By Michael Field

Fiji's constitutional human rights guardian has decided the Pacific nation did not have a coup last year or in 2000 but in a paper to the United Nations claims Australia has had eight coups.

   Fiji Human Rights Commission (FHRC) director Shaista Shameem today released an opinion she sent to the UN Human Rights Commission outlining why they believe that deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's human rights had not been breached.

   Her reading of history and the law will startle critics of FHRC who have accused it of backing the military overthrow of the Qarase Government last December.

   Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama mounted his coup in a bid to "clean-up" the Qarase Government. Those events and the George Speight take over of Parliament in 2000 are regarded as coups, as are Sitiveni Rabuka's two 1987 coups.

   But Dr Shameem has argued that Fiji President Josefa Iloilo remained in power last December and so it was not a coup.

   "Our own investigations revealed that the President was confronted with a number of constitutional dilemmas as he attempted to steer the country through a turbulent political period," she said.

   Mr Qarase was acting unilaterally and had kept Mr Iloilo "in the dark about the looming presence of the Australian naval taskforce just outside Fiji waters in late November."

   Nor was the president told that Mr Qarase had asked Australia and New Zealand for military intervention.

   Dr Shameem said the Australian warships had at least 100 soldiers on board and they were making forays into Fiji waters. "Australian SAS had their leave cancelled and a Sydney-based commando task force placed on standby."

   The president, she said, then removed Mr Qarase from office and the Commodore took over. This was all within the constitution, she argued, which provided for constitutional sovereign power.

   Legally a coup meant the removal of the "essence" of state power, notably the head of state, not the head of government. Governors general in Australia had removed leaders and none of those events were ever called coups. Fiji had not lost its president.

   "Indeed, we can safely say that Fiji has had only one 'coup', that of September 1987. The 'takeovers' of May 1987, May 2000, and December 2006 were either not sufficient (May 1987 and May 2000), or not designed (December 2006) to dislodge that 'small but critical segment of state apparatus', which is the Constitution/ Head of State."

   She said it was "legally wrong" to refer to events as Fiji's fourth coup.

   "If a 'coup' is merely a dismissal of a government by a Head of State, we could then, with some confidence, assert the proposition that Australia has experienced at least eight 'coups' since 1907- a surprising record."

Copyright: Michael Field