Yellow Ribbon Campaign (Fiji) - The Mara Family

The Mara Family

The children of the late President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who was deposed during the upheaval, have strongly opposed the legislation.

• Mara's eldest child, Adi Ateca Ganilau, who is married to Ratu Epeli Ganilau (q.v.) said on 25 June that the Mara family was opposed to the legislation and would not accept any compensation offered them by the proposed commission. She called the bill "a forced idea," said that it would set "a dangerous precedent," and questioned government's motives for promoting it. "If the move to reconcile and compensate came from the coup perpetrators maybe, I would have given it some thought but coming from the Government is hard to accept," Ganilau said.

Ganilau said that the government's previous attempt at a national reconciliation, during Fiji Week (4–11 October 2004 had been a failure, and thought it "ridiculous" that the government was now trying another scheme to "excuse people involved in the coup." This, she said, was "not on." She also complained that the government had shown no interest in including the Mara family in the reconciliation process. "The hurt is still with us, something we do not openly discuss but this government has not attempted to include us in any of their reconciliation process," Ganilau said.

In a statement on 24 July, Ganilau charged that the coup had not occurred spontaneously but had been "premeditated, well planned with all the personal graffiti being churned out through government offices and business outlets, ludicrous paraphernalia designed to malign the former President's family and character." She accused some members of the 2000 and present Senate of openly telling the public then that the government would soon be changed. "So what was the Fijian cause all about?" she asked rhetorically.

Following the decision of the Great Council of Chiefs on 27 July to support the bill, Ganilau said on 30 July that she and her family would continue to oppose it, as it amounted to legalizing the overthrow of her father.

• Ganilau's younger sister, Senator Adi Koila Nailatikau, who was held as a hostage by the perpetrators of the coup, added her own voice to the opposition to the legislation on 7 May 2005, saying that if her father were alive, he would not approve of interfering with the course of justice, and that unless all perpetrators of the coup were brought to justice, "Fiji cannot put to rest the ghosts of the coup." She also suggested that if the government was serious about reconciliation, it should have done something about it while her father was alive. "For all I know this has come very late in the day and it's a bit too late," Nailatikau said.

Renewing her attack on the legislation on 20 July, Nailatikau accused the government of neglecting "urgent and realistic issues" like squatters, unemployment, poverty, and road conditions, in order to concentrate on a bill which was biased towards the perpetrators of the coup rather than the victims. "This Bill is lenient towards the perpetrators while the victims get nothing," she said. She confirmed that she would attend a meeting of the Lau Provincial Council, set for 25 July. The Council already knew her views, she said, and she would reiterate them in the presence of the Council members if asked to do so. She accused the government of misleading the Fijian people, who had been given to believe that the legislation would strengthen indigenous power, adding that she had personally confronted someone who was distributing leaflets, which she said promoted discrimination against other races.

Nailatikau also challenged the government to say why it could not function without the coup perpetrators. Joji Kotobalavu, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's office, reacted by asking, "What kind of question is that?"

Speaking on behalf of the family, Nailatikau again condemned the legislation on 24 July, saying that it was tantamount to supporting the overthrow of their father. Nailatikau said the bill went against everything her father had believed in. "I recall what the late Tui Nayau said at his last Lau Provincial Council meeting on Ono, Lau, in October 2000: 'There can be no reconciliation or peace until the coup investigations are completed and the rule of law is upheld'", she said. Her father had stood for the rule of law, unity, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence, she said. His policies had "brought peace and unity to the different races of Fiji."

Nailatikau said that some government authorities were "hell-bent" on pursuing the amnesty clauses of the bill, thereby creating the impression that there was some connection between the coup perpetrators and themselves. She demanded to know what the connection was.

In the same statement, Nailatikau spoke highly of Military commander Frank Bainimarama (q.v.), another strident opponent of the legislation. "The commander is doing a wonderful job because he is not only speaking in his personal capacity as Commander," she said. "He is speaking as the Commander of the Fiji battalion in Fiji and those serving overseas, and he has the support of the silent majority," Nailatikau said.

Following a vote of the Lau Provincial Council to endorse the bill on 25 July, Nailatikau was at first too disappointed to speak to the media. She later said that the decision was "regretable and unfortunate" given the seriousness of the crimes committed in 2000. She said that the release of coup perpetrators could not be condoned by right-thinking and law-abiding citizens. "To put it in simple English, you break the law, you commit a crime, you do the time," she said. Nobody was above the law, she maintained, and it was the duty of the government and the people to uphold it. Nailatikau reiterated earlier statements that endorsing the bill amounted to approving the overthrow of her father, and expressed her belief that the Provincial Council members who had voted in favour of the legislation had not understood it – an assertion promptly rejected by Prime Minister Qarase, also a Lauan, who claimed that most people were well informed on the bill and supported it because they did understand it and agreed with it.