In line with concerns that any group activity may endanger participants, it was decided to select an approach that gave individuals space and anonymity. In- depth interviews had been utilised for key informants but I wanted to triangulate that with questionnaires to allow a larger number of individuals from different sections of the community to participate in the study. However, as the aim was still to acquire qualitative data, a semi-structured questionnaire was designed. This had a total of forty-four questions (see Annex 6) and was piloted within a small group. The response was overwhelmingly positive from the pilot session as some people said:
- ‘filling that questionnaire was almost empowering as I felt I could finally give voice to my frustrations about the current situation’,
- ‘it made me REALLY think about our situations’,
- ‘it made me think that we should be asking these questions to the government, but maybe not so explicitly’.
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The questionnaire was slightly revised and circulated among the target population. Purposive and snowball sampling were utilised to identify respondents. Purposive sampling was utilised while I was in Fiji and identified persons who had some understanding of these issues, such as Youth Peace Builders, Development Studies students at the university, and so on. Snowball sampling was utilised for email distribution with the questionnaire slightly revised to ensure anonymity and a specified time given for its return. Some filled emailed questionnaires were received from Fiji diaspora who are recent emigrants and/or students and therefore still Fiji citizens.
Table 2 shows that the demographics of the semi-structured questionnaire respondents. A total of 65 filled questionnaires was returned of the 80 circulated, but 6 questionnaires were discarded as the respondents were living overseas for a considerable period of time, therefore the total number of respondents was only 59. This resulted in a 74% response rate. The largest group of respondents were aged between 20 and 29 years, with a slight skew towards Fijians. In the overall population, Fijians make up 58% of the population, Indo-Fijians 38% and Other ethnic groups 4%. The Indo-Fijian demographic of the data collected is less by 13% of the national percentage, while the Fijians comprised 13% more than the national population.
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Table 2: Demographics of Questionnaire Respondents
Gender Ethnicity Total Percentage Fijian Indo- Fijian Other Ethnicity NR Female Age 20s 19 8 27 46% 30s 4 0 4 7% 40s 1 2 3 5% 50s 1 0 1 2% Total 25 10 35 59% Male Age 20s 12 5 0 17 29% 30s 1 0 1 2 3% 40s 3 0 0 3 5% 50s 1 0 0 1 2% Total 17 5 1 23 39% NR Age 20s 1 1 2% Total 1 1 2% GRAND TOTAL 42 15 1 1 59 100% KEY INFORMANTS
The use of key informants is an ethnographic research approach that has branched out to other social sciences. Generally used to obtain data about a pressing and/or sensitive issue from a limited number of experts in the area of interest or those who have insider knowledge, it usually entails in-depth interviews with each informant (Marshall, 1996: 92-93). Individuals usually have different perspectives on the same event and are most likely to distance themselves from disastrous decisions that were made by them in the past and because they may not accurately recollect significant facts or details, accuracy could be doubtful (Lilleker, 2003: 211). To minimize this, any unusual and/or incorrect data will be verified against other sources for same or similar information.
While key informants are advantageous for the insider and in-depth knowledge of a particular issue, their perspective can be elitist. To minimize the issue of elitism, some interviews were conducted with individuals who have insider information but are not high ranking public figures, such as an administrative officer and two
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university students. The administrative officer works in the judicial office and interacts daily with many key political and legal officers. This informant was particularly useful in substantiating information relating to abuses of office, weak rule of law, corruption, and so on. The student informants were both from prominent ethnic Fijian political and military families but had distanced themselves from their kinship links in coup related events and were able to provide an informative insider perspective on kinship ties, chiefly and military patronage politics and many related issues.
