Word: fiji
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...months before he appointed himself President and put Fiji's elected leaders under house arrest, military commander Frank Bainimarama had been threatening to stage a coup unless Laisenia Qarase's government abandoned plans to pardon those behind the abortive coup and mutiny of 2000. But some in Fiji say Bainimarama, who during the mutiny narrowly escaped assassination by rebel troops, has another motive: ending a police probe into the killings of four soldiers from the mutinous special-forces unit...
Commander Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, the top military man of the idyllic island nation of Fiji, is haunted by the memory of the day in 2000 when 30 of his own disgruntled soldiers came to kill him in his office at Queen Elizabeth Barracks in the capital of Suva. The military chief escaped the black-clad invaders and their gunfire, but he lost face as his flight was captured by video cameras. The would-be military assassins were allies of the men who had tried to overthrow the government the same year. During the past six years, Bainimarama has neither forgotten...
...Bainimarama has become a coup leader himself. This week he overthrew the South Pacific nation's lawfully elected government of Laisenia Qarase. It is Fiji's fourth coup in two decades. Before he took the final step, declaring himself president, the military man had thundered for months against the government's move to grant amnesty to the 2000 coup plotters. Bainimarama's talk became more strident in recent days, as the military tightened its grip on security personnel, the bureaucracy and the country's media...
...Bainimarama declared a state of emergency on Wednesday in Fiji. Without a shot being fired, he dissolved Parliament, dismissed the acting police chief, appointed a new prime minister and made himself president. "We have reasonable grounds to believe that the life of the state is being threatened," Bainimarama said. "Should we be pushed to use force, let me state that we will do so very quickly...
...potential alternative government. However, Ganilau told Time he has been talking to the military "when asked, on ceremonial matters." The split between backers of the abortive 2000 coup and those who would stage another coup rather than see its perpetrators freed goes right through the heart of indigenous Fiji. -By Rory Callinan/Suva