Fiji Vice-President Ratu Jope Seniloli was convicted yesterday of unlawfully swearing in ministers in a rebel government during a coup by armed nationalists four years ago.

Fiji’s High Court found Seniloli guilty of administering unlawful oaths during the May 2000 coup that toppled the government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry. After the verdict yesterday, Seniloli was driven away to jail in the same prison truck used to escort coup leader George Speight after he was convicted of treason.

Speight, a failed businessman, is serving a life sentence on a prison island for the coup -- which he claimed was to reclaim power for indigenous Fijians from the government of Chaudhry, an ethnic Indian.

Racial tensions are never far from the surface in Fiji, where indigenous Fijians resent the economic power of the descendants of Indians brought out to work British colonial sugar cane farms.

Fiji High Court judge Nazhad Shameem said she would sentence Seniloli today. He faces up to eight years in jail. His conviction could have serious implications for Fiji’s leadership if the 85-year-old president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, dies and leaves a power vacuum. Iloilo, who came to office after the 2000 coup, suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and several other illnesses and regularly requires medical treatment in Australia.

“The verdict of the High Court has proven that the Fijian legal system and the Fijian people now stand by the rule of law and not by the rule of the gun,” prosecutor Mark Tedeschi told Reuters outside the court.

Police and soldiers guarded the court in the capital, Suva, but there was no sign of unrest. Speight and a handful of gunmen stormed Fiji’s parliament in Suva on May 19, 2000 and took Chaudhry and most of his government hostage. The next day Seniloli, a Fijian chief, swore in a rebel administration but Speight never gained control of Suva or the rest of the country.

The military declared martial law while Chaudhry and his ministers were still being held hostage and appointed an interim government under indigenous Fijian Laisenia Qarase.

Unpopular Chaudhry, the first ethnic Indian leader in Fiji, was not allowed to resume office after the 56-day siege ended. Instead an election was called -- and won by Qarase.

The role of vice-president is largely ceremonial but Seniloli is also a ratu, or leader, of one of Fiji’s influential and widely respected chiefly tribes, which have an important role in almost every aspect of Fijian life.

<B>Malakai Veisamasama</B>