The Hindu : National : `Rule of law being enforced in Fiji'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 15, 2004

National

National

`Rule of law being enforced in Fiji'

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI, OCT. 14. Fiji's former Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, said today that the rule of law was being enforced in the Pacific island nation. Pointing to the sentences handed down to key persons in Government for their role in the 2000 coup that ousted him from power, Mr. Chaudhry said that law enforcement authorities had cracked down on them.

"We are happy to see the rule of law being established," Mr. Chaudhry, who heads the Fiji Labour Party, said at a press conference.

The Fijian leader, who paid a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday night, said he updated him on the current situation in Fiji.

He also met the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Labour Party leader said his party, despite a court order, had still not been able to join the Laisenia Qarase Government, as envisaged by the country's 1997 Constitution.

Though he was bound to include his party in government, the Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, offered inconsequential portfolios to his party to keep him out, Mr. Chaudhry alleged. Also, the offer to join the Government was not extended to Mr. Chaudhry personally.

The former Prime Minister claimed that the previous governments in Fiji had not submitted compliance reports to the United Nations for the past 15 to 16 years, despite being a party to a U.N. Convention on elimination of all forms of racism.

Now, however, a U.N. committee had asked to the Government to respond to its concerns on 23 aspects, Mr. Chaudhry claimed.

He added that in the last session of Parliament a decision had been taken to set up a bipartisan parliamentary committee to monitor the human rights situation in the country.

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