Harassment, intimidation and exile failed to silence two authors, a Fijian and a New Zealander, who claim to expose the ‘truth’ about Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka’s 1987 military putsch in Fiji. DAVID ROBIE reports.
By David Robie in The Dominion Sunday Times
After two false starts, Fiji’s rival former prime ministers finally get together for vital talks over the country’s future. David Robie assesses their chances.
After a few weeks of optimism over reports that Fiji’s former prime ministers were burying their hatchets and agreeing to discuss a government of national unity to take over from the military-backed regime, the hopes have been dampened.
Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, architect of Fijian independemnce and leader of the country for 17 years, and the man who ousted him in the April 1987 general election, Dr Timocy Bavadra, are still expected to have talks today.
Fiji: Countdown to a coup
ANALYSIS: By David Robie in New Outlook
Sakeasi Butadroka fingers his trademark blood-red bow-tie and laughs: “This represents the blood of Christ that flowed from the cross on Cavalry.” He says it also represents the danger facing indigenous Fijians and the sacrifices they are prepared to make.
A Methodist lay preacher and poultry farmer who exudes charm and good humour in spite of the firmness of his beliefs, “Buta” was the man responsible for the brief downfall of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara’s Alliance government in the first of two general elections in 1977. Unashamedly campaigning along racial lines, he also had a hand in the final ousting of Ratu Mara after 17 years in power in April 1987; his Fijian Nationalist Party gained enough ethnic Fijian votes to help the new multiracial Coalition government win office.
Butadroka’s controversial political career appeared to have ended after a heavy defeat in 1982, but he did not waiver in his struggle to change the Fiji Constitution and give ethnic Fijians exclusive rights to lead the country. He advocated “thinning out” the Indo-Fijian population by encouraging migration. “The nationalist ideal will live on — it will never wither like a flower,” he remarked, prophetically, during the election campaign. “Those who say we are finished are nothing but fools.”
Following the defeat of Mara, however, a group of hardline Alliance Party leaders, Butadroka’s opponents, also adopted a nationalist policy — a policy which last month led to the biggest protest rallies ever seen in Fiji, with barricades and firebomb attacks against prominent Indo-Fijians, and finally to a rightwing military coup.
Does Butadroka regret lighting the racial fuse? No. At least, not until Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni “Steve” Rabuka — also a Methodist lay preacher — deposed the Coalition government and imposed martial law.
“Why do you think I’ve been campaigning all these years?” he said before the coup. “I’ve had one objective: to get rid of the Mara government so that Fijians would realise they are in danger. Now the fight has begun, I am happy.”
But standing outside Parliament Buildings, stunned, after the May 14 takeover, he said: “No, no . . . The bastards cannot do it like this. They’ll destroy democracy forever. This is a tyranny. Blame Ratu Mara for this. Where is the Judas?” Police hustled him away.
Butadroka, who was jailed under the Public Order Act for “incitement” in 1977, has always advocated constitutional changes through democratic means. The Taukei (indigenous) Movement used to claim that Butadroka was anti-Indian while it was pro-Fijian, but the movement’s recent actions have been more extremist than Butadroka’s nationalists ever were.
More than a racial struggle, the Taukei attempts at destabilising the Coalition government and then the coup were part of a three-stage strategy for the Alliance Party to seize back power at all costs. The speed with which the coup came after the protests had lost steam has prevented prosecution cases expected against several Alliance ministers for corruption and misappropriation of public funds.
“The Coalition government was perceived to be dangerous by the Alliance and had to be overthrown,” says a University of the South Pacific historian, “because it was a challenge to the existing power structure and was crossing the racial barriers.”
Constitutional storm
Dr Timoci Uluivuda Bavadra, in a white shirt, tie and sulu, had been relaxed in spite of the constitutional storm blowing around him — until he was put under house arrest. “Doc”, as the 52-year-old former civil servant is known to friends and party stalwarts, had slipped into the role of Prime Minister with ease and was approaching his task with the air of a physician with a kindly bedside manner.
Some now say too kindly. He was under pressure from several of his cabinet colleagues to take a hard line against the dissidents. But Dr Bavadra regarded reports of the extent of the opposition as exaggerated. Still, the day after the Lautoka firebombings he began to take harsher action. A day-long emergency meeting reviewed security.
Three days before the coup, key Taukei leader and former Works Minister Apisai Tora, widely regarded, like Colonel Rabuka, as a front man for the Alliance, was arrested by police and charged with “sedition and inciting racial antagonism”. Senator Jona Qio was also charged with arson over the Lautoka firebombings the day before the coup.
Prosecutions for corruption against other previous Alliance ministers were expected to follow.
Shortly before the coup, Dr Bavadra’s cabinet heard a report from the police special branch about the presence of two CIA agents in Fiji. Cabinet opinion was divided on whether the agents should be expelled.
Sources close to the Prime Minister said Rabuka was seen playing golf with the two men and Ratu Mara the Sunday before the coup, only a week after the United State Ambassador to the United Nations, General Vernon Walters, a former director of the CIA, visited Suva. Walters has been described by New Statesman magazine as “having been involved in overthrowing more governments than any other official serving the US government”. The diplomat had talks with Foreign Minister Krishna Datt and would have reported to Washington on his assessment of the minister and the government’s non-aligned policies.
Dr Bavadra, the sources said, also summoned the US ambassador to his office and complained that US aid funds had been used to help the Taukei Movement. The Australian-owned Emperor Gold Mines company was also accused of providing buses to help transport Fijian protesters to anti-government rallies.
Dr Bavadra had earnestly defended his government, saying it wqs “unthinkable” that he consider sacrificing the welfare of ethnic Fijians. He was saddened that dissidents suggested he would allow the government to put the welfare of Fijians at risk.
“We have been elected on a platform of improving the lives of all Fijians, not just one race and not just a ruling elite,” he said. “Lack of housing, poverty and poor wages should not be blamed on racial grounds.”
His government gained power on promises to improve social welfare, education, health and housing, and to eliminate corruption. But the way to do this, he argues, is through fairer distribution of the country’s wealth and better use of government resources. Dr Bavadra allocated the sensitive public service, Fijian affairs and home affairs portfolios to himself. Another Fijian, Mosese Volavola, became Lands Minister.
‘Let us not yield . . . let us not tarnish the image of tolerance.’
— Dr Timoci Bavadra
Dr Bavadra also pointed out that his government was elected by a five percent swing among ethnic Fijians away from the Alliance — mainly educated Fijians, particularly women, and young, underprivileged urban Fijians. Two nationalist candidates were declared bankrupt when counting began, but the Nationalist Party’s high polling split the Fijian vote in four crucial Suva electorates to boost the Coalition victory.
“Fiji needs this government to develop our maturity as a nation,” says Health and Social Welfare Minister Dr Satendra Nandan, 48, a poet and former literature lecturer at the University of the South Pacific. “It is vital for our peaceful future to show that a real multiracial government can run Fiji, we cannot keep brushing racial issues under the carpet.”
