Fiji Post editorial on arrests

from w
There's not much in the Fiji news about the current arrests that is not sensationalised. However the editorial in the Fiji Post is a little more restrained.

What about this angle?
8-Nov-2007

The best light we can cast on the goings-on of late concerning the alleged conspiracy against the Interim government’s leaders is that it constitutes a kind of pre-emptive strike, a willingness on the part of government to seize the initiative before things got out-of-hand.

This view of the seeming confusion sees the Interim administration as endangered, but in wanting to diffuse that danger, it has demonstrated a willingness to potentially embarrass itself by being seemingly ill-prepared in legal prosecutorial terms.

Hence, in this light, the government has launched its counter-measure knowing that while it may have to suffer ignominy for its half-baked legal case from a sceptical international community looking on, it can rest assured that it has prevented assassination and bloodshed by doing so.

Going off half-cocked is not, from this view, what this is all about. Rather, it is an attempt to hose down potentially murderous dissent before it has time to form into resolve and action. This is the best light we can put on the events of this week.

That is to say, governments are entitled to have and hold views about certain persons it considers unhelpful in the least and downright disruptive at worst. The Interim Government is therefore entitled, in its view, to seek preventive action against these persons who are, in its view, guilty until proven innocent.

Their ‘guilt’ is defined by government as a natural accompaniment to their past actions which, although within the formal boundaries of the law, are not in accord with the spirit of the new order the interim regime is seeking to administer and encourage, if not impose. That is to say, how is any government to deal with persons it already knows, by virtue of who they are, to be trouble-makers?

etc. etc.