With its suspension from the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum last week, Fiji has been pushed yet another dangerous step closer to the precipice. The suspension automatically kicked in as the deadline imposed by the Forum nations’ leaders on the Fijian military leadership to come up with a schedule for holding elections in 2009 expired on May 1. The deadline was conveyed to Fiji at the special Forum leaders meeting held in Port Moresby in January.

The suspension – a first in the nearly four decade history of the Forum – effectively precludes Fiji from participation from all the Forum’s activities and any international aid programmes that are channeled through it. And it has the potential to affect not just the functioning and the programmes of the Forum but also many of the organisations that are linked to it.

The Forum is headquartered in Suva and the situation is quite a like the United Nations being located in the United States. In effect, therefore, the Forum has ended up suspending its host nation – the UN suspending the US as it were.

As well as the Forum, Fiji also houses the headquarters and nodal offices of several of the CROP (Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific) organisations that are engaged in development work across the Pacific states in activities ranging from education, fisheries, geosciences, environment, telecommunications, energy, media and tourism. These organisations employ thousands of people from across the region and beyond with most employees of the Forum enjoying a tax-free status in Fiji.

The University of the South Pacific is the biggest in the CROP group with some 18,000 students from almost all the Forum nations. During the 2000 George Speight led coup, regional governments had to cough up considerable amounts from their overstretched budgets to evacuate their students when the university was shut down.

Suspending Fiji from the Forum has the potential to disrupt the region in several ways. It is not surprising therefore that there were reports on the eve of the suspension that the President of the Republic of Kiribati had threatened to cancel his country’s membership of the Forum if Fiji was suspended.

Kiribati has a lot to be worried. Like its neighbour Tuvalu with which it has historical ties and also shares with it the effects of sea level rise, its only link with the outside world as also another distant part of its own territory is via Fiji. Two weekly flights from Nadi connect it with the outside world and its own Christmas Island several time zones away to the east.

President Tong told me in Kiribati last October how much he was worried about the situation in Fiji. “Economic problems in Fiji have a severe effect here in Kiribati and if a suspension happens, we can’t say how bad it can get for us.” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia expressed similar sentiments in Auckland.

These concerns were raised at the Port Moresby meet and the New Zealand and Australian Governments are reported to have assured Kiribati and Tuvalu that their fears had been taken on board and would be addressed should the need arise.

It is unlikely that the Fijian leadership would retaliate to the suspension in a manner that would affect these small Pacific states. But as President Tong feared, Fiji’s worsening economy would have its ripple effect not just on Kiribati and Tuvalu but also across the region as also pointed out by University of the South Pacific professor of economics Biman Prasad.

Meanwhile other recent action to step up the pressure on the Fijian leadership could bring in new worries for the people of Fiji. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plea to the UN not to employ Fijian soldiers, if heeded, could see the comparatively highly paid Fijian soldiers’ early return to their barracks in Fiji.

Their situation could well be compared to the battle weary and psychologically scarred US soldiers from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq returning home to recession ridden small town America where there have been increasing fears of them joining right wing causes, particularly in the Midwestern states.

Frustration at having been robbed at the opportunity to earn high incomes could easily fan disaffection within the ranks and could well lend credence to rumour about such undercurrents already making the rounds. Such an eventuality could spiral into a situation that would be disastrous for not just Fiji but much of the Pacific neighbourhood and needs to be avoided at all costs.

The Forum nations need to engage with the Fijian leadership now more than ever. Though there is polarisation within the Forum members with deep support for Fiji from the Melanesian block – Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, PNG – and strong criticism from a country like Samoa (though Polynesian Tonga and the Cook Islands have shown some sympathy), it is highly unlikely that there will be a split in the Forum.

New Zealand and Australia need to stay in the background and let Pacific leaders engage with Commodore Bainimarama, who must be prevailed upon by these leaders to restore civil liberties and media freedom as a prerequisite to any engagement as a first step rather than harp on a date for elections as a pre condition. The situation needs to be tacked one step at a time.

What is most important is engagement. Though it is not known what exactly is their tack, the spirit behind Maori Party leader Tariana Turia’s offer to engage with the Fijian leadership must be commended and encouraged. 
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First appeared in the New Zealand Herald