Dr Nandan, who had been tipped as likely Foreign Minister (Fiji Labour Party secretary-general Datt got the job instead), is fiercely critical of how the Alliance exploited racial fears during the campaign. “It tried racism, but we have broken the Alliance’s back on this issue,” he says. “It also tried scaremongering over land. When it failed to shoot holes in our domestic policies, it switched to foreign affairs — and it thinks the Fijian people are gullible.”
The Fiji Sun bitterly attacked the emotive smears used by the protesters, blaming them for worsening race relations. Rival Fiji Times, while conceding the Constitution was open for improvement, said it would “not be by brute force, threats or other illegal means”. (Both of Fiji’s daily newspapers are foreign-owned — the Sun by a New Zealand-Hong Kong owned company and the Times by Rupert Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times Ltd.)
Although several high chiefs condemned the protests, Ratu Mara’s failure to do so drew severe criticism and heightened suspicions about direct Alliance involvement, even though the party denied it.
When Ratu Mara surfaced as Foreign Minister in the military regime’s provisional government, it was widely believed that he was among the Alliance leaders who instigated the coup. Denials by Mara and Rabuka were unconvincing; the colonel needed the backing of the Alliance to stage the coup.
During at least one press conference, Colonel Rabuka was clearly being “coached” by the military regime’s Development Minister Peter Stinson and Information Minister Dr Ahmed Ali, both previous Alliance ministers concerned about the Coalition’s pledge to open the financial books.
Both of Mara’s former deputy prime ministers, Ratu David Toganivalu — regarded as the “Mr Clean” of the previous Alliance administration — and Mosese Qionibaravi, would have nothing to do with the military regime.
Among the Taukei leaders, besides Apisai Tora, is a rightwing trade unionist, Taniela “Big Dan” Veitata. A former member of the Fijian Nationalist Party, Veitata is regarded by many as a particular virulent racist.
“A new form of colonialism has been imposed on us, not from outside but from within our own country by those who arrived here with no rights and were given full rights by us — the taukei,” says Tora. But while Tora claims Dr Bavadra was a “puppet and a prisoner” of thw Indians, allegations are being made that Tora himself is a front for covert interference by the United States. When the new government took office, documents were found which purportedly linked Tora with American backing.
The “puppet” allegations against Dr Bavadra were based in his quick evelation of lawyer Jai Ram Reddy to the Senate and appointment as Attorney-General and Justice Minister. Reddy was an astute former opposition leader but he resigned from Parliament three years ago after a series of bitter clashes over what he considered to be the dictatorial style of Speaker Tomasi Vakatora. However, Reddy was the National Federation Party’s architect of the merger with the Fiji Labour Party and it was widely expected that he would be rewarded with a cabinet post.
Like Butadroka and Rabuka, Tora wants the Constitution to be amended so that only Fijians are elected to Parliament and to replace the Senate with an upper house based on the powerful, traditional Great Council of Chiefs, rather like Britain’s House of Lords. As Butadroka puts it: “We should follow Ghandi and Nehru in India: they told the British to get out of Parliament but have a free reign in business.”
Protected Fijian land rights
The so-called Indian problem began on 14 May 1979, when 489 Indians arrived as indentured labourers to work in the British-run sugar-cane fields. Just five years earlier, through a Deed of Cession — rather like the Treaty of Waitangi — signed by 13 high chiefs, the 320 islands which make up Fiji had become a British colony. One condition of the deed was that while property fairly acquired by European settlers at the time could be retained by them, Fijian rights to the rest of the fertile land should be protected.
These two events more than a century ago are at the heart of the present dispute. Descendants of those 489 Indians, joined by others over the following 37 years at the rate of about 2000 a year, now outnumber the indigenous Fijians, both within the 715,000 population and in Parliament. Forty-eight percent of the people are now Indo-Fijian, 46 percent Fijian (the higher birthrate means they will overtake Indians by 1990) and the rest “general”, or Europeans, Chinese and part-European. Nineteen of the Coalition’s 28 MPs are Indian.
In theory, Ratu Mara’s Alliance was a coalition of three parties: the Fijian Alliance, the Indian Alliance and the General Electors Association. After the Suva protests, however,two senior Indian Alliance officials quit and called on the other Indians to abandon the party.
Party general secretary Naresh Prasad said the protests had ruined the Alliance’s commitment to multiracialism and tolerance: “I get the feeling Fijians actually hate my guts yet they smile to keep my support.”
Britain’s departing colonial masters created a system of government which ensured each of the three major founding ethnic groups would be represented and any party or coalition forming the government would have substantial support from at least two of the three communities. Adapted from a Westminster-style democracy, the result is probably the world’s most complex electoral system. Each Fijian elector is represented by four members — two from that voter’s ethnic background and two which must not be from that community.
Parliament’s 52 seats are divided into two main categories and then into three sub-categories, making a total of six classes of seats — 25 national and 27 communal. Voters from all ethnic groups elect the national MPs while only specific ethnic communities elect communal MPs. The seats are broken down as: Fijian national 10, Indian national 10, general national 5, Fijian communal 12, Indian communal 12, general communal 3. To make the situation even more complicated, the six classes of seats overlap geographically.
Indigenous land 83 percent
Land distribution is fundamental to politics in Fiji. Under the Constituton, indigenous Fijians are guaranteed ownership of almost 83 percent of the land. Such Fijian land is inalienable and is owned collectively by the mataqali (clan). About 80 percent of the remaining freehold land is owned by Europeans, while the 350,000 Indians have freehold rights over only about 1.7 percent.
Nearly 120,000 hectares of Fijian land is leased, 75 percent of it to Indians — who naturally would prefer to own it. The Coalition government promised during the election campaign to open up more land for productive use, to “lease crown land to all citizens”.
But the government was also careful to stress that it recognised Fijian land ownership rights, and said no change would be considered “without the full consultation and approval of the Great Council of Chiefs. The Coalition is committed to uphold, protect and safeguard the ownership rights of people over their land and private assets as guaranteed under the Constitution and other laws of Fiji”.
The Alliance’s election campaign capitalised on Fijian fears over their land and tried to portray the Coalition as “communist” with a secret agenda designed to strip people pf their hand and hand it to the Indo-Fijians. Even if the allegations were without foundation, they have struck a responsive chord with some Fijians. “It is neocolonialism by Indians,” says “Big Dan” Veitata. “Unless we stop it now, we will be no better off than the kanaks in New Caledonia, the Australian Aborigines and the New Zealand Māori.”
There are many prosperous gujerati (Indian businessmen), but Fijian business is still dominated by foreign — mainly Australian, New Zealand and local European — ownership. And many of the poorest people in Fiji are Indian squatters or jobless.
However, the Indian community dominates the sugar-growing industry which is the mainstay of the Fijian economy. Nearly all the crop produced by Indians is grown on land leased from native landlords on the basis of limited tenure.
Ideally, the Indian community would like to have increased land rights, or, failing that, a greater security of tenure on leased land. Fijians, however, stubbornly stick to the traditional system of land distribution, the basis of their hold on power.
