The blogosphere will be relieved to know that my blog China Matters today disgorged 2000 well-chosen words on Fiji--and blamed a lot of it on the Australians. Here's a taste:

Fiji, with its coup of December 4, is the latest South Pacific island struggling to balance populism, democracy, and authoritarianism in order to secure a place for itself in a globalized, polarizing environment increasingly contested by great and near-great powers from Beijing to Canberra to Washington.

You’ll probably be reading about how the guy who executed the coup, Commodore Vereqe Bainimarama, is a dangerous nut.

What you’ll probably be reading a lot less about is how Andy Hughes, the Australian who served as Fiji’s Police Commissioner, precipitated the coup by going after Bainimarama and his political base on a sedition charge.

Just before the coup, Hughes bugged out to Australia, where he pontificates long distance on what was either a colossal misjudgment or a piece of crude political hatchet work on behalf of Canberra’s man in Fiji, Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.

...

While the investigation of the coup that already happened in 2000 putters along, with the prospect of pardon for the plotters (and Qarase’s allies) in the offing, Hughes accelerates plans not only to arrest Baimarama but also to gut his faction on a sedition charge.

It’s interesting that the fact that an Australian policeman was attempting to topple Fiji’s top military man, who regards himself as the protector of his nation’s multi-racial society, has not been discussed very much as what it must have been: a key precipitating factor in the coup.

Hughes has made a fetish of proclaiming his impartiality.

There's not enough evidence to impugn Hughes' honesty when he declares he was not intentionally advancing Qarase's sectarian interests or Australia's regional agenda.

But one can certainly question his judgment as a foreign national exacerbating a constitutional crisis and provoking a coup in a dangerously divided and distrustful nation smack in the middle of Australia's neo-colonial "patch".

Hey! Read the whole thing!

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2006/12/poisoned-cup-racial-and-neo-colonial.html
 China Hand | 8:14 PM