Yellow Ribbon Campaign (Fiji) - The Fiji Labour Party

The Fiji Labour Party

Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, whose government was toppled in the putsch, alleged that the Commission would be a cover for pardoning members of the present government who were implicated in the coup. Chaudhry insisted that one set of rules should apply to everyone, regardless of their position in society, and regardless of their motives for having broken the law. Reacting to Prime Minister Qarase's assertion on 20 May that the government did not need to consult anybody about the legislation, Chaudhry said that the Prime Minister's attitude was arrogant and that he could expect little cooperation in return. He further stated that granting amnesty to the perpetrators of the 1987 coups was a mistake, which should not be repeated this time. "The trust and confidence we showed then was sadly displaced. This time around, we must take a hard line attitude to those who think they can overthrow a democratically-elected government with impunity. We have to stamp out this coup-culture that has developed in Fiji." He accused the government of failing to pool the people's talents together in an effort to reconstruct their shattered dreams, trust and confidence.

On 24 June, Chaudhry called on Prime Minister Qarase to resign, following "serious allegations" from Roman Catholic Archbishop Petero Mataca that the Prime Minister had misled a delegation of church leaders on 2 May about the true contents of the legislation. "It is disgraceful that the Prime Minister should deceive Church leaders to get their support for the Bill. He then had the audacity to mislead the nation by claiming that the Bill had the support of Christians," Chaudhry said.

Chaudhry issued a warning to the Fijian chiefs on 17 July, saying that the government could not be trusted to mislead them, having already deceived church leaders about the nature and purpose of the bill. He told them to be on their guard, and to listen to their people. Thousands of people in the provinces, chiefly support notwithstanding, had signed the petition against the legislation, he said.

Labour Party Deputy Leader Poseci Bune said on 11 July that he would not participate in the consultations on the bill in his Province of Macuata. He said that petition signature tallies showed that a majority of his fellow ethnic Fijians opposed the legislation, and that they were being cynically manipulated by the Provincial Councils and by the government, which had chosen to consult the Provincial Councils ahead of the Great Council of Chiefs.

Krishna Datt, a Labour Party parliamentarian and former minister, said that the government was ignoring the feelings of the people worst affected by the coup, and that "any move forward would have to be founded on a solid foundation of understanding and a deeply and genuinely felt sense of forgiveness." Instead of trying to impose its will, the government should enter into a dialogue with the Opposition on this matter, he said.

Senivalati Naitala, a Labour Party member and a Ra Fiji Cane Growers Councillor, said on 11 July that the bill was a recipe for terrorism and would be a direct threat to politicians and diplomats. He called for the amnesty clause to be struck from the legislation in order to honestly promote reconciliation and unity in Fiji.

On 28 July, Chaudhry strongly criticized the Great Council of Chiefs for endorsing the legislation, and said that his party would continue to oppose it. It was for the perpetrators of the coup to ask for forgiveness, he said, not for the government to initiate such a move. "It is wrong for others to be asking for forgiveness on behalf of those who had committed the crime because it is not right," he said.

On 2 August, Chaudhry suggested that he and his party might be prepared to support the bill if it was substantially rewritten. He insisted that there could be no reconciliation without truth-telling, and that the bill as it was currently written did not require coup perpetrators seeking amnesty to tell all they knew about the coup or who was behind it. "Without divulging the information they have, there can not really be any reconciliation. It will merely be a vehicle for them to escape justice as is the provision in the current Bill," Chaudhry said.

Chaudhry also renewed his criticism of the country's fourteen provincial councils and of the Great Council of Chiefs. He said that their decision to endorse the legislation had not done justice to the indigenous people, and that they should be held accountable.

In a Parliamentary debate on 5 August, Labour MP Pratap Chand revealed that his party had initially offered to cooperate in the drafting of the bill, but that Prime Minister Qarase had rebuffed their offer, saying that it would be "too time consuming." The Opposition had wanted to negotiate the matter during the Tanaloa talks (a series of negotiations between the government and Opposition, held under the auspices of the University of Hawaii throughout 2004), Chand said, but the government had instead come up with its own version. The Opposition wanted a reconciliation bill that was victim-oriented, he said, rather than one that was perpetrator-oriented, and accused the government of violating its own principles.

Chaudhry followed Chand's line on 14 August when he confirmed a willingness to negotiate with the Prime Minister, but only through the venue of the Tanaloa talks. He said this in response to recent statements by the Prime Minister that the door was still open for the Leader of the Opposition to participate in the final drafting of the bill. Chaudhry said that if Prime Minister Qarase was serious about negotiation, he should withdraw the bill pending agreement on its clauses. He alleged that the government had had the bill drafted secretly by a law firm in Melbourne, Australia. "He (the Prime Minister) should be genuine in his invitation and not play devious games as he did over the multi-party Cabinet issue," Chaudhry said, a reference to the three-year negotiations, punctuated by numerous legal appeals and counter-appeals, over the formation of a multi-party cabinet, negotiations which the Opposition claims the government conducted in bad faith.

The Prime Minister responded on 16 August that he was always willing to talk with the Leader of the Opposition, but that all preconditions must be dropped. Chaudhry's demands that the bill be withdrawn until a consensus version could be produced, and that it should be negotiated through the venue of the Tanaloa talks – which he wrote off as a "failure" – were unacceptable to him. "Now this is not a trade union. We are running a government, and if he wants to come in engage the Government in discussion on this very important issue, he must come in without any pre-conditions," Qarase said.

Labour Senator Anand Singh told the Senate on 26 August that the legislation was an attempt to amend the Constitution without following the proper procedures. The bill undermined the human rights provisions of the Constitution, he said, and also violated six international laws. These laws, according to him, are the Bill of Rights, Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Race Discrimination (CERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR).

On 6 September Chaudhry reiterated his view that there should be no forgiveness for anybody who was involved in the 2000 coup. He said that the Labour Party had been forcibly removed from office twice, and wanted justice.

In talks with Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon the next day, Chaudhry called on the Commonwealth of Nations to suspend Fiji from membership if it passed the legislation. "We cannot have a Bill that will be an endorsement for terrorism and lawlessness in this country," he said.

Labour Party Senator Anand Singh said on 8 September that he had raised the bill at a workshop of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which was holding its annual conference in Nadi. A delegate from Ghana had revealed that a similar bill had been introduced in his country, Singh said, but opposition from a majority of the population had forced its withdrawal.

On 30 September, Chaudhry said that the FLP would continue to campaign against the bill, both locally and internationally. Told by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that Prime Minister Qarase had assured him that the bill would be amended, Chaudhry said that he would wait and see, and would continue to oppose the bill in the meantime. He reiterated this stance on 7 October, rejecting a compromise mooted by Prime Minister Qarase two days earlier, but offering a bargain of his own: if the bill was withdrawn, the FLP would provide the government with the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to amend the constitution and enact a number of land reforms. He repeated his stance yet again on 26 October, saying that a legal challenge to the legislation was in the pipeline.