‘We’ll give them six months and then we’ll take over.’
— Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka
In the late 1950s, there were barely 130 children of Fijian-Indian marriages. Since then the segregation of the races practised by the colonial administration through legal decrees has largely disappeared. Mixed marriages are now more common and mixed-race children more numerous than a generation ago. Figures are difficult to establish because children in Fijian-Indian marriages and relationships are not regarded as a separate category.
The colonial administration segregated living areas for the different racial groups. For example, in Suva, Vatuwaqa, Samabula and the Signal Station were reserved for Indians while areas like Toorak, the Domain and Tamavua Heights were for white settlement. Draiba was for Indian civil servants. This was coupled with a policy that non-indigenous races were barred from living in Fijian villages.
“The British practised a form of dictatorship from 1875 to 1963,” says Dr Vijay Naidu, a University of the South Pacific sociologist. “From 1904, whites had representation in the legislature and Indians were represented by nomination in 2016 and by election in 1929. The governor and the official members could veto any resolutions of the elected representatives. Indigenous Fijians voted for the first time in 1963. This was not all, “democracy” as practised in Fiji meant that Europeans, though numerically a minority, had parity with the other ethnic categories.”
According to Dr Naidu, the friction between Fijian and Indo-Fijian is highly exaggerated: “For black labour in Fiji, the owners and managers of transnational corporations, who are largely white, constitute the main antagonists.” He also says that the general electors (voters who are neither Fijian or Indian) have traditionally been the most racial in their voting, something hardly remarked on by foreign or even local journalists.
However, in spite of his comments, Dr Naidu found himself on the military regime’s “hit list” of about 30 people regarded as founders or sympathisers of the Labour Party. He went into hiding when police arrested two people wrongly identified as him.
“Fijians opposing the Coalition are led by those who have lost their privileges by being ousted — it is political rather than racial,” says Dr Tupeni Baba, a flamboyant university lecturer who became Education Minister. “The Alliance wanted a less open government than ours, judging from its failed attempts to prosecute people who delved into its actions and from the way it shielded itself from the media. It suffers from a fortress complex.”
Timeline of a coup
Saturday, April 11, 1987: A tropical beeze tugs at the coconut palms along the waterfront of the capital, Suva. Week-long polling in Fiji’s fifth general election since independence has just ended and there is excitement in the air. Supporters of the Fiji Labour Party-led Coalition with the Indian-led National Federation Party sense victory.
At Ratu Mara’s official residence in Veuito there is anger and disbelief. “These people cannot govern,” say several Alliance leaders. “We’ll give them six months and then we’ll take over.” Already Alliance activists meeting in the urban ghetto of Raiwaqa have begun plotting how to destabilise the future government.
Sunday, April 12: Labour’s Dr Timoci Bavadra, a man who had never sat in Parliament, claims victory before the final figures: 28 seats to 24. After an address to the nation on Radio Fiji that night, Dr Bavadra shares a bowl of yaqona with well-wishers, including New Zealand High Commisionetr Rod Gates at the modest clapboard headquarters of the Fiji Labour Party.
Monday, April 13: Dr Bavadra is sworn in as Prime Minister and meets, one by one, the chairman of the Public Service Commission, the commissioner of police and the commander of the Royal Fiji Military Forces. (In 1977, when the Indian opposition won the first election but were unable to form a government, none of these crucial services would cooperate with it.) Doubt still remains about the Fijian-dominated military.
In his first pres conference as Prime Minister, Dr Bavadra pledges to introduce a New Zealand-style ban on nuclear warships and attacks the Australian and United States claims of Libyan and Soviet threats in the region, saying he cannot see any evidence. He confirms Fiji will follow an “active non-aligned” foreign policy.
Tuesday, April 14: Honouring his pledge of a racially “balanced” government, Dr Bavadra reduces the cabinet from 17 to 14 members and names seven Indo-Fijians, six Fijians and one minister representing “general electors” (European or mixed race).The previous Alliance government was dominated by indigenous Fijians.
Dr Bavadra flies to the chiefly island of Bali to pay his respects to the former Governor-General, Ratu Sir George Cakobau, a paramount chief. When he became Labour Party leader two years ago, Dr Bavadra had visited Cakobau to seek his support in trying to win over the Fijian villages, the traditional stronghold of the Alliance Party.
Easter: Angry Fijian villagers set up barricades near the the northern town of Tavua on the main island of Viti Levu, demanding the Coalition government be ousted. A meeting of 3000 Fijians in Viseisei, Dr Bavadra’s home village in western Viti Levu, protests against the government.
Apisai Tora, a former Lands Minister in the Alliance government, accuses the new administration of “dispossessing Fijians in their own country”. He attacks the assigning of key commerce, finance, foreign affairs and justice portfolios to Indo-Fijians. The meeting votes to freeze land leases to non-Fijians.
Dr Bavadra, who is accused of being a puppet of the Indians, condemns illegal protests and “any attempts to destabilise Fijian society”. But the government remains cautious, anxious to avoid racial strife.
Friday, April 24: Between 5000 and 8000 Fijians state a peaceful anti-government protest rally in Suva, the biggest demonstration in Fijian history. Racist slogans include “Fiji fr the Fijians”, “Stop this Indian government”, “Fiji now little India — say no!” and “Out with foreign puppets”. Protest leaders petition the Governor-General, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, with a demand that the Constitution be changed to guarantee Fijian control in the country.
Dr Bavadra warns Fijians in na national radio broadcast not to allow a “disgruntled few” to sabotage the country. “Let us not yield . . . let us not tarnish the image of tolerance and goodwill for which Fiji is renowned,” he says. “Where is the justice and reason in trying to destabilise and remove a government as soon as it has been elected?”
Sunday, May 3: Police and military forces are put on alert after a Molotov cocktail explodes in the law offices of Justice Minister Jai Ram Reddy in the western city of Lautoka. Four nearby Indian businesses are firebombed at the same time. Shortly after the fires, police detain Senator Jina Qio, one of the Suva protest organisers, and release him after four hours of questioning. (He is later charged.)
Friday, May 8: Anti-government organisers claim at least 30,000 Fijians will blockade the opening of Parliament. However, the government refuses to grant a permit for a legal protest and only about 1000 people picket the opposition Alliance lobby rooms. But that is enough to prevent all but five Alliance MPs being sworn in. A rebel Alliance MP, Militoni Leweniqala, is elected by the House as Speaker and he is immediately banned from the Alliance caucus. More destabilisation threats are made but the Bavadra government appears to be weathering the storm.
Thursday, May 14: Ten soldiers wearing gasmasks and armed with pistols burst into the parliamentary chamber. Sitting in the public gallery, Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka rises, moves toward Dr Bavadra and orders: “Sit down everybody. This is a takeover!”
The soldiers abduct Dr Bavadra and 26 of his MPs at gunpoint, herding them into military trucks to take them to detention. Heads of the military and police forces are deposed, the Constitution suspended and the colonel forms a provisional council of ministers.
