, I am not driven by malice or hatred but I cannot avoid the anger at our community being used as doormat by unscrupulous politicians to further their personal interests.
I am sorry if the language I have used is strong; it only echoes the deep-seated pain that ravages my heart for our community in Fiji.
Few people know the depth of pain suffered by the community since the Girmit era, and to sit and watch their exploitation, by their own leaders, is simply criminal.
My pen will be my sword, used unsparingly against those, who have used our community to promote their personal interests, enriching themselves and leaving it to suffer in silence.
So where are we now? As we head down the home stretch of the 2000s the current decade, how will we in Fiji remember the period spanning January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009?
Internationally, the decade has been dominated by several wide-ranging topics, including international trade and a growing concern over energy supplies, the explosion in telecommunications, concerns with international terrorism, and the agreement among scientists that global warming is occurring.
For ordinary Fiji citizens I would say that two of the indelible influences of the decade on their lives have been digitality and coups.
Let me explain.
Digitality is used to mean the condition of living in a modern digital culture.
And yes, our coup culture needs least explaining, for the past eight years and definitely into the next year or so we have been living in an era influenced by military coups.
Firstly, last week's Digicel Fiji's launching of its initial investment of $115 million with a state-of-the-art network judging by the massive crowd turnout in Suva is the cutting edge of digitality along with the internet, emails, google, and weblogs.
For the first time last week, reliable nation-wide coverage and superior 24/7 customer care, fused with international pop culture.
For as it is today amongst our youths, near continuous contact with other people through cellphones is the "in" thing.
The much touted "third wave" information age has finally come crashing onto the shores of our three hundred odd islands with the deregulation of the telecommunications industry.
What then of our second influence of the 2000s in Fiji-coups? How does our coup culture fit into an age of democratisation.
In his 1992 celebrated book, 'The End of History and the Last Man' Francis Fukuyama argues that the advent of western liberal democracy may signal the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the final form of human government.
I quote, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".
Should we accept this argument given the preponderance of evidence globally, how then can we reconcile our military intervention into politics in a democratising and globalised world post cold war?
In again attempting to understand the one major influence in all our lives locally, the coup culture of the 2000s, I will bring a different perspective that of Postmodernism thinking. Postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, which was the basis of the attempt to describe a condition, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions (as in Giddens, 1990).
In Postmodernism contradictions thinking, one criticises the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself.
As such one aspect that has continued to baffle political observers of coups in Fiji has been the pro and anti-coup shifting alliances between the military and important civil actors since our first military intervention in May 1987.
Since then,coup apologists and anti coup proponents in propping up their sides have expounded explanations from the somewhat sublime to the ridiculous.
For at times, including those explanations put forward by academics, defy modern linear logic thinking.
One academic, Welch, even suggested that trying to find a solution to coups is futile as the intermingling of personal, corporate and civil society's motives are endless and sprouts a web like inter connectedness.
Hence for this decade I argue, with its chapter of coups and political chaos, can only be described in the context of a new paradigm shift that of postmodernism.
For as the interim Government is concerned its thinking stresses the irrationality of past governments, yet the same instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective.
Hence the recent utterance by the interim Prime Minister, that the illegality of the coup is irrelevant as nation building is what is more important has to be taken as postmodernism thinking and speak to be understood.
As one of the essential elements of Postmodernism is that it constitutes an attack against theory and methodology.
One can only hope that nation building for the future also means the institutionalising of liberal democracy without the military's overbearing influence.
With the close then of the decade beckoning what then of the military's exit strategy if ever?
Rabuka was saved because of the two big chiefs throwing him (and themselves) a life line. Speight was not as fortunate.
Wholly complicit in the 2006 coup,the interim Government not withstanding a presidential political forum positive outcome may have to consider alternative options and even explore postmodernism thinking.
As such Clapham and Philip (1985) rephrased the exit dilemma for military regimes as being to develop a mechanism for succession without jeopardising their own supreme position; they saw six likely alternative outcomes - handback, civilian renewal, authoritarian clientelism, factional clientelism, and military party state, and 'just another impasse' (as when the military, under pressure, hands power back to a weak civilian state).
Typically though, military personnel, having seized power, sought either to consolidate their position, penetrating civil society (sometimes setting up military-backed parties) and discouraging opposition, or to shift from a 'interim' role by restoring civilian governments while maintaining a guardian role and strengthening linkages with civilian politicians, business people, civil organisations and (in Fiji's case) sympathetic chiefs ideally with their vanua in tow.
Hence in conclusion looking at our present interim Government's political, social and economic re-engineering, efforts post 2000 and 2006 coups, by way of the charter, an optimist would see this as idolising a new secular trinity of tolerance-diversity-choice over lllegality in an age of digitality and postmodernism.
The views expressed in this article may not necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.