Fiji vice-president gets four-year jail term over coup

High Court Judge Nazhad Shameem told Seniloli she had originally decided to sentence him to six years in jail for administering unlawful oaths to the rebel ministers, but reduced the sentence because of his long service to the South Pacific island nation, including 33 years as a schoolteacher.

Seniloli’s lawyer Maqbool Raza said he was ‘‘appalled’’ by the sentence and planned to appeal. Raza said he would also apply for Seniloli to be freed on bail while the appeal is heard.

Seniloli’s jailing could have potentially serious implications for Fiji’s leadership because President Ratu Josefa Iloilo is an ailing 85-year-old who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and requires regular medical treatment in Australia. His death could now potentially leave a power vacuum, although constitutional experts said it was possible Ratu Ovini Bokini, the chairman of the influential Great Council of Chiefs, could decide to act as an interim vice-president in place of Seniloli.

A spokeswoman for Iloilo said the President would meet Bokini later on Friday to discuss a possible replacement for Seniloli. The council, or Bose Levu Vakaturaga, is an assembly of ratus or chiefs from across the nation that influences almost every aspect of Fijian life and has the constitutional right to select the President and Vice-President.

The courtroom in downtown Suva, Fiji’s capital, was packed with observers and several hundred more gathered outside, watched over by police and soldiers. The city, which has seen three racially motivated coups since 1987, otherwise remained quiet. ‘‘As far as I’m concerned 2000 is history … we won’t tolerate any instability, any public disorder or any violence on the streets of Suva, that will be dealt with,’’ Fiji police chief Andrew Hughes told reporters outside the court.

Seniloli, who had faced a maximum sentence of eight years, was driven away in the same prison truck used to escort coup leader George Speight after he was convicted of treason. Speight is serving life on a prison island off Suva for the coup that he claimed was launched to reclaim power for indigenous Fijians from the government of Chaudhry, Fiji’s first ethnic Indian leader. Racial tensions are never far from the surface in Fiji, where indigenous Fijians who make up most of the population of some 800,000 resent the economic power of Indians, whose ancestors were brought to work in British colonial sugarcane farms.

Speight and a handful of gunmen stormed Parliament on May 19, 2000, taking unpopular Chaudhry and most of his multiracial government hostage.

The hostage drama dragged on for 56 days and succeeded in toppling the Chaudhry government because martial law was declared in a bid to end the crisis.

—(Reuters)