The Governor-General, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, declares a state of emergency and refuses to recognise the military regime as Australia, Britain and New Zealand exert pressure for a return to constitutional democracy.
Tuesday, May 19: After five days of intense pressure from Colonel Rabuka for the vice-regal seal on his military regime, Ganilau still refuses to endorse the junta. He orders the dissolution of Parliament and return to barracks for Rabuka’s soldiers, and he calls for a new election.
David Robie was one of only two New Zealand journalists to cover the fateful 1987 election in Fiji and he correctly predicted the election of the Fijian Labour Party-led coalition to power. He also covered the post-coup period and later, as head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, led a group of student journalists in their award-winning coverage of the May 2000 George Speight coup. His early Fiji coup coverage was summarised in his 1989 book Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific and his Speight coup coverage was included in a 2014 sequel, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific. This article was published in the June/July 1987 edition of New Outlook magazine, pp. 22-29.
REVIEWS: By David Robie
When it first appeared in 1977 under the title Moruroa, Mon Amour, the Danielsson’s book was a damning indictment of French nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. For France, it had the effect of whipping up a tsunami, a tidal wave of hostile public opinion, that the French-language edition (Stock, 1974) was unable to achieve.
More than any writers, the Danielssons have exposed the arrogant and cynical way that a succession of French governments and leaders fron Charles de Gaulle on, have exploited the Tahitian people and their culture for a fallacy based on the force de frappe.
Now their revised edition, Poisoned Reign, which adds a further none chapters and an epilogue on “Underwatergate”, brings us up to date about France’s nuclear hostage in Polynesia.
Among one of the more moving passages is a statement by Ian Mana Te Nunaa leader Jacqui Drollet: “Our land,” he says, “has changed hands, we have sold it for a dream. Our power of decision has been taken from us and all we have got in exchange are a few social welfare benefits.
“Our society has become tough, cruel, merciless, and we are dominated by a new desire to make individual profits. To continue along this road is sheer nuclear prostitution.”
This edition includes a foreword by Chris Masters, who produced an award-winning television documentary, French Connections. Viewed in exclusion, the Rainbow Warrior affair does seem bizarre,” he observes. “Viewed, however, in the context of French Polynesian history as revealed in this book, it is not surprising.
“The vile treatment by France of the Tahitian autonomist Pouvanaa a Oopa is no less shocking than the killing of Fernando Pereira.”
Also from Penguin Australia, is American Lake, a detailed exposé of the state of the Soviet and United States nuclear stand-off in the Pacific. It warns that recent changes in superpower military strategy and force deployments have made it just as likely that World War III could break out in the Pacific as in Europe or the Middle East.
The authors, researchers with Nautilus Pacific Research, have spent several years compiling this long awaited wealth of information. They make telling use of previously undisclosed and formerly classified Pentagon files obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act.
They highlight the “deadly connection” between nuclear and conventional weaponry, “which is central to fully comprehending the nuclear power in the Pacific”.
The vast size and power of the US Pacific Command is explained and the authors conclusively reject US rhetoric about the “increasing Soviet threat” in the Pacific. Concluding that the Soviet military machine is homebound and vulnerable, the authors add that it is “vastly inferior to the US in every dimension”.
American Lake also touches briefly on the role of the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement which has provided a powerful “people’s diplomacy” since the early 1970s. It could have examined this rather more closely, but perhaps it is better tackled by other authors.
Both books are compulsory reading for anybody seriously advocating a truly peaceful order in the Pacific.
By David Robie in the NZ Sunday Times
Peace researcher Owen Wilkes claims the mystery submarine sighted in Cook Islands waters during February 1986 was on an American covert operation aimed at scuttling New Zealand’s antinuclear policy — but it misfired.
He accuses the Cook Islands and New Zealand governments and the military of a cover-up of the real identity of the submarine.
In an article in New Zealand Monthly Review published today, Wilkes says the facts point to a special operations submarine deployed by the United States navy.
![[Mystery] submarine from US](https://davidrobie.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Submarine-NZ-Suntimes-Drobie-19-Oct-1986.png)
When Aotearoa (NZ) banned nuclear warships from its ports it was seen as David standing up to Washington’s Goliath. But behind Prime Minister David Lange is a whole army of peace campaigners forcing him to sling his shot. David Robie traces the history of their resistance — and shows how ordinary people declaring their home as a nuclear-free-zone helped send a message to the superpowers.
By David Robie
Artist Debra Bustin sat dejectedly among the Reagan and Muldoon masks, papier mâché missiles and effigies of babies on stakes, waiting. The Nuclear Horror Show, a dramatic piece of street theatre, was ready to roll — but there was no transport. The truck supposed to have carted the props to the start of the demonstration in the heart of the capital, Wellington, had failed to turn up.
But another peace campaigner had an idea. He darted out onto the nearby street and stopped the first empty truck.
‘Hey mate, we’ve got to get all this stuff to the big anti-nuclear rally across town,’ he said. ‘Can you help us?’
Ten years before, the truck driver would have laughed at the campaigner’s cheek. But this was September 1983, and the peace and anti-nuclear groups in Aotearoa (NZ) had become a mass movement. The driver was delighted to help and the macabre show went ahead.
Within ten months, conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon had been swept out of office as David Lange and the Labour Party were catapulted into power on a nuclear-free Aotearoa platform which stunned the country’s Western allies, particularly the US. And the new government swiftly announced it intended to ban nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from the country’s ports.
Internationally, the move was perceived to be a bold, idealistic new step by a reformist government. Critics tried to suggest it was the result of some Machiavellian plot by the party’s militant left wing. In fact, it was the culmination of a policy which had first been introduced more than a decade earlier and had been reinforced at grassroots level by a highly motivated peace movement.
Indeed, even if the government itself had had doubts about the policy, it would have had little choice. Opinion polls showed 74 percent of people in favour of banning nuclear-armed ships, two thirds of the country’s 3.2 million population lived in self-proclaimed ‘nuclear-free zones’ and four out of five competing parties (including a new breakaway right-wing group) had the policy as part of their platforms. So what created this revolution in public opinion, and is there a lesson that the global peace movement can learn from Aotearoa’s example?
The peace movement in Aotearoa itself had humble beginnings in the 1960s with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)’s local Easter rallies being miniature clones of the huge annual Aldermaston march in the UK. But in 1968, two things combined to create the first major rallying point The first was the screening of Peter Watkins’ anti-nuclear TV film The War Game (which was banned in the UK). The second was the US Navy’s plan to build a radio communications base called Omega, which was to aid the navigation of Polaris submarines. Sensitised to the issue by the documentary. Aotearoans were so outraged by the Omega plan that it had to be shelved.
‘Government Deals NZ into War Game,’ said one newspaper.
‘The Watkins film brought home to Aotearoans the possibility of the country being a nuclear target,’ says peace researcher Owen Wilkes. ‘Until then war had been a kind of sporting event. It was something that happened on the other side of the world.’
