Fiji Church says it will remain apolitical: CEN 1.09.09 p 8. January 9, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand & Polynesia, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.trackback
The Anglican Church in Fiji will not take a stand on the Draft People’s Charter put forward by interim prime minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Speaking to Fijilive on Dec 7, the Dean of Suva, the Very Rev. Ifereimi Cama said the Anglican Church would not follow the lead of the Methodist or Roman Catholic Churches and intervene in politics.
The dean’s remarks came during a week of festivities that marked the 100th anniversary of the Diocese of Polynesia held at the cathedral in Suva that included the Archbishops of New Zealand and Melbourne along with guests from across the Pacific.
Fiji’s current round of political instability began in Dec 2006 when the leader of the armed forces, Commodore Bainimarama, overthrew the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. The new civilian government appointed Commodore Bainimarama interim prime minister in Jan 2007, and elections have been tentatively scheduled for March 2009 for a new parliament. However, the Bainimarama government has said that a People’s Charter needs to be in place that governs the nation before elections can be held.
The Methodist Church in Fiji has called for its members to reject the 11-point draft charter, which does away with the distinction under law between ethnic-Fijians and Indo-Fijians (Fijian citizens of Indian descent) and opens the country up to economic development. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Suva, Msgr. Petero Mataca is co-chairman of the National Council for Building a Better Fiji—a pro-Charter group created by the government to rally support.
A central plank of the Charter is land reform. Approximately 80 percent of the land is owned by native Fijian clans, controlled by local chiefs. In recent years, a number of chiefs have refused to renew leases to Indo-Fijian sugar planters, leading to the closure of farms and migration of farm laborers in to the city.
The Charter stated that “vast amounts of land in Fiji currently lie idle or are greatly under-utilised,” and promises to “address the land question by ensuring a “security of tenure and equitable returns to both landowners and tenants through a market-based framework for utilisation of land”—providing security of tenure to Indo-Fijian planters while also providing security of ownership to ethnic Fijian landowners, a hitherto difficult task.
Dean Cama said the Anglican Church was doing its “best to give our people the freedom of choice in terms of deciding for themselves in what to accept and what not to accept.”
Amongst Fiji’s Christian churches, the Anglican Church is unique in drawing its members from across the country’s racial divide and its bishops represent the country’s cultural and racial divisions. The Bishop of Polynesia, Jabez Bryce, whose cathedral is in the capital of Suva, was born in neighboring Tonga of mixed Scottish-Tongan heritage, while his suffragans, Bishop Qiliho of Vanua Levu and Bishop Gabriel Sharma of Viti Leu West are ethnic Fijian and Indo-Fijian, respectively.
The country’s two other main Christian groups, the Methodist and Roman Catholic churches draw their members primarily from the native (Methodist) and Indian (Catholic) populations. The ethnic and Indo-Fijian populations are roughly the same size with a small Anglo-Fijian and Chinese community found in the professions and in business.
Speaking to Taonga magazine after the conclusion of the centennial celebrations, New Zealand Archbishop David Moxon said that “inevitably, with such vast tracts of geography involved, there are traditional rivalries, different interests, and national agendas – and yet somehow [the Diocese of Polynesia has] achieved this multi-coloured, multicultural, multilingual phenomenon.”
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