Discussion Forum
What factors led to Fiji’s 2000 Coup? Identify the role played by George Speight during the Coup.
The 2000 coup was the fourth Coup that had occurred in the country and there had been several factors that led to the outbreak of the coup:
- The General Elections of 1999 was one of the major reasons of the Coup. This was due to the fact that the Fiji Labor Party won and gained power with the first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister. The electoral policies that Chaudhry made to the people of Fiji began to haunt him as they came into power. The electoral policies includes: introducing of a minimum wage, lower rates of interest on housing loans, and provide social security for the elderly. Thus, this was one of the factors that led to the coup.
- The appearance of movement and change was impressive, but it also embroiled the government in a hugely counterproductive tussle with the media. So the decisions that were made had in turn affected the public as well.
- Favoritism was seen to be practiced by the government in control as Chaudhry appointed his own son whom is not a civil servant as his personal assistant on the public pay roll. Therefore, this had increased the suspicions of the public on what the government is doing.
There was also a major role that was being played by George Speight in the Coup. He was fourty five years old at that time and was the principal motivator for the coup. Behind the fierce nationalistic feelings that he claimed that he possessed for the nation, he still had his own grievances against the government of the Fijian cause and said that he was a savior of the Indigenous race. Thus, due to his influence he was deemed as a major influence and he was widely supported by various groups who was seeking revenge against the current government at that time.
Tutorial Question
What do you understand of the Hostage Crisis and how it was resolved?
The term refers to a person a person seized or held as security for the fulfillment of a condition. On 19 May a group of hardline Fijian nationalists led by George Speight, marched into the parliament buildings in Suva and took the elected Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and some of the members of his cabinet hostage for 56 days, throwing the country into chaos. There were 50 cabinet ministers. They were held hostage in the parliament. It was a bloodless coup. On Thursday morning, the rebels tearfully hugged their hostages as they freed them from their long imprisonment in the nations’ Parliament complex. Later in the day the Great Council of Chiefs, Fiji’s traditional power, elected Ratu Josefa Iloilo as the country’s new president. The council made its choice under the gun of a wave of civil disturbances that seemed to be spinning out of control.