In researching issues such as amnesty, security sector reform, and prevention of coups, I found that conducting key informant interviews was the most accessible and informative strategy as it provided useful insights into these sensitive issues. For my study purposes I had identified 21 potential key informants representing past and present coup perpetrators, members of past and present governments who were removed from office by a coup, human rights activists, the legal fraternity, academics, and chief officers of NGOs and other agencies. In total 16 key informants were interviewed, yielding a76% response rate. The interview time ranged from an hour to a maximum of two and half hours. Interviewing members of the political elite can be fraught with problems if not planned and managed well and most problems occur in seeking, locating and contacting the elites individuals, particularly those who have retired (Lilleker, 2003). However, Fiji has a small overall population of approximately 800,000 and most elite persons can easily be traced, especially as most key players of even the 1987 coups are still active in the national political scene. Additionally, networking to access contacts in Fiji is very much embedded in the culture and I was able to utilise my connection with the academic, NGO and military communities to my advantage.
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One of my first points of contact was the University of the South Pacific, as I had worked there personally for many years and people there trusted me. This proved to be very advantageous as I gained access to personal contacts of two ex-Prime Ministers, a former Secretary to the President, a former high ranking military officer and two graduate students, and was able to interview all of them. Another crucial point of contact was a friend in the Director of Public Prosecution’s Office
(DPP) who gave me direct access to the Deputy DPP at the time of the interview (David Tonganivalu), a former DDP (John Rabuku) and an individual within the administration section. Due to my personal contact within the community, I was able to secure access to three NGO directors, a human rights group, a former senator who has been part of almost all past governments in various forms, a former member of parliament, a former military legal officer and current human rights activist, a journalist, and the Chief of Staff of the Fiji Military Forces.
Despite many attempts in different ways, I was unable to secure interviews with some potential informants. A deposed Prime Minister (Mahendra Chaudhry), who had initially agreed to an in-depth interview, only responded to emailed questions. This did not give me an opportunity to probe for more information, but the data are still useful and have been used in analysis. After many attempts and emails, a senior staff from UNDP’s Crisis Prevention and Recovery Unit in Suva agreed to
an interview, but continually stalled for an actual date of the interview, and a day before I left Fiji, he emailed to agree for an interview a week later. Therefore, I was not able to get his perspective. Attempts were also made to interview key informants from the Political Governance and Security Programme of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Transparency International, Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre, but all were unsuccessful. Many did
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not reply to emails and messages left with their assistants. I had also visited these offices in an attempt to meet them but was unsuccessful. Mr Nimmo, the person in charge of the Political Governance and Security Programme of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat informed me via his Administrative Officer, Angela Thomson, on 18 March, 2010 that, ‘as an international civil servant he (Mr Nimmo) cannot provide personal perspectives on the issues you have raised’ (Thomson, 2010),
although I had reiterated that I was interested in his professional perspective rather than his personal views. Therefore, I was unable to analyse the if international focus on amnesty for gross violations indicated international sanction for political crimes such as coups d’état. This was a limitation for this research.
Numerous attempts were also made in 2010 and again in 2015 to interview sitting and/or retired judges who had or continue to work with the Fiji judiciary. However, all these attempts were unsuccessful as except for one, all these judges did not even respond to my request for an interview. One judge responded in 2015 to say that the issue would be too sensitive in light of the current situation in Fiji and therefore he would like to refrain from giving an interview. The situation which has led to such apprehension to discussion any aspect of judiciary and its work had intensified, as authorities prosecuted discussions on the issue of judicial independence. For instance, in October 2012, the Fiji Times editor and publisher were fined for F$300,000 and F$100,000 respectively for reprinting and an article published by New Zealand's Sunday Star which briefly referred to the independence of the Fiji courts, and in February 2013, the editor and the publisher were also given suspended jail sentences (Pacific Freedom Forum, 2013). In May 2013, the Chief Executive Officer of the Citizen’s Constitutional Forum (CCF),
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of The Law Society Charity report which stated, that “there is no rule of law” in Fiji and that “the independence of the judiciary cannot be relied upon” (Amnesty International, 2013). ‘That the competence and independence of the prosecution service has been reduced to an unacceptable level’ (The Law Society Charity,
2012: 15.3).
