The first military coup d’état in the South Pacific occurred on the 108th
anniversary of the first arrival in Fiji of Indian indentured labourers.1
At 10am
on Thursday, 14th May 1987, a group of ten soldiers in combat gear armed with
M16 assault rifles and led by an indigenous Fijian soldier in a suit stormed into
the Fijian parliament, taking members of the month-old, democratically-elected
government hostage.2
Three more coups have taken place since and each was
followed by an economic collapse, a spike in poverty, and an exodus of Indo-Fijians
from the nation of their birth. This paper argues that there were two main contributing factors to the
political strife in postcolonial Fiji and both the result of colonisation a century
ago: first, the exclusionary political institutions of which the chiefs from eastern
Fiji were the main beneficiaries; and, second, the extractive economic institutions
of which indentured labourers were the main victims. Independent Fiji in the
lead-up to the first coup was governed by descendants of the privileged chiefs
who, for the first time, had lost power in the national elections of April 1987
to a coalition comprising the Fiji Labour Party, which had its roots in the trade
unions, and the National Federation Party with its majority Indo-Fijian support:
the coup restored power to the displaced chiefs.