By Verenaisi Raicola

Claims about "national security" allow the military to be secretive and cover up unethical behaviour or simple incompetence, says a political scientist at the Australian National University, Peter Larmour.

In a report published by the East West Centre, Larmour said the Fiji military faced a different set of corruption risks compared to other state agencies. The army's top-down system that enforced high standards of personal behaviour on members made criticism of senior officers difficult.

Larmour, a former consultant on governance issues in Oceania, analysed the vices and virtues of anti-corruption campaigns and how Fiji's interim military government under Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama approached it.

Military spokesman Major Neumi Leweni could not be contacted for a comment on the report yesterday.

Lamour found how personal and regional loyalties tied units together in combat and how it made them favour their own, resisting oversight.

The military has complicated dealings with a few suppliers of weapons, uniforms and vehicles, making it highly vulnerable to procurement scandals.

These risks were aggravated and new ones introduced by the expanded role the military took against crime.

A military survey prior to the 2006 coup found the army came out somewhere in the middle in terms of perceptions of corruption.

"It was generally seen as less corrupt than the media but more corrupt than NGOs (Tebbutt Research 2006).

Larmour says in its pure form a military coup displaces civilians with soldiers in top positions but the government otherwise continues as before.

"In Fiji's case the RFMF got more deeply involved in sensitive agencies and police work. Commander Esala Teleni, for example, was made deputy commissioner to the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption before being appointed police commissioner," he said.

Major Leweni was assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture, before being sent on a diplomatic mission to China and later posted to the Ministry of Information.

Larmour says the clean up campaign generates new challenges to its own legality and claims for compensation over maltreatment as people "remain guilty until proven innocent".

"So a wall of cases is likely to move forward into the legal system while the LAWASIA report shows the high court is divided and the TI report shows there are concerns about corruption in the magistrates court," Larmour said. FT Online/Pacific Media Watch, 02/12/08.