Fiji mulls next move as former PM told to go

Fiji mulls next move as former PM told to go

SUVA (Agencies): Fiji's ousted prime minister was under growing pressure on Tuesday not to seek reinstatement as the interim government considered its response to a court ruling that it is illegal.

The cabinet met on Tuesday and later briefed President Ratu Josefa Iloilo on possible options in the wake of the court ruling. Iloilo and Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase have said they would abide by a ruling restoring the multiracial 1997 Constitution, abandoned after last year's coup.

The Fiji Appeal Court last week ruled that Qarase's interim government, imposed by the military following the coup, was illegal, and said that Iloilo must recall parliament and vacate his office by March 15.

Troops ringed the government building in Suva during the cabinet meeting in a show of force by the military.

Fiji Radio, citing sources, reported that government lawyers told the cabinet that it must resign, but it may be able to stay on in a caretaker role. The cabinet was expected to meet again on Wednesday, the station said.

The government did not make any statement on the meeting. With no timetable for restoring democracy, former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry's five-party People's Coalition was in disarray.

Three of the parties said on Monday they support a government of national unity, despite Chaudhry's opposition. Chaudhry's Fiji Labor Party was one of the three parties backing a unity government.

There is a growing belief in the coalition that an indigenous Fijian at the head of a government of national unity is needed to unite the ethnically divided nation. Chaudhry was the country's first ethnic Indian prime minister before being deposed by nationalist gunmen in the May coup.

Ethnic Indians make up 44 percent of the population. Indigenous Fijians account for 51 percent. Relations crumbled as Indians gained more economic and political power, culminating with Chaudhry's 1999 election.

Chaudhry admitted on Tuesday there were four other coalition candidates for his job, but maintained the alliance was not disintegrating. He said the leadership should be determined when parliament is recalled.

"The coalition is intact, we have had some problems on this score, and the decision is that when parliament is recalled this matter will be settled," he said.

Pressure for Chaudhry to step aside is growing, from within and outside Fiji.

Former deputy prime minister, Tupeni Baba, a leading candidate to replace Chaudhry, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Tuesday the coalition has decided Chaudhry must go.

"Mahendra Chaudhry has been found by people to be totally unsuitable for governing this country," Baba said. "They have called for his stepping down, not only from our party but from everywhere."

A report in The Fiji Times newspaper on Tuesday said army commander Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama told the National Security Council that Chaudhry was a national security threat. An army spokesman said the report was not the military's official view.

New Zealand's High Commissioner to Suva, Tia Barrett, told Radio New Zealand on Tuesday the situation in the South Pacific nation is increasingly unstable.

Chaudhry's determination to stay on, "has raised a great deal of concern within the public, because they fear this could bring a backlash from the Fijian population and particularly the nationalists who have made it very clear, publicly, that they don't wish to see Chaudhry back in the seat," he said.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday his government would lift economic sanctions imposed on Fiji after the coup if leaders moved quickly toward establishing a national unity government.

However, Downer warned that more sanctions could be imposed if the Great Council of Chiefs, an important group of traditional leaders, did not uphold the rule of law.

"If they decide on top of all the things that have happened that they're going to flout the rule of law then obviously it would generate a very negative reaction from us," Downer told Australian Broadcasting Radio. "We wouldn't sit on our hands in a situation like that."

In a new development, Chaudhry conceded here on Tuesday that new general elections may be necessary to bring Fiji back to constitutional rule.

Elected as Fiji's first Indian prime minister in May, 1999, and deposed by a coup a year later, Chaudhry said he believed an election as early as possible may now be the only solution to constitutional crisis.