FIJI POLITICAL LEADERS AGREE ON AGENDA FOR DIALOGUE

UNCLAS SUVA 000099 PLEASE PASS TO EAP/ANP E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL FJ KDEM SUBJECT: FIJI POLITICAL LEADERS AGREE ON AGENDA FOR DIALOGUE ¶1. (U) Summary: Fiji's political leaders met with Interim Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama on March 13 and agreed on the agenda for a political dialogue being brokered with the support of the UN and the Commonwealth. It was the second time Fiji's 18 political parties have met since the December 2006 coup. In opening remarks, Bainimarama called on political leaders to stop engaging in "the blame game" and help reform the government to "tackle years of systemic problems." The meeting agreed on three issues that will be discussed at the President's Political Dialogue Forum (PPDF): the democratic experience in Fiji and parliamentary reform; electoral reform and the general election; and the People's Charter. The leaders agreed to meet again on April 3 to discuss the UN and Commonwealth's proposals for the chair of the PPDF and the involvement of NGOs in the PPDF. End Summary. ¶2. (U) The representatives of 18 registered political parties met with Bainimarama and the interim attorney general on Friday, March ¶13. The "Leaders of Political Parties" (LOPP) meeting was the second in a series that is supposed to establish the terms for the PPDF to follow. The interim government (IG) called the meeting without explaining the delay of nearly four months since the first meeting. During the LOPP the leaders agreed to reduce the number of political representatives at the next meeting on April 3, from an unwieldy 45, to only 23. The IG will have three representatives, the SDL and NFP will field two each, and the remaining 17 parties will have one each. They also agreed that each party would nominate three NGOs to be part of the PPDF but that only 15 of those would be allowed to participate. Those 15 would be chosen by the IG. ¶3. (U) The agenda for the April 3 meeting is to decide whether to accept the PPDF chairman proposed by the Commonwealth/UN and the team of mediators, as well as the modalities for decision-making and participation of NGOs/civil society organizations. The PPDF chairman proposed by the Commonwealth and UN is rumored to be Sir Rabbie Namaliu, a former Papua New Guinea prime minister. ¶4. (U) The March 13 LOPP meeting agreed on three issues for discussion at the PPDF: the democratic experience in Fiji and parliamentary reform; electoral reform and the general election; and the People's Charter. Significantly, the agenda did not explicitly include a discussion on the future role of Fiji's military. The meeting's final report states that the PPDF can be convened after all outstanding matters are ironed out and once the UN/Commonwealth is prepared to host the PPDF. ¶5. (U) Note: Bainimarama had previously commented on the government-owned radio station that the decisions to be made in the PPDF must coincide with the interim government's own goals, notwithstanding the involvement of the UN and Commonwealth. Bainimarama has long maintained that he will not schedule elections based on imposed deadlines or before the country can amend its "communally divisive [electoral] system." In the two years since the coup that brought him to power, Bainimarama's government has moved forward on the People's Charter - his political, social and economic vision for a "building a better Fiji." The government has spoken of amending the country's communal representation system (where Indo-Fijians vote on separate rolls than indigenous Fijians) and moving to a one-person, one-vote system to help build consensus among political parties and attempt to draw power from those parties only attracting support from a single community. End note. ¶6. (U) While the Charter is included in the agenda of the PPDF, the political parties have avoided getting into the details of the Charter, in order to allow the dialogue to move forward. Some observers doubted whether the meeting would even take place, given Bainimarama's increasingly negative statements in the press earlier in the week that he would bar deposed PM Qarase's SDL party, the National Federation Party (NFP) and the Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo party. By Thursday afternoon, however, Permanent Secretary Parmesh Chand said that all parties were invited and would be allowed into the meeting. ¶7. (U) Comment: The parties who attended the political leaders meeting commented on the PPDF in generally positive but cautious tones. Their caution is well-founded in view of the IG's ongoing attacks on free speech, which recently have included searches of newspaper offices for never-classified documents pertaining to the first dialogue meeting and letters from the UN and Commonwealth to prospective PPDF participants. Moreover, the homes of media executives and pro-democracy and unionist leaders have been methodically vandalized in the past few weeks by unknown elements. The positive tone taken by the main opposition parties and their concessions to the IG's structuring of the dialogue seem designed to expedite the launch of the PPDF, which they hope will allow for more genuine dialogue under the auspices of the UN and Commonwealth. Sensitive issues like the future of Fiji's rogue military presumably would be addressed in the discussions on democracy or the People's Charter. MCGANN