Anti-nuclear feeling contributed to Labour’s election victory under Norman Kirk in 1972. Their nuclear-free policy emerged from the fallout shelter hysteria of the early 1960s, thermonuclear tests by the superpowers and the escalating Vietnam war. In the three heady years which followed, the Kirk government shut out nuclear-armed and powered ships from Aotearoa’s ports. They also despatched frigates in support of the vulnerable flotillas of yachts which sailed to Moruroa in protest at French nuclear testing there.
But then the nuclear-free strategy was dealt a body blow. The National Party was re-elected in 1975 and Muldoon ushered in his decade of power by welcoming back nuclear ships. The Peace Squadron was formed in response — a loose coalition of people whose yachts, small boats and other craft mounted spectacular waterborne protests against visiting nuclear ships.
Another focus for the peace movement was the creation of nuclear-free zones. ‘We campaigned to declare your house, dog, car and boat nuclear-free,’ recalls Maire Leadbeater, leader of CND. It seemed small fry at the time, but later it was realised what a clever strategy it had been. It gave peace activists a manageable goal while at the same time making elected councils take a stand against nuclear facilities visiting or being sited in their area.
Canadian émigré Larry Ross dived into the nuclear issue in 1979 with a crusader’s zeal and an ‘ad man’s flair’. He made his Christchurch home headquarters of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Committee and sparked off a movement which had remarkable success: 66 percent of the population now live in such zones declared by local authorities.
One after another local authorities declared themselves nuclear-free in the face of a barrage of letter-writing and lobbying by peace campaigners. Even larger cities became nuclear-free — councillors in the country’s largest city of Auckland considered the issue three times before deciding yes. Indeed, it was better, according to Larry Ross, for a council to refuse the demand at first – because this meant campaigners had to go out and involve local people, talk to them on the doorstep and get them to sign petitions.
By the 1980s the movement was becoming more organised. Peace Movement Aotearoa was formed, while Māori campaigners, seeking with increasing success to link anti-nuclearism with racism and land rights, set up the Pacific People’s Anti-Nuclear Action Committee.
In the wake of the social upheaval caused by the protests against apartheid during the 1981 South African rugby tour, enormous energy was released which became diverted to the peace movement. In one week alone, 40,000 people protested against a warship visit. The peace movement was finally a mass one — and the Lange Government’s policy was a direct result.
‘Everybody thinks we have this brilliant Labour government which is dedicated to pacifism,’ says Owen Wilkes. ‘But it isn’t, the government simply responded to public opinion whereas in other countries where there have been similar high percentages against nuclear weapons, governments haven’t reacted.’
Why has there been such an extraordinary level of popular backing for the policy in Aotearoa, a country which is so far from the centres of the world tension and so unlikely to be a target in the case of any nuclear attack? One key factor has been the bitter resentment most people feel towards French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
French persistence with the tests in arrogant disregard of repeated protests by Aotearoa, Australia and other neighbouring Pacific nations has helped keep Aotearoans acutely aware of the nuclear issue. It has also helped to provide the peace movement with credibility.
Last year [1985], the sight of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, lying bombed and submerged in Auckland harbour while crew members mourned their dead photographer colleague, Fernando Pereira, became a brutal reminder to all Aotearoans of the realities of raising a voice against war. And it unquestionably strengthened the Lange government’s anti-nuclear resolve.
While Lange is portrayed internationally as a champion of the nuclear-free strategy, he is at times accused at home of back-pedalling on the issue. The peace movement is also watchful for any sign that the government might soften its stance.
Last year [1985] the government tried to allow the nuclear-capable American warship Buchanan to visit and was only stymied by the strength of the peace movement. The protest ruined a carefully laid plan by the bureaucracy to open up a chink in the antinuclear strategy and prepare the ground for a compromise with the US.
Aotearoa’s policy has pushed it into an increasingly isolated position within the Western alliance. The US has applied severe pressure on the Lange government both overtly through diplomatic harassment and covertly through attempts to influence Aotearoans by CIA-funded projects involving journalists, trade unionists and other opinion leaders. Britain, meanwhile, has sent envoys like Baroness Young to warn that if the New Zealand Nuclear-Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Bill were passed by Parliament it would mean Aotearoa and the rest of the Western alliance would move apart.
In the face of this international pressure, Lange has become increasingly cautious. At Oxford University during the popular debate with the American Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell in March 1985, Lange delighted in his image as the nuclear-free David challenging the superpower Goliath.
But barely 15 months later his delight in the image was not so obvious. On his first major tour of European capitals, in the wake of Chernobyl, he was determined to reassure Western leaders that he was no pawn of the peace movement. During a speech to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War he almost appeared to be defending the nuclear powers in his anxiety not to be seen to be ‘exporting’ the anti-nuclear policy.
Many people in the peace movement were disappointed that he did not use the occasion to make an emotional plea to the West to follow Aotearoa” example. They know that they have to keep up the pressure so as to counteract the influence of the Western alliance — and support from people internationally will help them. Otherwise a stand that has become a great source of hope to the worldwide peace movement might be endangered.
David Robie is a journalist based in Auckland. He specialises in Pacific affairs and is the author of Eyes of Fire (see box below).
World headlines
The sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior by the French Secret Service made world headlines. But few of those stories told us that the boat had just arrived back from a mercy mission — evacuating the Pacific islanders of Rongelap from their home atoll in the Marshall Islands, still drenched by radiation from a US nuclear test in 1954. The bomb dropped then, codenamed ‘Bravo’, was over a thousand times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, and the islanders have always claimed that the US deliberately used them as guinea pigs. These quotations tell one of the most iniquitous stories of the nuclear age:
‘In a sense the Marshall Islanders are the first victims of the Third World War. They are the first culture in the history of our race which ahs been effectively destroyed by radiation.’ — Denis O’Rourke, director of the acclaimed film about the Marshall Islanders, Half Life.
‘We heard a noise like thunder. We saw some strange clouds over the horizon. But the sun in the west faded away. In the afternoon something began falling from the sky upon our island. It looked like ash from a fire. It fell on me, it fell on my wife, it fell on our infant son. It fell on the trees, and on the roofs of our houses. It fell on the reef and into the lagoon.
‘We were very cautious about this ash falling from the sky. Some people put it in their mouths and tasted it. One man rubbed it into his eyes to see if it would cure an old ailment. People walked in it, and children played in it.’ — John Anjain, mayor of Rongelap when the explosion took place on 1 March 1954. In 1972 his son Lekoj died of leukaemia blamed on the fall out.
‘Greater knowledge of (radiation) effects on human beings is badly needed. Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world. The habitation of these people on the island will afford the most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.’
— Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Medical Survey March 1957.
‘The Rongelapese have for years accused US government scientists of using them as guinea pigs. They claim that their exposure to Bravo was not an accident but part of an experiment to test the effects of radiation on human beings. The US Government has consistently claimed that the fallout was ‘accidental’ and caused by ‘an unprecedented shift in the winds’. However, in 1984, a declassified Defence Nuclear Agency report surfaced confirming that the fallout was in fact not an accident. The report said that, six hours before the blast, weather briefings showed winds at 20,000 feet were heading for Rongelap.’ — David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire.
