This book explores the factors behind - and the implications of - the 2006 coup. It brings together contributions from leading scholars, local personalities, civil society activists, union leaders, journalists, lawyers, soldiers and politicians - including deposed Prime Ministers Laisenia Qarase and Mahendra Chaudhry. The 2006 Military Takeover in Fiji: A Coup to End All Coups? is essential reading for those with an interest in the contemporary history of Fiji, politics in deeply divided societies, or in military intervention in civilian politics.

Provides an analysis of the lead-up to, the outcome, and the aftermath of Fiji's historic 2006 election - including the December coup. Contributions from ex-Vice President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi; ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase; interim Minister for Finance Mahendra Chaudhry; and an array of leading commentators.

In May 2006 Fiji held its tenth general election since independence in 1970. In a country with an unenviable history of electoral trauma, the mood was apprehensive if not tense - not least because of controversial public statements against the incumbent Qarase government being made by the commander of Fiji's military forces. Despite a record number of parties and candidates, the winners were the two big parties - the heavily church-backed SDL, the party of choice of the majority of indigenous Fijians; and the Fiji Labour Party, the party preferred by most Indo-Fijians. Although the result was ethnically polarised, for the first time in Fijian history the successful candidates came together to share power in a constitutionally ordained multiparty cabinet, with Laisenia Qarase retaining the prime ministership. But the fragile collaboration was short-lived. On 5 December 2006, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama ordered a military takeover, declaring himself 'President', ousting the elected government and replacing it with an 'interim' government of his choice, and once again throwing Fiji into political turmoil. With contributions from ex-Vice President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, ousted Prime Minister Laesenia Qarase, leader of the Fiji Labour Party and now interim Minister for Finance Mahendra Chaudhry, and an impressive array of leading commentators on Fijian affairs, this book provides a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the lead-up to, the outcome and the aftermath of Fiji's historic 2006 election. Shedding light on the complex weave of traditional chiefly systems, race relations, economics, constitutionality, the military ethos and religion, From Election to Coup in Fiji is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Fiji, the South Pacific and the politics of divided societies.

"In May 2000 a gang of soldiers and failed politicians, with George Speight at their head, burst into Fiji's Parliament and captured the nation's government led by its first Indo-Fijian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry. As the politicians were seized, hundreds of rebels ransacked Fiji's capital Suva." "This was supposed to be a coup by indigenous Fijians angry at their loss of power. But as the drama unfolded and Speight's rebels continued to hold the politicians hostage, the spectacle turned into a power struggle pitting Fijians against each other. This climaxed in a violent military mutiny." "Speight of Violence offers an insiders' view of what happened. Extracts from a secret diary kept by Deputy Prime Minister Tupeni Baba during his 56 days in captivity tell of Speight's behaviour, the conditions inside Parliament, and the beating of Chaudhry; and Red Cross letters between Tupeni and his partner Unaisi Nabobo-Baba reveal the distress and deprivations suffered by the hostages' families. Veteran Pacific reporter Michael Field, who covered the coup and the treason trials which followed, reports the barricade, court and media dramas and offers a powerful analysis of what it all meant."--BOOK JACKET.

"On 14 May 1987, Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka led a raid on Fiji's Parliament House in the nation's capital, Suva, to remove a government dominated by Fijian Indians. The coup sent shock waves around the world and changed forever our view of the tanquility of our Pacific neighbours. Rabuka: No Other Way is Sitiveni Rabuka's own story - told for the first time. It describes the man behind the coup, the growth of tensions between the Fijian racial and political groups and the events that precipitated military action."--Bac cover.

Disturbing History focuses on Fiji’s people and their agency in responding to and engaging the multifarious forms of authority and power that were manifest in the colony from 1874 to 1914. By concentrating on the lives of ordinary Fijians, the book presents alternate ways of reconstructing the island’s past. Couched in the traditions of social, subaltern, and people’s histories, the study is an excavation of a large mass of material that tells the often moving stories of lives that have largely been overlooked by historians. These challenge conventional historical accounts that tend to celebrate the nation, represent Fiji’s colonial experience as ordered and peaceful, or British tutelage as benevolent. In its contribution to postcolonial theory, Disturbing History reveals resistance as a constant but partial and untidy mix of other constituents such as collaboration, consent, appropriation, and opportunism, which together form the colonial landscape. In turn, colonialism in Fiji is shown as a force shaped in struggle, fractured and often fragile, with a presence and application in the daily lives of people that was often chaotic, imperfect, and susceptible to subversion. The book divides the period of study into two broad categories: organized resistance and everyday forms of resistance. The first examines the Colo War (1876), the Tuka Movement (1878–1891), the Seaqaqa War (1894), the Movement for Federation with New Zealand (1901–1903), the Viti Kabani Movement (1913–1917), and the various organized labor protests. The second half of the book addresses resistance manifested in the villages and plantations, including tax and land boycotts, violence and retributive justice, avoidance protest, petitioning, and women’s resistance. In their entirety these forms reveal a complex web of relationships between powerful and subordinate groups and among subordinate groups themselves. The author concludes that resistance cannot be framed as a totality but as a multilayered and multidimensional reality. In the wake of Fiji’s present volatile climate, this book will aid readers in understanding the continuities and disjunctures in Fiji’s interethnic and intraethnic relations.