Meeting seen as symbolic

FIJI – This week’s meeting between the prime ministers of Fiji and New Zealand is hugely symbolic and significant according to an academic specialising in regional security.

John Key flies to Suva on Thursday, the first visit by a New Zealand prime minister since the 2006 coup.

Key said the time was right for a visit two years after the coup leader Frank Bainimarama was democratically elected.

A senior lecturer in Security Studies at Massey University Anna Powles said the two leaders haven’t always seen eye to eye and the meeting was all about resetting the relationship..

“I’m sure that there are issues that Key will bring to the table – business, private sector investment, but I think that Key will be mindful of not putting too many demands because that could potentially set the relationship back.”

The Fiji Labour Party has called on New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key, who is due in Suva tomorrow, not to apply double standards of democracy.

Key said there were quite a few countries that had a form of democracy he wouldn’t see as perfect, but added that his visit to Fiji was to show support for the restoration of democracy.

The FLP said this implied that for Key anything short of the standard for New Zealand was quite acceptable.

In a statement, the FLP leader, Mahendra Chaudhry, said Fiji continued to have autocratic rule behind the strappings of democracy, which made its democracy a farce.

He said Fiji’s media was so cowed and intimidated by the regime’s army-backed top guns and its repressive Media Decree that it was often scared to run articles criticising the government and its policies.

Chaudhry, who was the prime minister until he was ousted in the 2000 coup, served as the military regime’s finance minister after the 2006 coup.

In the last election, his party won no seats.

In general, the New Zealand prime minister’s visit to Suva over the next two days is being welcomed by people in Fiji.

The deputy leader of the opposition in Fiji, Biman Prasad, said the visit was a chance for Fijians to press home their country was not out of dictatorship yet.

“They will see this visit as an opportunity for Fiji and New Zealand to strengthen their ties but they will also be looking at the messages to this government that they cannot continue to muzzle the opposition, they cannot continue with the dictatorship that they have continued with over the last two years.” - RNZI