Fiji set for vote and treason trial

Coup leader George Speight faces trial one day and voters the next

SUVA, Fiji -- Elections to restore democracy in Fiji begin on Saturday amid threats of bloodshed and a fast-tracked treason trial.

Facing the court a week early, to avoid "interference" during the voting, is George Speight, who led a coup that toppled the government of the Pacific islands nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.

The following day, the people of Fiji will begin to give their verdict on a new government.

The issue of the coup survives. Extremists have distributed leaflets threatening bloodshed if ethnic Indians win votes, the head of a U.N. observer mission said on Thursday.

Fiji's electoral system splinters the country along racial lines, with parliament's 71 seats divided into 46 communal Fijian and ethnic Indian seats and 25 mixed race or "open" seats.

Speight and the man he deposed, Mahendra Chaudhry, are both standing for election, Chaudhry at the head of his fractured Fiji Labor Party and Speight with the newly-formed Conservative Alliance.

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Speight and his 12 co-accused will be brought from their prison island of Nukulau, off the capital of Suva, for the trial which will start at 10 a.m. (2200 GMT, Thursday) at Suva's High Court.

Fiji's military will announce security details for the trial later on Thursday.

Extremist groups

International observers including New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff have warned there is a risk of violence towards the end of the long election process if extremist groups who support Speight do not accept the result of the poll.

The descendants of Indian indentured laborers make up about 44 percent of Fiji's 800,000 population and they dominate the important sugar and tourism industries.

But the political power of ethnic Indians has so far not matched their economic clout.

Fiji has been rocked by three racist coups and a military mutiny in the past 13 years. On May 19 last year, gunmen stormed parliament in the name of indigenous rights and took Chaudhry and most of his multi-racial cabinet hostage for 52 days.

With a return to democracy drawing near, Chaudhry has complained to the U.N. mission about the leaflets threatening his party.

The anonymous flyers, one of which Chaudhry sent to U.N. observers two weeks ago, read: "A vote for Labor is a vote for bloodshed -- but it will not only be Fijian blood this time."

Threat of violence

But Dong Huu Nguyen, head of the U.N. Fijian Electoral Observer Mission, said he expected the week-long election to restore democracy in Fiji would proceed smoothly despite the threat of violence.

Chaudhry has called on the economically powerful Indo-Fijian minority not to be intimidated during the elections.

Speight has not denied his role in the coup but says he should not be prosecuted under an immunity deal he reached with the military.

Court sources it was very likely that the trial would be adjourned almost as soon as it started. Treason carries the death penalty but jail is the likely alternative.

The sources told Reuters the trial would likely be put back until after the election, the result of which will probably not be known before September 6.

Speight's coup hit the Fijian economy hard. Official tourism figures show visitor numbers down 41 percent in the year after the coup and the economy shrank by 9.3 percent.