September 12, 2007

By Michael Field

Imagine if some chap came along and robbed your home, but in the act of doing so was caught.

In most parts of the world this would be regarded as a fair cop. Caught in the act. Off to jail you go.

But not so in Fiji and certainly not so in the complicated world of worthy lawyers.

Yes, back in December the soldiers were roaming the streets, pushing people around. Firing mortar bombs in the harbour and terrifying the populous, while at the same time issuing assorted demands to the elected government.

And on December 5 last year that same government folded and was taken over by the military.

I was there, I saw it. So did lots of other people. The burglar was witnessed in the act of looting the house.

"No," says the burglar, "you might have seen me steal and rob and smash, but it is for the court to decide."

The constitution has to be consulted, judges have to decide. What your saw is only what you think you saw. You might have thought it was burglary, err, a coup, but who are you? Are you a lawyer? A constitutional lawyer? A pet, military approved Judge of the Fiji High Court?

No?

You are only somebody who was there, who saw what you saw? Or thought you saw what you saw?

Let me tell you; what you saw matters not a jot; what matters is what the lawyers say what your saw.

First up in the Mad Hatter Tea Party is Shaista Shameem, the now military appointed ombudsman and head of the Fiji Human Rights Commission. She saws the law proves that what happened on December 5 last year was not a coup. (read her reports)  It was, she says, some kind of constitutional re-arrangement of positions at government level. Coups, it seems, involve only heads of state. Which may be good news in Thailand.

Now one can be quite generous at this point and say Shaista is mad. Her eminent sister Nazahat Shameem actually used to say that. But as both sisters have joined Voreqe Bainimarama's camp now, they are solid in support of each other - although has anybody noticed that Nazahat has got her children out of Fiji now. Interesting testament of faith in Fiji that.

But no, Shaista is not mad. In fact she is quite calculating and has thrown her lot in with the coup. She believes in it and believes (to use George Speight's term) in "the cause". She and the whole little coterie which includes cousin military blessed attorney general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. He has the oddest of washer room habits.... But that's another story.

Bainiamama, Sayed-Khaiyum and the Shameem Sisters have been caught in the act of burglary. They smashed and grabbed and while they were not caught, everybody saw them do it.

Except, well. You know. What we saw was not what we saw and Shaista has advised the United Nations that "it wasn't like that at all".

Its all sad enough, but from New Zealand today comes lordly Sir Geoffrey Palmer,  Helen Aikman and Alison Quentin-Baxter (full statement). In a worthy piece of Constitutional Law 101 they actually engage in debate with Shaista, give her the credit of some kind of credibility but transforming a crime - an actual crime - into a discussion on legal tautology.

No one invited Palmer and Quentin-Baxter into the discussion, they heard the world "constitution" and thought that this was their business.

Actually, the fact is that the Fiji coup is not some Supreme Court point of law; it's a cheap and nasty street crime, of the kind that washes up in a Monday morning low court where the people in the dock wear suicide suits and bare feet, and get lawyers off a roster - if any lawyers at all.

Palmer and Quentin-Baxter have honoured Fiji's coup plotters with lordly debate; what they needed was the 'cuffs and a night in the cell and the possibility some low grade lawyer might get them bail in the morning.

Copyright: Michael Field