Academic says Fiji lacking candidates for head military role

Transcript

An academic says Commodore Frank Bainimarama is running out of people he can trust to take over his role as the head of the Fiji military.

Last month, Commodore Bainimarama said he would step down at the end of February to launch a political party but Friday's scheduled handover ceremony has been postponed.

The military has cited the bad weather but no new date has been given yet.

The regime is yet to announce his successor but his brother-in-law and former navy commander, Francis Kean is said to be in contention.

Dr Steven Ratuva, from the University of Auckland told Bridget Tunnicliffe, Mr Kean's appointment would be unpopular because he served a jail sentence after killing a guest at a Bainimarama family wedding in late 2006.  

STEVEN RATUVA: If it's true then there will certainly be questions raised by members of the public in relation to his background, also in relation to the closeness between the two. And the process of selection constitutionally is to be made by the Constitutional Offices Commission but because the parliament is not in place yet, the Constitutional Commission [is supposed to] also includes the leader of the opposition so there's no leader of the opposition yet so at this point in time the pragmatics of the situation is that it's really the current government which will appoint whoever is going to be the next commander.

BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: So basically the Constitutional Offices Commission seems to be made up basically of the prime minister.

SR: Well at this point in time that seems to be the case, yes.

BT: Do you there's also a case that Commodore Bainimarama is running out of people that he can trust, is the pool of people that he can trust now to take over that kind of role, diminishing?

SR: Well a lot of senior officers have left and what you have now is a country of younger offices so that's the pool from which he has to choose from, some of them are pretty young. I suppose at the end of the day the decision will be made on a number of things. One is to do with loyalty as well as being able to find somebody who he thinks would be able to maintain stability within the military. These are major challenges and given what Fiji has gone through in the last few years and also what the military has gone through in the last few years, it's not going to be easy.

BT: The flow on effect of this delay in the handover, it means that there's also a delay in Commodore Bainimarama launching a political party because that was always the plan, following the handover then he would launch his political party. Have you heard anymore news about this party and who it might be made up of?

SR: Well again officially it's not available [the information] except that people have been talking about who might be there, people in the current government and also some of his supporters so yeah the delay would be for a few days, perhaps after the [bad] weather has gone, so things will begin to unfold pretty fast from then onwards.

BT: Because this Constitutional Offices Commission isn't really made up of anyone apart from the regime do you see this appointment process as being really just whoever the prime minister wants.

SR: Well at the moment because of the circumstances now we simply don't have a parliament, a government which is elected, it looks like the process is going to be fundamentally driven by the current government, by the powers that be.