Freedom Socialist Bulletin • Number 37 • Winter/Spring 2007

Fiji strike vote brings hope for a breakthrough after four military coups

Fijian nurses voted to strike against proposed pay cuts. Photo from Fiji government webpage

On May 14 this year, Fiji marked the 20th anniversary of its first military coup. Two decades on, the country remains chronically unstable with workers and the poor forced to pay the price.

In December 2006 the Fiji military, citing government corruption, staged Fiji's fourth coup. On securing power, coup leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, issued invitations to join the unelected military government. The Fiji Labor Party's Mahendra Chaudhry — the Prime Minister ousted in the 2000 coup — quickly signed up to become finance minister. The Labor Party had polled 44% of the vote in the May 2006 election, claiming to be more responsible economic managers than ousted Prime Minister Qarase (pronounced "Larasay").

Chaudhry, who led Fiji's first public service strike in 1963 —was clearly useful to the military. He was given the task of introducing and selling a savage austerity budget. In March he announced a 5% pay cut for all public sector workers and a new enforced retirement age of 55. Education spending has been slashed by 4% and health spending by 3%. Chaudhry has been pleading with union leaders to support the interim government, arguing that the cost-cutting measures were necessary.

Members of Fiji's Confederation of Public Sector Unions responded with a vote to mandate union leaders to call a national strike. The vote to strike was 92% in favour among members of the Fiji Public Servants Association. Members of the post and telecommunication workers union voted 90% in favour of strike action. Nurses, teachers and air traffic controllers all voted in similar proportions for the strike.

Fiji's union leaders delayed acting on the overwhelming strike vote, preferring an attempt to broker a compromise deal with the military regime. The strike eventually went ahead, but after six days, they called it off, despite none of the strike's objectives being achieved.

Legacy of imperialism. Fiji is made up of 332 Islands and has a population of 906,000. In 1874, it became a British colony. Society was organised on a clan-based system and the majority of Indigenous Fijians were reluctant to leave their village communities. Deprived of a labour force for its plantations, Britain sought workers from elsewhere, and in 1879 began importing Indian indentured labourers to work the plantations. Over a period of 37 years, more than 60,000 were brought to Fiji. This practice continued until 1916, when pressure from the growing nationalist movement in India forced it to stop.

The traditional tribal structures of Fiji coexist awkwardly alongside a relatively developed capitalist economy. The largest industry is tourism. This is closely followed by the sugar, timber, gold and textiles industries.

Indigenous Fijians retain ownership of the vast majority of the land in Fiji. This land is then leased out. The economy is comprised of a large subsistence sector. More than two-thirds of the workforce, predominantly Indigenous Fijian, work in this sector, which is not integrated into the capitalist economy. A significant proportion of the Indo-Fijian population remain tenant sugar cane farmers.

Communities divided. Colonialism has left Fiji with significant ethnic tensions between the Indigenous community, which makes up 54% of the population and Indo-Fijian community (38%). However, both of these communities are also internally divided.

The Indigenous community is split between the tiny group of tribal chiefs who form an aristocracy and the vast majority who are "commoners." Indigenous Fijians predominate in the bureaucracy and make up 99% of the military. Among the organised working class, this group is concentrated in the mines, on the docks and in the public service.

In contrast, Indo-Fijians receive 70% of Fiji's personal income. However, there is a large income gap with many Indo-Fijians being extremely poor. Indo-Fijians own most local businesses and make up the majority of the organised working class, predominating in health, education, finance and the professions. Yet, although this community is the local force in business, foreign capital — particularly from Australia and New Zealand — is dominant.

A future for all Fijians? A significant development in Fijian politics was the formation of a multiracial labour party in 1985. Launched by the union movement in response to a wage freeze and other austerity measures, the party was built on a base of both Indo-Fijian unionists and urban Indigenous Fijian workers. Dominated by the union bureaucracy, its political program is standard social democratic reformism with a few demands designed to curb the most excessive power of the chiefs. In a country that is a classic example of combined and uneven development, solutions must come from the bottom with both Indigenous and Indo-Fijians uniting against both the capitalists and the chiefs.

The last two decades of instability prove that solutions for this deeply divided country cannot be provided by chiefs, bankers, colonels, judges, trade union officials wedded to capitalism or the imperialist masters in Canberra and Wellington.

The pressure is rising on the military regime to comply with the neoliberal agenda with economists and business tycoons saying Chaudhry did not go far enough with his recent austerity measures. They are calling for deeper cuts and a renewed program of privatisation.

Those who can are voting with their feet. Indo-Fijians were once a slight majority of the population, but this has changed. Since the 1987 coup, 70,000 people — mostly skilled and professional workers — have left the country, and 90% of these émigrés were Indo-Fijian. The health sector is suffering, due to significant emigration by doctors, nurses and other health professionals. Attacks on wages and cuts to the health budget will speed up the exodus. The Fiji Nurses Association says its members are among the poorest-paid workers, and a further 5% cut will cause many more to seek work overseas.

Meanwhile the union leaders — tied to the Fiji Labour Party and, by extension, the military regime — continue their efforts to broker a deal to avert the public sector strike. The regime has limited perks to offer and is using them to advance its interests. Felix Anthony, the National Secretary of the Fiji Trade Union Congress, was recently appointed the chair of the Board of Directors of Fiji Telecom. Anthony reciprocated by condemning the vote by public sector workers for strike action!

Neither the military, business interests based in Canberra and Wellington, the Fiji Labour Party or the Great Council of Chiefs can find solutions to Fiji's economic problems and ethnic tensions. The only way to solve Fiji's chronic problems is to unite workers and the poor across ethnic lines to fight for a socialist Fiji.

A program of reform based on tinkering around the edges of the system has proved incapable of holding together the Indo-Fijian and Indigenous Fijian masses. The Indo-Fijians cannot expect the Indigenous Fijian masses to fight with them against the party of the aristocratic chiefs unless the Indo-Fijian workers are also prepared to struggle against the capitalists — including the Indo-Fijian component. The overwhelming strike vote gave a strong message that Fijian workers want to fight. But the leadership of the unions and the Labour Party are becoming increasingly deferential to the demands of both the chiefs and the bosses. A new party based on a socialist program is what is needed to unite the Indigenous and Indo-Fijian masses — defy the conservative leadership, implement the strike vote and let the struggle blossom!

Alison Thorne