Josaia Waqabaca (pronounced [tʃoˈsaja βaŋɡamˈbaða] ) is a Fijian public figure and former political organizer, who turned police informant about the Fiji coup of 2000. Waqabaca was convicted and imprisoned in 2001 for plotting to kidnap the Military Commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, in 2000. [1]
Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles northeast of New Zealand's North Island. Its closest neighbours are Vanuatu to the west, New Caledonia to the southwest, New Zealand's Kermadec Islands to the southeast, Tonga to the east, the Samoas and France's Wallis and Futuna to the northeast, and Tuvalu to the north. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about 18,300 square kilometres (7,100 sq mi). The most outlying island is Ono-i-Lau. The two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, account for 87% of the total population of 898,760. The capital, Suva, on Viti Levu, serves as the country's principal cruise-ship port. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts, either in Suva or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry—or Lautoka, where the sugar-cane industry is paramount. Due to its terrain, the interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited.
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to protect the lives, liberty and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their powers include the power of arrest and the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with the police forces of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from the military and other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing. Police forces are usually public sector services, funded through taxes.
The Fiji coup of 2000 was a complicated affair involving a civilian coup d'état by hardline i-Taukei nationalists against the elected government of a Fijian of Indian Descent Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, on 19 May 2000, the attempt by President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara to assert executive authority on 27 May, and his own resignation, possibly forced, on 29 May. An interim government headed by Commodore Frank Bainimarama was set up, and handed power over to an interim administration headed by Ratu Josefa Iloilo, as President, on 13 July.
A former official of the Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party (NVTLP), [2] Waqabaca claims to have been hired by two businessmen, at the behest of the party, to help bomb Nadi International Airport and strategic positions in Suva after the People's Coalition had come to power in the general election of 1999, and to have initially participated in, before withdrawing from, the campaign of unrest that led to the coup d'état which deposed the Chaudhry government in May 2000. He supported similar allegations made by coup-convict Maciu Navakasuasua.
The Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party (NVTLP) was a Fijian political party which champions Fijian ethnic nationalism. It was led by Iliesa Duvuloco, while Viliame Savu served as the party's President.
Nadi is the third-largest conurbation in Fiji. It is located on the western side of the main island of Viti Levu, and had a population of 42,284 at the most recent census, in 2007. A 2012 estimate showed that the population had grown to over 50,000. Nadi is multiracial with many of its inhabitants Indian or Fijian, along with a large transient population of foreign tourists. Along with sugar cane production, tourism is a mainstay of the local economy.
Nadi International Airport is the main international airport for the Republic of Fiji as well as an important regional hub for the South Pacific islands, located by the coast on the western side of the main island Viti Levu. It is the main hub of Fiji Airways and its domestic and regional subsidiary Fiji Link. The airport is located at Namaka 10 km from the city of Nadi and 20 km from the city of Lautoka. In 2016, it handled 2,047,476 passengers on international and domestic flights. It handles about 97% of international visitors to Fiji, of which 86% are tourists. Despite being Fiji's main airport it is a considerable distance from the country's major population centre; located 192 kilometres (119 mi) northwest of the country's capital and largest city Suva and its airport, Nausori International Airport.
In an interview with the Fiji Sun, published on 22 December 2005, Waqabaca said that a religious conversion experience had led him to confess his role in the 2000 coup.
Fiji Sun is a daily newspaper published in Fiji since September 1999 and owned by Sun News Limited. Fiji Sun was founded by and is part of CJ. Patel Group.
The Fiji Sun reported on 6 March 2006 that Waqabaca had applied for the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) nomination for the Suva City Fijian Communal Constituency for the upcoming parliamentary election, due on 6–13 May 2006. He described the ethnic politics to which he had once subscribed as "suicidal" and that dialogue with other ethnic leaders was the only way forward. He went on to contest the seat, receiving 675 votes, or 6.84 percent of the 9,865 votes cast. He thus became one of a mere handful of FLP candidates to poll more than five percent in a Fijian communal constituency.
The Fiji Labour Party (FLP) is a political party in Fiji. Most of its support is from the Indo-Fijian community, although it is officially multiracial and its first leader was an indigenous Fijian, Dr. Timoci Bavadra. The party has been elected to power twice, with Timoci Bavadra and Mahendra Chaudhry becoming prime minister in 1987 and 1999 respectively. On both occasions, the resulting government was rapidly overthrown by a coup.
Fijians are a nation and ethnic group native to Fiji, who speak Fijian and share a common history and culture.
Communal constituencies were the most durable feature of the Fijian electoral system. In communal constituencies, electors enrolled as ethnic Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Rotuman Islanders, or General electors vote for a candidate of their own respective ethnic groups, in constituencies that have been reserved by ethnicity. Other methods of choosing parliamentarians came and went, but this feature was a constant until their final abolition in the 2013 Constitution.
The Fiji Sun quoted Waqabaca on 16 March as saying that in late February, he had been confronted by Cabinet Minister Ted Young and rebuked for not joining the ruling Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL), and later by the businessmen who had planned the bombing of Nadi airport, who had forced him to sign a denial of his earlier media plans. He had signed the denial only out of fear for his life, he emphasized.
The Cabinet of Fiji is the Fijian Government's body of Ministers. It is appointed by the Prime Minister of Fiji and responsible to the Parliament of Fiji. The Cabinet's constitutional basis is sections 90 to 96 of the 2013 Constitution of Fiji.
Ted Young is a Fijian politician, who served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase from 2001 to 2006. He was Minister for Regional Development from 2001 to 2006, when he became Minister of State for Provincial Development. He represented the Lomaivuna Namosi Kadavu Open Constituency, which he won on the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) ticket in the general election of September 2001, defeating Samuela Nawalowalo of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT). He had previously sought to win the seat at the 1999 election, for the Fijian Association Party (FAP), but was defeated by Konisi Yabaki of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT)..
The United Fiji Party was a political party in Fiji. It was founded in 2001 by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase as a power base; it absorbed most of the Christian Democratic Alliance and other conservative groups, and its endorsement by the Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga) caused it to be widely seen as the successor to the Alliance Party, the former ruling party that had dominated Fijian politics from the 1960s to the 1980s. It draws its support mainly from indigenous Fijiians.