‘The wind had been blowing straight at us for days before the test. It was blowing straight at us during the test, and straight at us after it. The wind never shifted.’ — Gene Curbow, senior weather technician on the neighbouring atoll of Rongerik, who took radio-sound weather measurements up to an altitude of 30,000 meters before and after Bravo. Curbow and US veterans stationed there have suffered since from a variety of illnesses including cancer, tumours, heart and thyroid conditions, and urinary and bladder disorders that they say were related to Bravo. Three of them said they had difficulty in fathering children or had had sickly offspring.
‘When we decided to leave Rongelap Atoll, the old people cried to leave their homeland. But I said, “What about your grandchildren? Do you want them to die?”‘ — Jeton Anjain, a Marshall Islands Senator.
All material from Eyes of Fire; the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior by David Robie (Lindon – NZ 1986; Ravette – UK, 1986; New Society Publishers – USA, 1987; Asia Pacific Network, 2005; Little Island Press, 2015).
Aotearoa’s own peace needs
Aotearoa is now seen as a peacemaker on the world stage. But Māori and Pacific Islanders see little sign that their own needs for peace and social justice are being taken seriously and they ‘denounce any actions of the present state of Aotearoa, which acts at a mini-superpower in the Pacific’. Hilda Halkyard-Harawira puts their case:
“The Māori people are the indigenous people of Aotearoa — the land known to the international community as New Zealand. We are also children of the Great Ocean of Kiwa (Pacific), and we trace our ancestry back to the lands of Hawai’i and Tahiti Nui.
“The indigenous peoples of the Pacific are small nations, and often our plight goes unheard. And yet, isolated though we are geographically, our histories of colonisation match almost exactly those of our indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the world.
“We too have been forced to carry our cultures within our hearts and wear the culture of the European like a second skin. And today we too are but second-class citizens in our own homelands. Today we suffer the classic effects of colonisation endemic drug and alcohol problems, high mortality and suicide rates, apathy, self-hatred and identity crises. And now, as if that were not enough to cope with, an even greater and more deadly monster looms — nuclear death. The superpowers have invested in a new war game. The Pacific is the battlefield. Pacific peoples are the pawns. Even those not directly involved in the making of nuclear war will kill, so also will we be decimated by the dumping of radioactive waste in our oceans.
“We are denied the information that will help us to build our movement. The truth is always hidden from us, and we are made to feel powerless and ineffective.
“But despite all this, the spirit of resistance is strong. We have withstood the erosion of our culture and we continue to yearn for the freedom and peace that was once our birthright. And if all we can do in our lifetime is guarantee our children’s survival in a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, then we will have achieved something.”
Hilda Halkyard-Harawira lives in Aotearoa New Zealand, and is the Australasian representative for the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement.
By Chris Cooper, David Robie and Michael Fleck
An independent video slide show developed from photographs in David Robie’s photographic exhibition around the original Rainbow Warrior’s humanitarian voyage to Rongelap in the Marshall Islands in May 1985.
The exhibition was donated to the NZ Peace Foundation for showing at schools. Also photographs by Gil Hanly, John Miller, Giff Johnson, Fernando Pereira and some US military archival images.
Narration: Foufou Susana Hukui and Nathaniel Lees.
Produced and filmed in 1986.
Script by David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
Winner of a NZ Media Peace Prize citation in 1986.
Video dubbed off VHS. Screened on NZ and Pacific television, including Tagata Pasifika.
Director: Chris Cooper
Script: David Robie
Producers: Chris Cooper, David Robie and Michael Fleck
© Aroha Productions 1986
By David Robie
“Award-winning journalist David Robie was on board the Greenpeace environmental ship Rainbow Warrior on its last mission to Rongelap Atoll in May 1985 and continued to stay with the ship until it reached Auckland in July.
“Robie’s account of this voyage — of the Marshall Islands community poisoned by nuclear fallout and of the fatal bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by the French secret service — remains a definitive work on Western treachery in the Pacific, but also shows the power of good people who were willing to stand up and be counted when others desperately needed help.” – Lindon Books
“One of the most iniquitous stories of the nuclear age.” – New Internationalist
“This is THE book of the last five months of the first Rainbow Warrior.” – Rainbow Warrior skipper Peter Willcox
“Robie’s analysis places the bombing squarely in the context of the South Pacific politics and people, providing a much-needed human backdrop.” – Steve Sawyer, Rongelap campaign coordinator, Greenpeace Magazine
Journalist David Robie won New Zealand’s 1985 Media Peace Prize (NZ Peace Foundation) for his reporting of the last voyage to the Marshall Islands and the bombing.
This was the original 1986 NZ edition published by Lindon Books. Other editions followed in the United Kingdom (Ravette) and the US (New Society Press).
A 20th anniversary edition was published in 2005 (Asia Pacific Network, NZ) and a 30th anniversary memorial special edition (Little Island Press, NZ) in 2015.
Victory was complete. Gaston Flosse crushed all opposition at the polls. David Robie in Pape’ete asks how powerful can he become as France’s newly created Pacific Affairs boss?
By David Robie in Islands Business
Some brand him as the Pacific’s “Papa Doc”; others regard him as the man with a vision which will turn Tahiti into the economic and cultural showpiece of the region.
For two decades Gaston Flosse has been the mayor of the affluent Pape’ete suburb of Pirae. Ten years ago he was President [Speaker] of the Tahitian Territorial Assembly. But the real start of his phenomenal rise to power was four years ago [1982] when his neo-Gaullist party, Tahoeraa Huira’atira, wrestled control from the jaded autonomist Front Uni coalition of Francis Sanford.
Since then, the 54-year-old businessman has consolidated his power in such a devastating way that opponents are bitterly talking of “another dictatorship” or one-party rule.
Two years ago [1984] he assumed the title of President of “French” Polynesia with the authority of a prime minister under a statute reform which granted the territory considerable self-government powers. And barely three days after crushing defeat of the fragmented Tahitian opposition parties at the polls in March he was named by incoming French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to the newly-created post of State Secretary for Pacific Affairs.
It was a triumph for his platform of internal autonomy for Tahiti and a greater say in French Pacific policy by islanders. Already he is being touted as the powerbroker of the region.
Delighted, Flosse praised Chirac for keeping his pledge. “I’ve already told him,” he added, “that I would only accept the job providing he gave me the support necessary to apply the policies of France in the Pacific.”
But, warned his opponents, the move increased his powers to an unhealthy degree. He would, for example, hold senior ranking to the French High Commissioner in Pape’ete. “Chirac has given Flosse a baby’s rattle to play with for a while — he’ll have no real power in thePacific,” snapped Jacques Drollet, leader of the pro-independence socialist party Ia Mana Te Nunaa (Power to the People). “And, in any case, the Chirac government won’t last a year.”
