Checking the mini-bar

Swimming with Sharks Chapter 10.2

Police Commissioner Isikia Savua was a colonel in an army given to making many men colonel. He was fat, sluggish and had some kind of speech impediment that made it difficult to understand him. He possessed an intellectual sterility that helped doom Fiji. 

As Chaudhry’s premiership progressed, a nationalist Taukei march took place in the capital. Savua would announce grandiose figures about who took part and what they had planned to do. 

On 18 May 2000, I went on an ABC Radio phone panel to discuss the Solomons. Rabuka was on too. He spoke of going to Honiara in the next few days to resume his Commonwealth mediation role. I told him I would be there and he said we should go fishing on the Solomon’s patrol boat. As I am not a fishing type at all, I paid little heed to it.

A coup next day in Fiji reminded me of that conversation and I guessed that Rabuka was not behind it. He may have been behind some other coup that never got off the ground; there were many of them.