From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 15, no. 3, September 2000.

Lopeti Senituli, the former Director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, the Secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, was in Fiji when George Speight and his armed men entered parliament on May 19 and held hostage the Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his cabinet members.

Lopeti, who has been an activist for decolonisation, and indigenous rights of various indigenous people in the Pacific region, believed that the recent coup in Fiji was inevitable.

“I have said that the fire will go up among the Spear-head Group countries of Melanesia—Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomons, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia. I said that because of their multi-ethnic societies, and even though they have the best democratic constitutions in the world, unfortunately these constitutions are not backed-up by government policy to bring about national unity,” he said.

Senituli quoted a Russian playwright who said that if in the first act you introduce a gun, then before the final act the gun must be fired. “Rabuka introduced the gun in 1987, and from then on Fiji has gone down that road, and to my knowledge if George Speight had not done it someone else would have done it.

“Without justifying the coup, a number of things should not have happened. It is a known fact that the 1997 constitution was not ratified by the people of Fiji. Out of the 14 provinces, nine rejected the draft constitution, but Rabuka was able to convince parliament to adopt the constitution. The second mistake was the Fiji government adopting the alternative voting system, thereby weakening the Fijian position because there were too many Fijian political parties, while the Indians had only two parties to choose from.”

Senituli said that Prime Minister  Chaudhry also made a big mistake by appointing his son as his personal secretary. “As a Trade Unionist and someone who has been fighting against nepotism all his life it was a bad move.” Senituli said that the other mistake that Chaudhry made was that he was still talking and behaving like a Trade Unionist, but not the Prime Minister of Fiji, “and he also rushed into to deal with the land issue, something that he should have acted on cautiously.”

Senituli was a founding member of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, which was formed in Fiji in 1975. In 1987 Senituli became the Director of the Pacific Concern Resource Centre, and set up its headquarters in Suva, Fiji. The PCRC is the secretariat arm of the NFIP. Lopeti left the PCRC at the end of May to take up the directorship of the Tongan Human Rights and Democracy Movement.