SOUTH PACIFIC: Copycat Coup in Solomon Islands Tests Democracy

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY, Jun 9 2000 (IPS) - The copycat coup attempt in the Solomon Islands on Monday may well mean that the apparently successful takeover in neighbouring Fiji has become a model for other countries in the South Pacific region.

In a move believed to have been sparked by the armed insurrection led by businessman George Speight in Fiji some three weeks ago, gunmen of the Malaitu Eagle Force (MEF) put Solomon Islands Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa’alu under house arrest on Jun 5 and demanded his resignation.

After Ulufa’alu’s seizure, Nori went on national radio to say that the aim of the MEF is to restore law and order and confidence in the government, although critics see him as a political opportunist. Nori is a long-term political rival of the premier, known to be a fiery, outspoken character.

If small armed groups are able to remove democratically elected governments with such ease in the South Pacific — where ethnic rivalries and land right conflicts exist in many other island states such as Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Vanuatu and New Caledonia — the region may be in for a period of political turmoil.

Perhaps sensing his country could be the next target, Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Mekere Morautu was quick to condemn the coup attempt in the Solomon Islands, a 28,900 sq km group of islands with 400,000 people.

“Papua New Guinea is committed to democratic and representative government,” said Marautu. “Individuals or groups who are unhappy with government policies and actions have, like every other person, legal means to effect legitimate change. They should use them.”

Papua New Guinea is dealing with long-running conflict in Bougainville island, one based on both ethnicity and indigenous land rights. Bougainvillians are not part of the central government in Port Moresby, and southern highlanders are unhappy with being left out of the power structure in the capital.

In New Caledonia, the indigenous kanaks are divided but there is a strong militant wing which could take power and take over the power- sharing government of kanaks and French settlers in Noumea.

Vanuatu, for its part, is faced with tension between the French speakers and English speakers in the island nation.

“Coups are clearly catching,” observed Rowan Callick, South Pacific analyst of the ‘Australian Financial Review’. “The perpetrators in the Solomon Islands would have been following, enthralled, the failure of the Fiji authorities to get a grip there.”

The similarities with Fiji however may stop there.

In Fiji there are two distinct ethnic groups competing with each other, the Indian descendants of indentured labourers and indigenous Fijians. Speight claims he launched the coup on behalf of indigenous Fijians discriminated against by a government led by an Indian Fijian.

In the Solomon Islands, the people of the two camps look the same, are both of Polynesian stock and speak an identical language. So what are they fighting each other for?

A so-called ethnic conflict focused on inter-island migration and land rights has been raging in the islands for almost 18 months, and has claimed more than 50 lives.

The Soloman Islands capital Honiara is located in Guadalcanal island, but the public service, the police and the paramilitary service and the government is dominated by migrants from adjoining Malaita island. This has created resentment among the Guadalcanal people, most of whom remain poor and marginalised.

Guadalcanal leaders have demanded that the capital be moved off the island and that the island be paid compensation for people murdered by Malaitans.

The question of indigenous Guadalcanal land rights has existed since independence in 1978, but successive governments have largely ignored it.

Guadalcanal provincial premier Ezekiel Alebua revived this issue in 1998, demanding a 10 dollar tax from every non-Guadalcanal islander and compensation for the 25 Guadalcanal people killed by Malaitans since independence.

These calls have been instrumental in the growth of a shadowy guerrilla group which emerged in December 1998 called the Guadalcanal Revolutionary Army (GRA), which raided a police armoury soon after its formation and used the seized arms to train themselves in jungles.

In June last year, Prime Minister Ulufa’alu announced that the government would give 500,000 U.S. dollars to the Guadalcanal provincial government as compensation “in recognition of the social impacts Guadalcanal has to bear by hosting the national capital and major development activities”.

Also in June, GRA killed several Malaitans, creating a dangerous situation in a culture based on “pay-back”. Since then more than 50 people have been killed from both sides and thousands of refugees created, especially Malaitans chased away from their land in the Guadalcanal island.

This led to the formation of the Malaita Eagle Force — blamed for the coup attempt with rogue elements of the Royal Solomon Islands Police — by young Malaitans who have seen their families flee Honiara and returning to Malaita.

They stole weapons from a police station in Malaita and returned to Guadalcanal to fight the GRA, which now calls itself the Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM). The IFM, originally a disorganised group of unemployed youth, is now a well-armed force of about 2,000 fighters.

The confusing thing about this coup is that the Malaitans control the police and the para-military group Seagulls, as well as the government. So why did the MEF conduct a coup against a prime minister who comes from their own island?

The Malaita Eagle Force is believed to be backed by the Seagulls. They raided the main police weapons armoury at dawn on Monday, before storming the prime minister’s residence to hold him hostage.

The leader of the uprising is believed to be a Malaitan lawyer and former finance minister, Andrew Nori. The son of a post-war anti-colonial nationalist leader, he had set up his own political party now called the National Front for Progress. But Nori is suspected to be the MEF leader.

“He’s not a George Speight. He is pretty measured sort of lawyer, and an ex-MP who had been putting forward the Malaitans’ case and legallyoreign Minister Phil Goff said: “We have some influence, but no control.”

Asked by journalists in Canberra on the possibility of Australia intervening in the Solomon Islands, Prime Minister John Howard said any Australian response must be “consistent with recognising the rights of countries ultimately to make decisions about their own future”.