2007-04-22
Fiji
Last year there was a military coup in Fiji. Before the coup, Fiji had a democratically-elected government. Unfortunately, it was a racist government, voted in by racist ethnic Fijians. The situation is pretty bleak for ethnic Indians (a minority). They basically can't buy land and are at the mercy of the ethnic Fijian landowners. The military coup (by a non-racist ethnic Fijian) has prevented the racist democratic government implementing any more racist policies.
Since I value a humanist government above democracy, I more-or-less support the coup (despite Australia condemning it). If I were the Australian government, I probably would have condemned it too. Now is not the time to let people know that we're going to install humanist governments, against the will of the majority if necessary. In this "first round" we should just be installing democracies. Democracies essentially require no resources to maintain, because by definition the majority support the government. If the people democratically elect a humanist government, that is wonderful. If the people elect a non-humanist government, then we should probably just live with it for now, and come back for them in a "second round", as that will essentially require us to maintain a military presence to teach these people to not be non-humanist (e.g. racist/sexist/religious bigots).
At the moment we do not want to waste our troops on such endeavours. Simply concentrating on installing democracies is the way to go. See what emerges out of that, and then decide on the best way to deploy our troops.
The one concern I have with the military coup in Fiji is that it now means one man gets to choose whether Fijians have human rights or not. He could change his mind at a moment's notice (or get overthrown by someone else in the military), and it becomes unpredictable what policy in Fiji will be. It would be more predictable and safer if someone like Paul Bremer were installed instead. Paul Bremer had constraints on his power. There is nothing constraining the head of the Fijian military except his own personal ideology (which seems to be better than what Fijian democracy produced).
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Since I value a humanist government above democracy, I more-or-less support the coup (despite Australia condemning it). If I were the Australian government, I probably would have condemned it too. Now is not the time to let people know that we're going to install humanist governments, against the will of the majority if necessary. In this "first round" we should just be installing democracies. Democracies essentially require no resources to maintain, because by definition the majority support the government. If the people democratically elect a humanist government, that is wonderful. If the people elect a non-humanist government, then we should probably just live with it for now, and come back for them in a "second round", as that will essentially require us to maintain a military presence to teach these people to not be non-humanist (e.g. racist/sexist/religious bigots).
At the moment we do not want to waste our troops on such endeavours. Simply concentrating on installing democracies is the way to go. See what emerges out of that, and then decide on the best way to deploy our troops.
The one concern I have with the military coup in Fiji is that it now means one man gets to choose whether Fijians have human rights or not. He could change his mind at a moment's notice (or get overthrown by someone else in the military), and it becomes unpredictable what policy in Fiji will be. It would be more predictable and safer if someone like Paul Bremer were installed instead. Paul Bremer had constraints on his power. There is nothing constraining the head of the Fijian military except his own personal ideology (which seems to be better than what Fijian democracy produced).
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 23:05 
