- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday January 9 2001 02.38 GMT
Seven months after an ethnically inspired coup plunged Fiji into civil chaos, the country's only university continues to mirror the political tensions that have bitterly divided the 850,000 inhabitants of this one time British colony.
While the stories of many institutions of higher learning in the Asia-Pacific region are taking buoyant new turns, the same old pessimistic themes keep recurring at the University of the South Pacific.
"I do not believe we've reached the bottom yet," says one faculty member who asked not to be identified. "Things are definitely going to get worse before they get better."
The coup, which was led by indigenous Fijians, was directed against the multiracial government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, who along with 45 others was taken hostage at Fiji's Parliament House.
In the wake of the seizure, the country witnessed unprecedented scenes of rioting in the streets of the capital Suva, with supporters of the ultra-national ist Taukei Movement - from whose ranks the insurgents were drawn - destroying scores of buildings in the city centre. The university campus managed to escape physical damage.
The drama came after months of growing tensions between the majority population of indigenous Fijians and the 43% of the population who trace their roots to Indian migrants. The latter were brought to Fiji as indentured labourers by the nation's erstwhile colonial overlords in the late 1800s.
Until last year, Indian Fijians, or Indo-Fijians, played a commanding role in the country's commerce and academic life, resulting in widespread resentment against their perceived good fortune, not least at the University of the South Pacific.
Established in 1968, two years ahead of Fiji's independence from Britain, the institution serves 12 member countries and territories sprinkled across 20 million square miles of ocean and including the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
It currently enrols some 4,700 full-time students and has about 300 fac ulty members, roughly half of them Indo-Fijian.
But while the campus may have escaped physical damage during the May riots, academics say the coup has left its lingering mark on many other aspects of its operation.
Following the coup, the institution shut its doors for two months, during which more than 50 staff members resigned their positions, many to seek new opportunities abroad.
For those who remained, any work deemed to be politically sensitive has been conducted in conditions of "extreme anxiety and many [academics] have engaged in various forms of self-censorship in terms of what they could have written and said about the illegal overthrow of the democratically-elected government," according to Biman C Prasad, an economist at the university and a prominent member of the Fiji Trade Union Congress.
"I am sure you can imagine the kind of academic environment we had when people carrying M16s and AK47s were roaming around the place and when the police and the military were unable to do much to restore peace and stability. In this kind of environment, you can't be expected to do serious academic work."
In recent weeks the university has been robbed twice. In the first incident, on December 11, two staff members were held up at gunpoint and relieved of more than £10,000 worth of course fees. A day later, another £7,000 was stolen from one of the offices.
On current indicators, such crimes against property are only likely to increase. With international investments hitting their lowest point in years and a surging exodus of Indo-Fijians bound for Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States, it has been estimated that it could be a quarter-century before the nation can enjoy its pre-2000 levels of economic activity.
By far the most divisive issue to have yet faced the university, however, has been the selection of a prominent ethnic Fijian economist over an Indo-Fijian scholar to become its next vice-chancellor. The decision, which was made in October, reversed an earlier one to appoint the popular Indo-Fijian scholar as the next head of the University of the South Pacific.
Savenaca Siwatibau, an economist and former head of Fiji's Reserve Bank, won the position over Rajesh Chandra, a professor of geography and long-standing administrator at the university. The term of the current vice chancellor, Isikia Solofa, ends next month.
Initially, the university's governing council had recommended Dr Chandra be chosen, not Dr Siwatibau. The politically sensitive decision was made at the behest of an Australian-led team of academics that went to the university to help in the selection process.
"There's been a great deal of dissatisfaction over the way in which this process has become politicised and made into an ethnic issue, and as such has brought our institution into some disrepute," says Dr Prasad.
Nevertheless, he added, with a note of optimism: "The general attitude among most of the staff here is now to take a let's-wait-and-see approach to the appointment."
Others, however, are less sanguine. "This is another nail in the coffin of what until recently was one of the region's premier centres of excellence," says one, who sees little end in sight to the current tales of South Pacific woe.
