Public excitement does not legalize illegality

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s recent testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission once again reveals a disturbing pattern: a consistent effort to recast himself as a reluctant participant in the 1987 coup rather than its chief architect. His claim that returning to the pre-coup constitutional order would have been “treason against the Crown” is not only historically inaccurate but a brazen inversion of reality.

Let the truth stand: the only act of treason in 1987 was the coup itself.

 

Rabuka speaks of an “emotionally charged, ethnically driven movement” as if he was merely swept away by forces outside his control. But no amount of emotional framing changes the basic fact; he commanded the guns, he gave the orders, and he executed the coup.

No council, no crowd, and no claimed “popular sentiment” absolves responsibility for toppling a democratically elected government.

 

His attempt to portray the coup as a “popular uprising” is equally deceptive. Even if segments of the population supported it, public excitement does not legalize illegality. A democracy cannot be dismantled by soldiers and then rebranded as patriotism.

 

Rabuka has now taken an even more troubling turn—depicting himself and his family as victims of the very coup he orchestrated.

He told the TRC that:

• his village is labelled as “the coup village,”
• his daughters lost friends after being taken to military camp on the morning of the coup,
• his wife and sisters faced difficulties at school and in their workplaces,
• and that one of his daughters was excluded from a school team because of her father’s actions.

 

These stories may be painful for his family, but they are not the tragedies of political persecution.
They are the natural consequences of a man’s decision to violently upend a nation’s democratic order. To present these anecdotes as if he is owed sympathy is deeply manipulative.
It suggests that the perpetrator is quietly seeking an apology from the real victims, the people of Fiji.

Let us be clear: His family did not choose the coup. He did. And their social discomfort cannot be  placed on the same scale as the trauma inflicted on Fiji.

The nation suffered democratic collapse, ethnic division, job losses, displacement, lasting political instability, and generational trauma still felt today.

For Rabuka to elevate his family’s hurt feelings above the collective pain of the nation is not healing. It is self-serving revisionism.

Feeling guilt is not accountability. Telling stories is not repentance. And reframing history is not truth.

Reconciliation requires the perpetrator to stop acting like the victim.

The people of Fiji do not owe Rabuka sympathy. He owes the people of Fiji the truth without excuses, without deflection, and without theatrics.

The coup was the treason. Everything else is performance.