July 2, 2007

By Michael Field

      In a fit of unsophisticated petulance, New Zealand now stands revealed as a bully in the South Pacific.

      New measures announced by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has explicitly targeted Fiji’s powerless people.

      In an astonishing move, the Labour Party and its New Zealand First Consort have targeted people who might, for very little money, come here to pick our fruit or do the menial work no one else wants to do.

      This, so that New Zealand can get even with Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and his coup regime whose latest sin is to have kicked out the New Zealand High Commissioner. About she did not also use my fate in Fiji – expulsion – to justify this revengeful new act.

      New Zealand’s sanctions were already tough – although they did not so explicitly include the poor and the powerless. This is a new wrinkle. New Zealand was in line with Australia and the United States, but Ms Clark and Mr Peters have chosen, not to turn the other cheek, but to fire shots back.

      The expulsion of Michael Green was madness; it was silly and counterproductive.

      Now New Zealand has validity the Fijian action; Bainimarama was right in expelling him. New Zealand was not a friend, New Zealand was a bully all along.

      To be a bully you do not necessarily have to act with violence or malice; sometimes bullies come about through carelessness in which the big bully simply creates the tone and mood of threat, of hectoring, of domination.

      Yes, New Zealand can do this to Fiji; but did we have too?

      Do we look bigger, more moral because not only did we not accept Bainimarama’s insult, but we struck back?

      Undoubtedly the coup was wrong, illegal, violent, nasty and militarily corrupt. Bainimarama is a man of very limited intellect; the army he leads is moronic and crude.  I doubt that a majority of the country even support him, although their was a kind of mad revenge at the time of the coup from some communities. His complete failure to produce evidence of high level corruption or of electoral fraud shows his coup was self-aggrandisement and personal power with a gun. The taste of dust kicked up as he ran away from his soldiers under siege in November 2000 lingers on.

      But will banning poor Fijians from picking Marlborough grapes change any of that.

      What needed to happen was a grander, cleverer act; New Zealand could have won Fijian hearts and minds with a noble, selfless gesture that flew in the face of the stupidity of Green’s banishment. There is so much need in Fiji among people far removed from the political madness; why didn’t Wellington so something clever … send a team of doctors to help the rural villages for a couple of months. Or fly a bunch of sick people here for treatment.

      Just do something that shows democracy and justice and respect for law does not mean a schoolboy scrap over diplomatic status, that New Zealand values mean decency and help for our neighbours.

      No one in Fiji will be much impressed by Ms Clark and Mr Peters today.

      They could have been, but they had petty agendas and scores to settle instead. 

Copyright: Michael Field