Seminar Series: Abstract

Dialectics in the Historical Trajectory of Fijian Power
Dr Robert Norton

Fiji’s army-backed interim regime is an organisation of indigenous Fijian power that paradoxically has been forged against supposed threats to the military and the multi-ethnic nation from Fijian ethnic extremism. It starkly highlights the importance of distinguishing between accommodative institutional expressions of Fijian power and excluding Fijian nationalism. This difference is a feature of Fiji’s political development that can be traced back over many decades to the times of Apolosi Nawai and Ratu Lala Sukuna. The paper examines episodes in the trajectory of Fijian power from those times to the present. Fiji’s problem in political development has been in large part how to institutionalise Fijian political pre-eminence in a way that neutralises the nationalist potential. Could a constitutional provision for a role for the army in the political system, achieve this objective where other approaches have failed, without entailing a deepening entrenchment of vested interests that typically accompanies military interventions?