Personality attacks against Flosse have been the most savage ever seen in a Tahitian election campaign. Although his policies have clearly meant a giant economic leap forward, his critics claim only supporters of the party have cashed in. Even when Flosse turned the tables on his opponents on polling day, 16 March 1986, by becoming the first Tahitian leader in 30 years to win an outright majority in an election, the nasty barbs continued.
Tahoeraa Huira’atira, which won power through a coalition in 1982, retained office with 21 seats, a majority of one in the expanded 41-seat Territoral Assembly. (The number later rose to 22 when an electoral office gave Tahoeraa another seat.) The vote also gave the indépendantistes a surprise success.
But, alleged Flosse’s opponents, Tahoeraa achieved its win by “buying” votes with favours and gifts of building materials for islanders on many of the 120 small outlyng islands and atolls in Polynesia. The opponents also claimed that an electoral reform had gerrymandered the remote islands, which cover an area of the Pacific almost as large as Australia, to Tohoeraa’s advantage.
“it is an outrage that Tahoeraa should win a majority in the Assembly with a minority of the votes,” said Quito Braun-Ortega, one of the leaders of the opposition coalition Amuitahiraa No Polinesia. “We cannot accept this result.” On the windward islands of Tahiti and Moorea, where two-thirds of French Polynesia’s 160,000 population live, Tahoeraa won just over a third of the vote. Yet this was still enough to gain nine seats out of the 22 at stake. Overall, Tahoeraa won 40 percent of the 74,000 votes cast. (A record 105,000 voters were registered.)
‘Unjust and scandalous’
By the end of the week, Ortega’s accusations had become increasingly bitter. He declared the “real majority” would resist Flosse’s government and said he electoral law was “unjust and scandalous”. Pape’ete mayor Jean Juventin, leader of another key opposition party, Here Ai’a, added: “A real fight is starting.”
The seven opposition parties held a series of meetings to consider a strategy for seeking an annulment of the results, particularly in the Tuamotus, where Tahoeraa won four crucial seats.
Ortega accused Tahoeraa of using state funds and the territorial institutions for the benefit of its electoral campaign. There was also talk of occupying the Territorial Assembly building in protest so that the new Parliament could not convene on 27 March 1986.
With Flosse and Vice-President Alexandre Leontieff away in Paris to meet Chirac, Tahiti’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Patrick Peaucellier, called a press conference in whivh he accused Amuitahiraa of using “seditious language” in challenging the election results. Defending the electoral law, he said: “Tahiti isn’t a banana republic where coups d’etat can take place any old time.”
It was a grave situation when the opposition could talk about taking to the streets. Peaucellier said the opposition lacked political maturity. he warned the government would not tolerate any attempted occupation of the Territorial Assembly, as happened in 1976 when Front Uni assemblymen were agitating against Paris for reforms.
“If it doesn’t have anything to hide,” added Drollet, “Tahoeraa should be happy to have the inquiry. If it opposes it then our suspicions are confirmed. But I maintain there has been massive corruption.”
Criticism on a similar theme pas persisted over the last few months. One Paris newspaper, Libération, published a full-page article in January citing the alleged corruption. Flosse responded by filing a defamation suit against the newspaper. An issue of the party paper, Te Tahoeraa, also denied the allegations in a report headed: “Monsieur 10 percent doesn’t exist.” It also quoted Drollet telling Agence France-Presse: “None of the accusations against Flosse have to this day been substantiated. Nobody has been able to prove anything.”
The electoral allegations have centred on two government agencies, the US$10 million Islands Aid Fund (FEI) set up in 1984 to help develop the outer islands, and the Territorial Reconstruction Agency (ATR), established after the tropical cyclone devastation in 1983. ATR has built more than 1000 homes for the homeless.
However, the opposition claims that some houses or building materials have benefited party supporters while many Tahitian homeless remain without a place. Fei is also the Tuamotu word for a species of red banana used as the party symbol for Tahoeraa. So, in the minds of many islanders development work done by FEI was immediately associated with personal assistance from Flosse’s party.
The opposition claimed the government abused its powers by using both FEI and ATR to further its electoral prospects. Ortega also accused the French administration of being at least “ambivalent” over the election and having contributed to the alleged fraud.
Flosse rejected the allegations, saying: “They’re absolutely false.” He denounced the local newspapers and television station for “encouraging” the attacks. he also pointed out that the electoral law had been in use for several years. “You know very well there hasn’t been any fraud,” he told La Dêpeche. “The best proof is at Pirae, where the magistrate was preset and in charge of scrutineering. The same at Pape’ete, at Faa’a .. .in all the big centres a magistrate was present. It’s the opposition which was carrying out a fraud.”
But the electoral figures, as cited by Ortega, were hard to ignore. “Nobody had time to seriously study the implications of the new electoral law,” said Ortega. “But what it means is that a voter from the remote Austral or Tuamotu islands is equal to three voters from Tahiti. What sort of democracy is this?” In effect, it took about 2400 votes to win a seat on Tahiti and only about 800 votes on outer islands.
The opposition won 63 percent of the votes in the Windward Islands (Tahiti and Moorea) against Tahoeraa’s 37 percent; more than 54 percent on the Leeward Islands, against Flosse’s less than 46 percent; more than 54 percent in the Tuamotus (against 45.5 percent) and more than 57 percent in the Australs (against nearly 43 percent). It was only in the Marquesas where Tahoeraa actually won a majority of votes (more than 66 percent against 34 percent for the opposition).
Power on a minority
In the most “scandalous” case, Tahoeraa won four out of five seats in the Tuamotus with 45 percent of the vote. The other seat was won by Tapuro Napo, the one-man band party of Napoleon Spitz, who later announced he would support Tahoera’a. The Tuamotus were the islands that benefited most from FEI’s development assistance.
“We cannot confer power on a minority which has so far clearly been rejected by most Tahitians,” said Ortega. “Or the Tahitian people are in danger of revolting like in the Philippines. We hope the state will have the wisdom to realise this.” But there seemed little hope of a “grand coalition” of opposition parties as Ortega hoped — the political differences were too great. “This idea is moe moea — a big dream,” scoffed Drollet.
“There isn’t much difference between Amuitahiraa and Tahoeraa — it’s just a struggle between money and money.” The opposition looked likely to settle into three factions with the Assembly line-up as follows:
Government
Opposition
Amuitahiraa and Here Ai’a, the party once led by the late independence leader Pouvanaa a Oopa and then John Teariki before his death in 1983, were expected to form two major opposition blocs. Ia Mana and Tavini Huira’atira’s Oscar Temaru, the rising star of Faa’a, were likely to form a pro-independence bloc with the possible support of Maohinui, Sanford’s onetime party now led by Senator Daniel Millaud. Tutuha Salmon (Tahoeraa) and Jean Juvenin lost their deputy seats in the French National Assembly. They both went to Tahoeraa, the first time a Tahitian party had won the “double”.
