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.

 

APOLOGISING WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE:

Fiji’s Matanigasau and the Constitutional Elephant.

If Fiji were a stage, and it often behaves like one, then the recent matanigasau from the Fiji Military Forces to the Great Council of Chiefs would be the grand, sweeping, emotionally charged Act III moment. The violins swell, the lights dim, the warriors kneel, and the chiefs receive the apology with gravitas befitting centuries of tradition.

It is moving. It is solemn. It is beautiful. It is also (let’s not mince words here) hilariously incomplete because behind the dignified ritual, stands something so enormous, so awkward, so constitutionally indestructible, that everyone pretends not to see it:

The Immunity Clause. The elephant in the room that Fiji is legally required to ignore.

An apology delivered under a constitutional shield is not reconciliation. It is public relations in ceremonial attire.

1.     The Elegant Ceremony and the Ugly Reality

The matanigasau was everything a Fijian cultural ritual should be: respectful, symbolic, powerful.

But there was one thing it was not and that is "An apology to the people who actually suffered."

The military apologized to the GCC, a body of chiefs, many of whom were not the ones dragged from beds, beaten in police stations, threatened in cane fields, or economically destroyed.

The victims of Fiji’s coups were:

• Indo-Fijians whose homes and businesses were torched,
• moderate iTaukei ostracized for refusing hatred,
• families living through fear as mobs roamed city streets,
• families that lost fathers and sons,
• communities taught to brace for instability the way other nations brace for cyclones.

They were not in the room. They were not mentioned. They were not acknowledged.

Like the elephant, their presence was felt but inconvenient.

2.     The Constitution: Fiji’s Most Loyal Coup Defender

Let us speak plainly. The 2013 Constitution’s Immunity Clause is not a legal technicality.

It is a slap, delivered with bureaucratic precision, to every citizen who ever cried for justice.

 It declares, without hesitation:

“Coup-makers, fear not. Whatever you did, whatever you broke, whomever you harmed, you will never be accountable.” 

It turns the great national sin of Fiji not into a lesson, but into a precedent. It is the ultimate guarantee: a lifetime warranty for political adventurism.

When the military presented its matanigasau, it knelt before the chiefs. But legally, Fiji kneels before the Immunity Clause.

3.     Selective Remorse: A National Hobby

The apology to the GCC was sincere in tone, but deliberately limited in scope. It apologised vertically, toward hierarchy, not horizontally, toward humanity. It addressed institutional dignity, not personal suffering.

Fiji’s most wounded communities, the Indo-Fijians who lived through the riots of 1987 and 2000, iTaukei moderates who resisted extremism, and ordinary citizens traumatized by instability, watched from the outside.

Some watched with skepticism. Others with bitterness. Many with exhaustion.

Because this country has spent decades perfecting the ritual of public ceremonies while ignoring private pain.

4.     Reconciliation Without Accountability Is just Theatre

A nation cannot heal while its foundational law declares:

“The truth matters, but consequences do not.”

You cannot build reconciliation on a constitutional promise that ensures the most powerful actors can never be touched by the justice system. You cannot heal a people whose trauma is acknowledged only symbolically but erased legally.

You cannot move forward when the constitution itself clings to the past

like a guilty ghost refusing to vacate the house. Fiji must confront this paradox:

We perform apologies. But we forbid justice.

5.     The Real Matanigasau Still Waits

A genuine national reconciliation would look very different.

It would acknowledge:

• Indo-Fijian families driven from homes and farms
• children who grew up with the sound of coups as background noise
• iTaukei leaders punished for defending democracy
• business owners ruined by mobs
• citizens abducted, silenced, beaten or murdered.
• dreams deferred
• trust destroyed

It would not hide behind a ceremonial tabua. It would not lean on tradition to avoid accountability. It would not bow to chiefs while turning away from citizens. A true matanigasau would speak not to power, but to pain.

6.     Fiji’s Choice: Keep the Elephant, or Build a Future

Until the Immunity Clause is addressed, Fiji remains a nation asking victims to forgive

while protecting perpetrators from consequences.

We cannot call this healing. We cannot call this closure. We cannot call this national unity.

We can only call it what it is:

A beautiful ceremony staged in the shadow of an unmovable constitutional elephant.

Fiji must decide whether it wants ritual reconciliation or real reconciliation.

Because until accountability is possible, every apology, no matter how sacred, no matter how beautifully presented, remains incomplete.

And the victims,  every citizen bruised by Fiji’s chaotic political experiments deserve better than ceremonies.

They deserve truth. They deserve justice. They deserve a future unburdened by the ghosts of immunity. They deserve a Fiji where elephants do not write the constitution.