With regard to Fiji’s endeavours to develop a new constitution, commentators are avoiding the elephant in the room.
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All the coups in Fiji have been about the same thing: the fact that many ethnic Fijians see their culture as being threatened by the local ethnic Indians. Ethnic Indians represent about 38 per cent of the population.
There are ethnic Fijians who do not accept ethnic Indians as being true Fijians, despite the fact that ethnic Indians have been in Fiji for over one hundred years.
Frank Bainimarama, and the military, will only accept a new constitution that ensures that the Fijian culture can never be swamped by the ethnic Indians and their culture.
Is it racism for those ethnic Fijians who now hold the power to determine Fiji’s constitution to want to ensure that their culture is not swamped by that of ethnic Indians?
It’s probably best described as “culturalism”, which is something of the opposite of multiculturalism. Does any country on earth have the right to reject multiculturalism, given that we’re all products of a particular culture by a mere accident of where and when we happen to have been born?