SPEIGHT OF VIOLENCE Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup Authors: Michael Field, Tupeni Baba and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba Published by: Reed, Auckland, 2005, 274pp, $34.99.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Fiji's first military coups. In May and September 1987, Sitiveni Rabuka (then a lieutenant-colonel)

overthrew the elected government of Dr Timoci Bavadra first, and then ousted an interim government led by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The coups of 1987 generated a significant body of documentary and analytical literature (for example Dean and Ritova 1988, Robertson and Tamanisan 1988, Scarr 1988, B. Lal 1988, Griffen 1989, V. Lal 1990, Suthetland 1992), and it was remarkable how rapidly much of it came off the press. Indeed, influential among the titles focusing on 1987 was Brij Lal's book Power and Prejudice: the making of the Fiji crisis, published by the NZIIA in 1988. But the rush to explain causes and justify positions evident in much of the literature may have entrenched unhelpful (for example racialised or face value) ways of interpreting contemporary political events in Fiji.

It is, therefore, somewhat of a relief to read an account of the subsequent civilian-led coup of 2000 that has afforded itself the benefit of some hindsight. Published in 2005, Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup will be interesting to readers concerned with Fiji, the Pacific, the political challenges faced by developing nations, or movements for indigenous rights. While it takes 2000 as its main focus, the narrative lightly tracks back to the 19th century, through the first seventeen years of independence, to the coups of 1987 and the general election of 1999, and accelerates forward to the 2002 and 2003 convictions by judicial ruling of perpetrators of the 2000 coup.

The book is authored jointly by New Zealand-based veteran journalist Michael Field, Fijian academic and former Fiji Labour Party politician Tupeni Baba, and Fijian academic Unaisi Nabobo-Baba. Although the majority of the text was penned by Field, Baba's and Nabobo-Baba's individual voices come through in clearly identified segments. The book thus offers an unusual combination of perspectives: those of Field reporting and commenting on events, those of Baba caught up as a hostage during the coup, and those of Nabobo-Baba trying to negotiate a minefield of information and emotions while her husband is captive and she is heavily pregnant.

Most of the time their accounts are retrospective, but both Baba and Nabobo-Baba have the added advantage of referring to or sharing extracts from diaries kept and letters exchanged during the hostage crisis. Through Baba's and Nabobo-Baba's contributions we gain rare insights into the lead-up and dynamics of the 2000 coup. Baba reveals the party political machinations and miscommunications around the 1999 election victory of the Labour Coalition, in which he believed that the party had given him the mandate to be Prime Minister, but which he claims Mahendra Chaudhry willfully ignored. Nabobo-Baba draws attention to the complex web of relationships which bound victims and aggressors during the 2000 coup--reflecting on an encounter with a former classmate among the coup-makers. The enigma that is indigenous Fijian politics is well-captured in her description of feeling reassured about her husband's safety, having met the military mastermind of the coup and former British SAS commando Major Ilisoni Ligairi. In Field's contributions there is an unapologetic approach to editorial opinionising, demonstrating a confidence based on decades of observation and participation in the hurly burly of Pacific politics. Even in the barest chronology he provides, there is a slightly irreverent use of language that conveys his impatient familiarity with events and players: for example, on 27 May 2000, 'President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara sacks hostage Prime Minister Chaudhry'; on 28 May 'Policeman Filipo Seavula murdered by rebels, Fiji TV trashed'; on 19 April 2004 it is baldly stated, 'Mara dies' (emphasis added).

While I am reasonably confident that none of the authors would have intended it to be read as such, the effect of their co-authorship is unavoidably post-modern. The shifts in voice are not always smooth in tone or consistent in theme, but this serves the purpose of highlighting the inevitable fragmentation of any knowledge or understanding of Fiji's contemporary politics. Anyone who proposes to provide a unitary or definitive storyline about Fiji should be treated with suspicion!

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In the light of the most recent coup of 2006, how does Speight of Violence measure up in terms of enhancing the quest for understanding Fiji and assisting the return of the coup-beleaguered nation to political stability and democratic process? Each of Fiji's coups has been distinct in purpose and execution, and the coup of 2000 had some quite notable distinctions. It was fronted by a suave (though failed) businessman known as George Speight; it involved a protracted (56-day) hostage crisis; it became the centre of a media circus never before seen in Fiji, happening as it did in the age of internet and cellular phone communications; and though there were rebel military personnel acting in support of Speight, the Fiji Military Forces' position was officially to oppose the coup. With their combined perspectives, Field, Baba and Nabobo-Baba help to bring intimacy to what otherwise can only be described as an event exacerbated by media overexposure.

As emerging scholarship and commentary is concurring, the coup of 2006 differs significantly from any of Fiji's previous ones by combining military leadership with an ostensibly anti-ethno-nationalist agenda. Speight of Violence thus provides vital background for understanding the new directions taken in 2006. But more importantly, what this book signals is the benefits of bringing together different points of view to illuminate the complexity, the contradictions, and the continuing tensions in Fiji's contemporary politics that unfortunately could produce more 'Speights' and more violence.

Dr Teresia Teaiwa is a senior lecturer in Pacific studies at Victoria University of Wellington.