Flosse and Leontieff, the President’s technocrat right-hand man, were to have filled the seats. However, Flosse’s post in the French cabinet meant he would have to surrender his deputy’s seat which went to his son-in-law Édouard Fritch, the 34-year-old Mines and Energy Minister.
Well-oiled political machine
The well-oiled Tahoeraa Huira’atira political machine, backed by local and multinational business interests, steamrollered its way through the election campaign in a way not seen elsewhere in South Pacific elections. Estimates of the election bill, including campaugn costs, ranged between a massive $1 million and $5 million. Using American-style razzamatazz, Tahoeraa imported 17,000 orange-coloured T-shirts from Korea for the party faithful, staged village extravaganzas with pop singers, balloons and bands, and even built a temporary stadium with seating for 7000 people on Pape’ete’s harbour-front Quai de Commerce for a one-night rally.
Quite a sight for the cruise ship Liberte when it docked alongside the quay.
As a final election eve carrot, Flosse pledged to build cheap housing to provide adequate homes for all poor Polynesians. But this was a sore point with some political leaders who were already asking embarrassing questions about why many Tahitians remained homeless after the big cyclones of 1983 had left more than 5000 people without housing.
Even the daily newspapers, La Dépêche de Tahiti and Les Nouvelles, were partisan during the campaign in support of Flosse. An independent newspaper, La Nouveau Journal de Polynésie, was due to be launched at the beginning of March, but the Flosse government reportedly blocked delivery of the printing press until after the elections.
Tahiti has by far the highest living standards — for some — of any South Pacific nation or territory. It has more than 40,000 cars, 20,000 television sets and the most comprehensive socil welfare system. The Tahiti budget totals $200 million a year to cover a major part of the civil service sector and the nuclear Pacific Experiments Centre (CEP).
During the campaign, Ortega offered a political platform based on “integrity . . . competence” and declared Tahiti would remain part of the French republic for at least five years. He was a hard-driving lieutenant for Emile Vernaudon, the “sheriff” mayor of Mahina, who helped Flosse to power in 1982 and then split.
Flosse warned Tahitians against the “political amateurism” and “irresponsiblity” of his opponents. “All they do is nitpick about our ideas and our programme,” he sneered. “They hurl invective and hate at us, abuse us and defame us . . . all without proof.” And the party’s 200-page manifesto was a document of progress which the opposition could not match.
Outside the polling booths of Faa’a, the airport township on the outskirts of Pape’ete, a former Tahitian head of government nodded sadly to me. “I fear for the future of Tahiti,” said Francis Sanford, the metua (father figure) whose retirement from politics at the end of last year [1985] helped precipitate the elections more than a year early. “Big money is now ruling Tahiti and there are serious social troubles ahead.”
Independence parties make gains
The historic success of Flosse winning a majority did not detract from the remarkable gains made by the parties seeking independence and an end to nuclear tests. Their combined share of the vote almost doubled to 20 percent.
Temaru, the charismatic mayor of Faa’a, led his party Tavini Huira’atira to win two seats. Campaigning on the slogans “Independence Tomorrow” and “God is our Leader” with the Christian cross as the party symbol, Temaru drew large crowds to his rallies. He is regarded as potentially the most powerful force to emerge in Tahitian politics since Pouvanaa.
“France is going to be forced to listen to us and respond now that we are in Parliament,” he warned. Temaru has embarrassed French authorities in the past three years with pro-independence and anti-nuclear rallies. Earlier in March a New Zealand peace campaigner, Annie Maignot, and a West German member of the European Parliament, Dorothy Piermont, were expelled for addressing a Faa’a rally at the invitation of Temaru.
He also has close links with the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) in New Caledonia.
Ia Mana, which made its Assembly debut in the 1982 elections, retained three seats but lost votes to Temaru. “We’ve only just begun our fight,” said Temaru. “Many Tahitians are beginning to hear our message. They had forgotten our independence and our freedom which has been buried under the corrugated iron and plywood of colonialism.”
This is part 1 of six reports in David Robie’s nine-page cover story portfolio for Islands Business magazine covering the 1986 Tahitian elections. Oscar Temaru went on to become President of French Polynesia five times, the first instance in 2004. His party made a comeback in 2023 to decisively win the Territorial Assembly outright, with Moetai Brotherson as President and independence still the longterm goal.
By David Robie
One political cartoon depicted President Gaston Flosse as a vampire. A potted “species” note in the opposition newspaper Te Teo o Te Amuitahiraa described him as Flossilus vampirus and added that he easily mistook his party colour, orange, for gold.
Another cartoon showed him as a giant coconut crab scuttling off with a pile of money. Yet another portrayed the President as Bokaflossa I — after deposed Central African emperor-for-life Bokassa — with the party slogan “always more for myself”.
A fourth caricature showed him as a traditional Tahitian high chief with slaves offering him the French airline UTA and the fuel-storage freighter Petrocean on a plate.
Rarely in a Tahitian election has a political personality become such a target for cartoonists and satirists. Flosse largely ignored the critical barbs [for this 1986 election], determined to make his reply through the ballot box. But then he could afford to. Most of the mass media supported him and his opponents were forced to attack through small-circulation party newspapers — and the coconut wireless. However, occasionally the criticism stung and he retaliated.
An editorial in the Tahoeraa Huira’atira party paper Te Tahoeraa recalled the words of Archbishop Michel Coppenrath, head of the Catholic Church in Tahiti, at the beginning of the election campaign: “Say and do what you wish, carry your campaign work, but respect the inhabitants of our country and don’t oppose them. Peace above all.”
He warned against the the language of hate, adding: “You can kill the dove of peace with words.” Yet his warning was largely ignored.
“For several weeks a torrent of lies, defamations and insults have been heaped on the voters by the opposition,” complained Te Tahoeraa . . . “But you cannot build a country on hatred. It is built on a coherent and realistic programme. It is built on a common wish and with a solid team.” It added that the opposition had no real plafform.
But the editorial failed to deflate the scathing satire. Some of the attacks were witty rather than wretched; for a satirical commentary in Te Reo about a meeting between gaullist envoy Bernard Pons and Flosse as an example:
“Gaston, are you gaullist?”
“Yes, long live De Gaulle.”
“Fine Gaston, but do you truly know what gaullism is?”
” . . . Not very well. Can you just fill me in a little?”
“A true gaulllist must hold the interests of the state above all and the public interest must take precedence over private interest . . . The chief who represents his country must have a dignified attitude, noble, heroic if it is needed, and when required must sacrifice himself completely for the nation . . . He must have a higher goal of leading his people and show an example . . . Gaston, do you really want to be a gaullist?”
“No, actually, I would rather not. I’m more flossiste than gaullist. Vive myself. Vive Flosse!”
This is part 2 of six reports in David Robie’s nine-page cover story portfolio for Islands Business magazine covering the 1986 Tahitian elections. Oscar Temaru went on to become President of French Polynesia five times, the first instance in 2004. His party made a comeback in 2023 to decisively win the Territorial Assembly outright, with Moetai Brotherson as President and independence still the longterm goal.
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