Economic pain should be no shock to Fiji coup leaders
Fiji's interim government says it has no money! What does that actually mean? A country has no money! Our correspondent this week is the host of Pacific Beat, Geraldine Coutts.

We've seen practical illustrations this week with the military government getting tough on the nurses and teachers unions in an attempt to force them back to work. The unions want their salaries returned to pre-coup levels. But this government says it can't, it has no money. The unions now fear that the one per cent compromise offer expected in December cannot be paid.

The government has no money. What does it mean when a country is broke, why are its funds so depleted?

An economist with the ANU's Crawford School Dr Satish Chand explains in part that Fiji's four coups have been costly, losing three years economic growth following each of the four coups. Twelve years productivity lost.

A number of speakers at a recent conference in Townsville titled Fiji Update agree that the most disaffected are the people already on the margins of society. The evidence for this is the continuous stream of people flowing into squatter settlements with nowhere else to go and no help on the horizon.

Dr Chand borrowed the title for his paper from Fiji's interim finance minister Mahendra Chaudhry who used it during his budget speech in March.

"Swim or Sink - the situation for the economy is so dire," says Mr Chaudhry, "that it is a swim or sink position".

The economic cost of Fiji's four coups over the past two decades, with the first in 1987, have been major shocks to the economy.

Dr Chand's research shows that Fiji has had enough of these shocks now for us to make some assessments of the costs of these coups. In any economy there are many things going on simultaneously. Changes in weather. Changes in investor climate. Changes in interest rates and many additional factors. It's very difficult to isolate any one of these as the most damaging to the economy.

Now I'm a person whose eyes glaze over each month when the visa statement arrives... too many numbers. But I do understand Dr Chand's point that the coups have caused a major downturn in the economy for three years after each of the four coups. The only difference with the fourth is that we hope it follows the pattern of the others and finds a positive growth rate within three years.

I understand that business takes a hit and that tourism, one of the country's main earners, also suffers huge losses.

I get all of that. What I don't know is what will happen with the people who are increasingly marginalised by each successive coup.

My arguments are cyclical, but so are Fiji's coups.

People are Fiji's most precious asset.

At the height of Solomon Islands ethnic crisis public servants left Honiara and went home to live a subsistence lifestyle in the village. If they couldn't grow it or make it, they went without. Many survived for years this way.

But this does not seem to be an option for Fiji's marginalised. Tens of thousands of the country's poor are being tipped off the land because of the land lease crisis. A solution for which is yet to be found. The owners are choosing not to renew the leases, and in some cases preferring the land to remain vacant.

Fiji's working poor, the nurses and the teachers, are striking because they can't make ends meet unless they have their salaries restored. Mediation, demonstrations and strike action have all failed and compulsory arbitration so far denied.

Economies are not meant to fly backwards. Will this fourth coup be the straw to break the camel's back permanently?

What choices remain? There are some who fear the biggest tragedy may be yet to come.

< back