Frank’s performance gives us the ultimate SNAFU

A novel about warfare called “Catch 22″ gave the world a new word – SNAFU.
It stands for “Situation normal, all f***ed up.” If there isa better word
in the English language to describe what Fiji’s dictator Frank Bainimarama
has
created in our country, I would like to hear it. Everywhere you look in
the Fiji that has had I8 months of Bainimarama’s rule it’s SNAFU. If
Bainimarama was ever any good in his military role, and I have heard that
question debated often enough, he’s certainly a complete and utter failure
in his attempt to command the civilian population of Fiji.

Remember back to the coup and how it divided Fiji right down the middle. I
think it would be fair to say that at that point Bainimarama might have had
50% of the people strongly opposing him, 25% on side and the other 25%
undecided. Today those figures are more likely to read, respectively, 75%
(against), 10% (in favour) and 15% (wondering what the f**k is going to
happen next). And those estimates are deliberately generous!

Let’s face the central fact honestly and realistically: In the eyes of
both people in Fiji and elsewhere, when Bainimarama pulled his coup he had
his chance to carry out what he said he was going to carry out, but he
blew it, big time.

Sure, his coup was legally and morally as wrong as you can get. However back
then he gave his justifications (corruption, clean-up etc.) and put on a
display of getting on with it. He fooled quite a few people. It’s a fact
that a lot of people listened and a lot of people believed him. But as the
months wore on, he didn’t deliver. And by then other factors had come into
play: gross human rights abuses, the economic downslide, loss of jobs, a
rise in crime, the overt manipulation of the judiciary, and so on. That’s
when the pendulum of potential public support began to swing sharply
against the dictator. And it continues to swing.

To put it in a nutshell, Bainimarama just doesn’t have what it takes to
being a nation leader. He doesn’t have what it takes to be even the patch
on the pants of someone who is leading a nation. To be a national leader,
to successfully steer your country on a particular course, you need to be
mentally and intellectually competent, a good communicator, to have
diplomatic skills of a high order, and you need to take the people with
you by demonstrating a high degree of governance and transparency. By any
measurement known to the modern world, Bainimarama has demonstrated very
convincingly that none of these essential capabilities belong to him.

And equally importantly for a small island state like Fiji, a national
leader has to remember that you are living in a global village, and as one
of the poorer, least developed inhabitants of that village, you need to
have the bigger, stronger inhabitants on your side, especially the ones
that happen to live next door. But that is not possible if a leader,
albeit a self-proclaimed “interim” leader, is governed by his heart rather
than his head and instead of cultivating his neighbours he goes out of his
way to antagonise them.

Thanks to Frank, Fiji is regarded as a pariah state, a state which has
abandoned the rule of law and replaced it with a dictatorship in all but
name. The illegal arbitrary expulsions, arrests and deportations of New
Zealand and Australian expatriates on bogus grounds has not only put Fiji
right offside with the governments of the citizens involved, but also
seriously jeopardise long-standing cordial relationships that have been of
benefit to Fiji in the past and which Fiji will need more than ever when
it gets the opportunity to start rebuilding her democracy. To put it
bluntly, Frank’s attributes as a leader who can advance Fiji’s national
interests on the international stage are less than zero.

Whichever way you like look at it, in terms of being the leader of a
country, on both the domestic front and the international front, Frank has
proved himself to be a spectacular all-round failure. All he has managed
to do over the past 18 months is to put Fiji in a SNAFU category all of
its own.