ETHICS
Issues of consent were approached differently for various methods. In the focus group interview, the consent was obtained verbally. Similarly for the semi- structured questionnaires, respondents gave consent verbally after they had been informed about the research, their voluntary participation and confidentiality. No pictures and videos were taken of the respondents in consideration of their wishes and to exclude any possibility of harm to them. For the key informants, I had requested them to select to use either their true names or select a pseudonym for my reporting of their interviews. Apart from five key informant respondents, all had agreed to use their true names. One respondent stated that ‘at least in this way I am rebelling against the suppression of the freedom of speech’.
I made strategies to minimize harm to any of my respondents as much as possible. This was done in awareness of the prevalent fear against the authorities at the time and an understanding that my residence and belongings in Fiji could be searched at any time while I was in the country for data collection. Hence, from the beginning I deleted any identifiers to potential respondents even prior to data collection. For instance, I removed the names of all potential key informants from all documents stored in my laptop and USB, from my mobile phones contact list, and all print documents that I had with me in Fiji. After each interview, I would
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store the data on CDs and email a digital copy to myself. The original on the digital recorder was deleted and the CDs were stored at a relative’s place. He was
unaware of the contents of the CDs, which I believe would minimise any harm to him in the unlikely event of a raid of his house. I had selected this uncle for this purpose being mindful that if the military and police did try to harass my relatives for any information, he was the most unlikely choice as he was little known within the family, had almost no history of human rights activism, lived in a squatter settlement and I had links with him through my community work within that area. Therefore, my contact with him was not perceived as out of the ordinary.
CONCLUSION
This chapter focused on the methodologies used in this research, the challenges faced in the process and how these challenges were addressed. This research integrated the applied research elements into basic research. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods was utilised to collect data, after taking into account the various strengths and weaknesses of both methods. Three specific data collection methods were utilised: focus groups interviews, semi- structured questionnaires and key informants. However, the focus group interviews were discarded after realising the pervasiveness of fear within different groups and the lack of trust of each other within the community, particularly when discussions on the coups and the military was attempted.
In total 50 persons were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires and 16 key informants were interviewed using the key informant interviews using the in- depth approach. While the number of respondents may seem low, the rationale for
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this research is not to have generalised findings but rather to get rich data with many issues identified and discussed in depth.
Apart from the focus group interviews, there were also some challenges in interviewing key informants. An informant agreed for a face to face interview but only sent an email response to the questions, which did not allow me to probe for further information. Another respondent stalled for the interview date and another did not agree to the interview with a perception that he did not prefer to share his personal opinions on the issue, despite an assurance from me that the interview would be based on his professional capacity.
I had strategies to minimize harm to any of my respondents and informants as much as possible as some of the topics investigated in this research were sensitive, such as coups and the military reform, particularly as Fiji was under military rule. I also had to consider the prevalent fear of many people against the authorities at the time. Hence, I had to ensure that in the event of any raid by the authorities, the respondents and informants’ data and details was not
compromised. All the respondents and informants gave their consent for data collection and majority of the informants also gave permission to use their real name in the process.
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CHAPTER THREE:
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This section will establish the theoretical framework for three main issues; the coups d’état, the concept of structural conflict and the issue of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
The section on coups d’état will analyse various coup theories and their
application to Fiji. Political and social theorists have identified a range of theories for military coups such as: the political development theory; the military centrality theory; the ethnic antagonisms theories which comprises of the modernization theory, the ethnic competition and ethnic dominance theories (Jenkins & Kposowa, 1990); as well as the economic dependency theory (ibid.); the agency theory (Galetovic & Sanhueza, 1997), and the centralization/decentralization theory (Jia & Liang, 2010).
This chapter also analyses the application of the structural approach to conflict to the Fiji situation. This approach focuses on the macro level and considers the role of attitudes, behaviour, policies and institutions in aiding and abetting conflict and the theory was developed John Galtung (1996). He categorized the causes of violence as; direct violence, cultural violence, and structural violence; separating them into visible and invisible elements. It also analyses the different institutions in Fiji and how they are ethnically divided and their link to conflict.