Patrick Mercer and Fiji

by Tim Haydon.

Interest in Fiji will be stirred following the resignation of Patrick Mercer, former Colonel and Front Bench Tory who has resigned the Party Whip in view of allegations of being paid to lobby Parliament on behalf of the Pacific Island State.

Mercer is alleged to have said of David Cameron that he was “a despicable creature without any redeeming features”. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the present case, Mercer can’t be all bad, then. Cameron is personally reputed to be a narcissist well along a spectrum of psychopathology leading to total lack of empathy and sensitivity to others, except insofar as these others impinge on himself and his own ambitions. In other words he is a self –serving egomaniac.  A selfish s**t.

As it happens,  Mercer was dropped from the Tory Front bench when, speaking as an ex commanding officer, he made the probably perfectly accurate  observation that he had met “a lot” of “idle and useless” ethnic minority soldiers who used racism as a “cover”. Who in the world of work does not know of many such? One is not allowed to say such things though, even, or especially, if true. Like Mercer’s one’s job  and worse may be at risk if you do.  But who would you trust to tell the truth and be straight dealing; Cameron or Mercer? It’s no contest, is it?

Naturally, Cameron is not totally unpleased at having got rid of such an implacable enemy of his even in such circumstances, saying merely of Mercer’s resignation that ‘it was the right thing to do’. There have been other departures from his fiefdom about which he has not been so sanguine. Perhaps we shall see Mercer popping up in some other party soon.

But back to Fiji. This country is a classic instance of what is likely to happen when you import huge numbers of ethnically alien cheap labour into a country, as has been happening in Britain. The British  began bringing in indentured Indian labour to Fiji in the  last quarter of the 19^th Century to work on sugar plantations.  When the indenture system ended, most of these chose to stay in Fiji even when offered passage back to India. This asian population became independent traders and farmers and grew to the point where it outnumbered the native Fijians.

Since Fiji gained independence from Britain in 1970, the artificially created ethnic divisions in the country have been reflected in its extremely violent politics, which have played out around the issue of which ethnicity, the Indian or the Fijian, was to rule the country.

There have been no less than three coups against the government of the moment in Fiji, each of them calculated to entrench the native Fijians in control of their own country  The first was mounted in 1987 to prevent an Indian-dominated government coalition holding power.

There was another coup in 2000 following the election of Mahendra Chaudhry as the first Indo –Fijian (Indian) as prime minister. A Fijian businessman, George Speight took Chaudhry hostage and demanded an end to Indian political participation. This event precipitated a Fijian-dominated government lead by Laisenia Qarase, but this government was ejected from power in 2006 by one Commodore Bainimarama.

As Wikipedia tells us, ‘The coups and accompanying civil unrest contributed to heavy Indo-Fijian emigration; the population loss resulted in economic difficulties but ensured that Melanesians became  the majority.’ About which, one is confident in saying, the native Fijians are very happy indeed.

The British were ultimately responsible  for the ethnic tragedy that has been Fiji because it was they who imported the Indians  into the islands in the  first place in pursuit of mere profit. (Does this sound familiar?).

One would have hoped that they would have learned from this debacle (and many other similar ones) when it came to running their own country. Apparently  not.

Is Fiji the future of Britain? Why ever shouldn’t it be?