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The Fiji Coup. It’s okay apparently.
10 October 2008
I was a legal reporter for six years here in Australia.
In that time I saw some strange rulings, because the law, as we know, is open to interpretation. In the case of Constititional matters things can be even more sticky, if only because constitutions are necessarily broad documents with broad brush clauses that could be interpreted differently. We in Australia have had differing views about constitutional matters for many years. Rarely are all the judges in our High Court (the finest legal minds in the country) all in agreement over the cases they have been hearing.
So when I first heard the news that the Fiji High Court has ruled that the Fiji 2006 coup was legal, I thought I must not have been hearing the whole story.
I ask you, when can a coup against a democratically elected government ever be considered a legal thing to do? When can the military ever be considered above the people of a country? When can a prime minister be thrown out by a military leader, in this case Commodore Commodore Frank Bainimarama. How can that ever be constitutional?
Only if that is in the constitution. The president in Fiji does have constitutional powers to dismiss the government and appoint an interim government. But all the reports of the time said that it started as a coup by the military, not as a dismissal of the government by the president.
So the Fiji High Court accpeted this timeline, it would have to be interpreting the Fiji Constitition as saying that the military has the right to take government from a democratically elected leader by force.
It doesn’t matter what happens after that. It doesn’t matter about the president’s appointments of interim governments. The issue here is the legality of the initial coup.
So the High Court says Commodore Frank Bainimarama and his soldiers were legal in throwing out Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.
As one person said to me yesterday “So much for democracy. ” This was a person who comes from a one-party communist country. He knows a heap about democracy or the lack thereof.
Democracy, a phrase invented by my forebears, means ‘people power’. We are yet to have a perfect democratic system anywhere in the world, but in Fiji we have the extraordinary scenario of a people’s constitution that has been interpreted as leaving out the ‘people’ bit.
- Phil
Charlie’s Lament. The Markets Keep Going South.
9 October 2008
Charlie’s taken to walking home from work.
He says it’s a fitness thing, but I suspect it’s a bit more than that. You see, Charlie’s stockbroking firm is dealing with some pretty heavy times at the moment, and he’s spending a lot of his day trying to convince clients not to pull out of the market. Again and again he has to explain that yes the market has been falling quite a lot, but it’s only a matter of time before it goes up again.
He’s making the same argument to the same people, and at the same time hoping that he’s right. It’s people’s life savings that he’s dealing with here.
Hence the need for a clearing walk home.
Charlie’s battles are symptomatic of the times and the fear the times have created. People started the year with their shares doing pretty well. They were at historic highs, and investors had every reason to believe that they would be going even higher. The Australian government believed that, if anything, the booming economy here and overseas would cause big inflationary pressures. In other words, governments were expecting market surges, not losses.
Then entered Fannie Mae, Freddie, and a couple of brothers named Lehman, and we saw a u-turn. Inflation became no longer the fear. Instead, its dire nemesis deflation started creeping into the language once more after an absence of some decades.
The US, after spending a trillion on its economy, has now co-ordinated a global interest rate cut, just two days after Australia cut its own rates by a much larger than expected one percent.
Markets become more educated each time there’s a crash, but every crash has its own circumstances, and these circumstances change when governments alter the financial system, such as they’ve done with free trade agreements. All this goes to show that we are still financial babes in the woods. The market seems to morph quicker than the shapeshifter Odo in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
Those of you who thought the stock market was an easy way to make a quick buck. Sorry. The frown on Charlie’s face tells us it just ain’t so.
- Phil
More Wall St Blues. Aussie Dollars Falls. A Lot.
8 October 2008
Australians like to think that they are the finest and best in everything: cricket; rugby; science, swimming, breakfast radio.
So when the Australian Reserve Bank announced that it was taking the huge step of dropping interest rates by a full percentage point yesterday, the Aussie papers all trumpeted that this was a world-leading event. Certainly it will stimulate the economy at a critical time. Australia is not in recession, and may well not slip into one. The Reserve is taking events by the neck and throttling as hard as it can.
The recession neck, however, is a small one here in Australia. The effects of the rate drop will not really be felt around the world, but the decision will be a pointer for other countries. Economies like New Zealand need stimulation. It has been in recession for some weeks now, and the indications are that its period of negative growth will continute for the rest of the year at least.
What is bad news for Australians is that the Australian dollar has dropped a lot in the last few days. In was only a few months ago that the dollar was reaching parity with the US Greenback.
Not now. We’re heading towards the stage where the US dollar is buying one and a HALF Aussie dollars. This means that Australians will have to pay a lot more for imports.
But in times of slowing growth, one would hope that people are not splashing out on imports anyway. The Reserve would be hoping you pay off your house, car and fridge, and put your money away for the more diffficult times that may well be coming.
With the dollar the way it is, the Reserve is hoping people will see restraint as a no-brainer.
It will also hope the rest of the world will take its lead and take strong action. Now.
The British are making a bank bailout announcement within hours of this blog being posted. Maybe it does occasionally look across to what’s happening in its former penal colony.
- Phil
More Elections. This Time the Maldives
7 October 2008
Just as Barack Obama and John McCain are flaying each other in pre-election desperation, it’s easy to forget that the US is not the only place where democracy is at work.
The Maldives, a small group of islands south west of Sri Lanka are having its most important elections tomorrow. These will be the first multi-party presidential elections. The significance of these elections is that the people will have a genuine say for the first time over who is president.
Up until now the parliament chose the presidential candidate, then the public voted on whether they backed this candidate. In such cases, people may be loathe to reject the parliament’s choice, simply because there is no alternative.
Tomorrow they will have a choice. Half-a-dozen parties will be putting up candidates for the president.
This could, maybe, spell the end of the thirty year incumbency of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who is just shy of his seventy-first birthday.
You don’t need me to tell you that thirty years is a long time to be the head of state, especially for a position that holds power over the parliament and the Executive.
The people of the Maldives may well choose to return Maumoon Abdul Gayoom for yet another term. The important thing here is that now, for the first time, they have the choice, and for anyone who believes in democracy, that is where true power must rest.
- Phil
700 Billion package passes. Obama’s election-winning lead.
6 October 2008
What a difference two days make.
George Bush’s huge rescue package gets through the House of Reps, and the market appears to not react at all.
Don’t be fooled dear market observer, because the reaction is in what the market did NOT do. Our analysts agree that the passing of the package stopped the market from dropping. Big time. No-one seriously expected the US markets to jump up on the news of the package passing, expecially with so much bad economic news coming out of the US every day. Any bounce from the package was offsert on the weekend with the news that more than 150,000 Americans lost work in the past month. Just imagine the drop if the House of Reps had voted nay.
Barack Obama has shot up in the polls too. As a former political reporter I can tell you that with less than a month to go to the US election, it’s virtually impossible for John McCain to turn this kind of lead around. Barack Obama has got the momentum, and no minor hits by his opponent are going to make much of a difference now.
My prediction. Barack Obama will be sworn in as president in January. But he will not win in a landslide. The thing he has going against him is the electoral college. There will be plenty of states that will not go for him. The Sarah Palin factor was never going to be enough to push things over the line foir the Republicans. She performed really well against Joe Biden in their debate on Friday, but to turn things around she had to get Biden to admit to being a bank robber/mass murderer/American Idol fan. He did none of those things, and the election is Obama’s for the taking.
What an interesting time we have coming up in the next few months, in matters both economic and presidential.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but sitting here, watching.
- Phil
