SUVA, Fiji (17 Dec 2006) -- He was deposed at the barrel of a gun, but Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase continues to welcome visitors to the island republic. The national airline's in-flight video shows him sitting in his book-lined study, a genial and bespectacled figure plying the popular image of Fiji as a mixture of tradition and progress; the best of both worlds. It's an image seasoned with irony. The former PM now sits in his homeland, the remote island of Vanua Balavu, making promises to return to Suva to resume "talks" with Commodore Frank Bainimarama and his military government, a move that - should he find an airline willing to take him - would likely see him arrested and installed in the island prison of Nukulau alongside the 2000 coup leader George Speight. But Air Pacific has been left with little alternative. A military strongman with a machine gun in his hands is not such an inviting picture for an economy largely based on tourism. 'Coups are bad for business. The short-lived takeover in 2000 plunged the country into recession. Locals say it took more than one year for tourist numbers to return to normal; this time the loss of up to 2000 jobs and $1.3 million a day to the economy through tourism is already being blamed on the coup. But with Fiji rejoining the abject club of nations under military rule, union and business leaders are warning of a bleed-on effect into other crucial sectors of the economy, such as garment manufacture and sugar, which threatens to collapse with massive job losses if the EU withdraws aid. They say it could be the death-knell for what has been one of the more robust economies of the Pacific region. Despite the Australian Government's level four travel warning, some tourists are still coming to the archipelago - enthusiastically swapping tales of the cut-price hotel rates - and unless they take a particular interest in Fijian politics they would notice nothing terribly amiss. The few nervous days that followed the setting up of military roadblocks and the declaration of a state of emergency were followed by relative calm in which everyday life has returned to normal. Stockpiling of food has stopped; people no longer queue at ATMs to withdraw their savings. Aside from roadblocks in the capital, Suva, which is a business rather than a tourism centre, there is nothing to contradict the glossy brochure images of smiling islanders and mirrored lagoons. But peer under the carapace and a different picture emerges. The Fiji Bureau of Statistics on Thursday released the last piece of good news for the tourism industry can expect to receive for the forseeable future. Visitor numbers for the third quarter of 2006 were up for the fourth consecutive year since 2003, bringing in an estimated $220 million. No-one doubts they will be reduced in the fourth quarter - the question is, by how much. Henry Cork is one man who's seen enough. The musician is under contract at Fijian Resorts until January but after that, with occupancies at 25 per cent compared with a usual 90 per cent at this time of year he doesn't expect it to be renewed. "It's 2000 all over again," he says, adding that the resort only just finished building a conference centre that lies empty. "The ordinary people suffer," he says with a shake of his head. "Anyone with money has the ability to get out." The country's tourism industry is the South Pacific nation's biggest earner of foreign exchange, according to the World Bank. Australian tourists pour $954m into the country each year. Bookings for Air Pacific flights to Fiji are down 40 per cent for the first three months of 2007 and a ring-around of the major hotels reveals a depressingly familiar story of staff cutbacks, reduced working hours and worried people. In a nation with no social security, it's a dire situation for many families who have one breadwinner to support them. More than half of Fijian families are believed to exist in absolute or relative poverty, according to the United Nations Development Project. The slow fracturing of the village system, driven by emigration to the main island of Viti Levu for work and a "brain drain" of middle-class Fijians, means the traditional support structures aren't as reliable as they once were. A queue of people claiming back their savings as an unemployment benefit this week snaked out the door of the Suva office of the Fiji National Provident Fund. They were largely the victims of the closure earlier this month of the foreign-owned Vatukoula gold mine, which put 1600 out of work. But the paradox is that the lay-offs, precipitated by high-level travel warnings by the Australian and New Zealand governments, are widely believed unnecessary. The Indian owner of a Suva cafe put it best: "I would send my daughters to a holiday in Fiji". And while Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer accused Bainimarama this week of being a "bully", the same charge has been levelled against him by locals and expats who accuse the Australian Government stance of doing more harm than good. "Morbid emotionalism", one letter writer called the implacable international opposition to Bainimarama. Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry - himself a victim of the 2000 coup - now says the Army should be allowed to "restore democracy to Fiji" and while this coup is illegal, a "better future" can be negotiated for Fiji. It has wounded more than one Fijian's pride that, with four coups in 19 years, they are now a society where military force is an accepted solution to a political problem. But a healthy streak of political fatalism runs through the nation, says a company chief executive who doesn't wish to be named. "No-one's a cleanskin in Fijian politics and I think that's why many people are prepared to accept an outcome if their lives are not disrupted. That's not to say there isn't opposition to the Commander." Says one opponent of Bainimarama: "George Speight lasted six weeks. So far it's been one week." Henry Cork also brings up the ghost of the failed coup leader. Back in the seventies Speight played saxophone in his band. Its name? Racial Harmony. | | A military strongman with a machine gun in his hands is not such an inviting picture for an economy largely based on tourism. Cork thinks it's a great joke, but it also shows how one coup bleeds into another; how the Pandora's box, once opened, is hard to close. One of the military's ostensible reasons for seizing power was to clean up corruption in the SDL government led by Qarase, who was installed by Bainimarama following the 2000 coup. Motives, often conveniently blamed on ethnic tensions between indigenous Fijians and the sizeable minority local Indian population, are murkier than that. The 2000 coup was blamed on Indo-Fijian tensions but had more to do with the personal ambitions of George Speight. The current crisis has its roots in poisonous inter-Fijian rivalries left over from 2000. A popular view among locals is that if Bainimarama has evidence of corruption, he should show his hand now. Others think the coup is a fait accompli. "It's over. People are all around town ... everything is normal," says Samisoni Kustino. After the slow and at times downright bizarre lead-up to the December 5 coup, Bainimarama now finds himself in control of the levers of power but with questionable means to support them. The dubious means of supply were highlighted by the inability to pay more than 1000 soldiers for three weeks, and future participation in UN peacekeeping operations, which has traditionally paid for the army, are now under a cloud. Bainimarama on Wednesday promised public servants a 3 per cent cost of living adjustment backdated to the beginning of 2005. Further weakening its potential revenue, the regime also said it would roll back a tax hike ordered by the ousted government as it would cause too much hardship to "ordinary Fijians". He then took the extraordinary step of holding a press conference to ask local and foreign investors not to desert the nation. "Please continue to treat Fiji as a safe and attractive business destination," he said. But as the Fiji Sun later editorialised, "An announcement won't restore the cancelled bookings and flights. It won't remove trade bans or the threat of them. An announcement won't reopen the aid programs and it won't heal bruised diplomatic relations among our friends and neighbours. An announcement won't give people their jobs back." "Bainimarama is waging a war for hearts and minds," says the editor-in-chief of the Sun, Russell Hunter. "He's realised that he has guns on his side but that's not enough." The coup has reached a stalemate. With the military in control, a war of words is being waged through the media ahead of next week's meeting of the Great Council of Chiefs, whose task it is to appoint the President and Vice-President but has so far failed to endorse the takeover as it did in three previous coups. As it drags on, a note of resignation has crept into ousted PM Qarase's previously fighting words. "Life must go on," he told radio Legend FM yesterday. "If this takeover is ultimately fully established, that's it. There's still room for the military to pull back but that seems to be more and more difficult now." 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