Severing church from state in Fiji

Australian Liberal Party election campaign consultant, Mark Textor, was involved in Qarase's campaign, using the fear-factor approach. The latter trades on the researched prejudices of voters. Just why Textor got involved is not clear, but having a business-friendly party may have been an incentive to Australia as well as the strategic interest of keeping Fiji out of China's sphere of influence.

In a radio interview in 2012 Mark Textor said that 'Methodist preachers ... were an important influence in the vote'.[4] This is a somewhat surprising comment.

In the United States, preachers are constitutionally forbidden from telling their parishioners how to vote from the pulpit on the grounds that religious involvement in the political process contravenes the establishment clause of the First Amendment separating church and state.

Similarly, in Australia and New Zealand, churches, which are legally charities, stand, in principle, to lose their charitable tax-exempt status if they engage in pulpit-driven political involvement. Political comment outside the church is another matter: it is free speech. Be that as it may, Textor's comment seems to confirm Commodore Bainimarama's statement that

In Fiji, you don't come with your own vote. Your vote is dictated by the chiefs, it is dictated by the Great Council of Chiefs, it is dictated by the provincial councils, and it is dictated by the [Methodist Church] ... So it's not your vote. So don't tell me that it's democracy.[5]

It is alleged the way Qarase ran Fiji led directly to the 2006 coup. Methodists were heavily represented in the cabinet. There were many allegations of corruption. Mark Textor said:

Unfortunately [Qarase's] policies got a bit radical towards the end of his second term and led to, you know, another coup. And that was unfortunate.

It is worth noting that some Methodists despaired at the political behaviour of their colleagues. In 2002, Aisake Casimira noted that a former, now deceased, president of the Methodist Church, Reverend Paula Niukula, said the heavy advocacy of a Christian state had nothing to do with Christianity. Rather, it was all about 'accumulation of power and wealth by those in power'.[6]

In justifying his 2006 coup in a 2009 interview on SBS TV in Australia, Commodore Bainimarama said that there is a 'rot that we need to get rid of [and] radical change cannot be brought in by some weak organisation. It has to be a strong entity and there's no other strong entity than the military.'

After the coup he established the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption. Amazingly, there are many billboards in the main cities and towns, featuring a phone number, asking citizens to contact the Commission to report corruption. Critics say this is just a feint to cover for the 2006 coup and the scale of corruption was no worse than in other comparable countries. Certainly, in making corruption such a high profile issue, the Commodore is setting the bar very high for himself and his colleagues. Any hint of nepotism or the like would undermine his credibility.

In the age of the internet, it is debatable whether Fiji's compliant press is enough to keep the lid on serious allegations. The regime is walking a fine line, especially after former Prime Minister, and sometimes lay-Methodist preacher, Lisenia Qarase, was gaoled for twelve months for share dealing corruption in 2012.

From 2012