{"id":2013,"date":"2002-05-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-05-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/05\/22\/2002-05-22-fiji-pm-s-coup-claim-sparks-row\/"},"modified":"2002-05-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-05-22T12:00:00","slug":"2002-05-22-fiji-pm-s-coup-claim-sparks-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/05\/22\/2002-05-22-fiji-pm-s-coup-claim-sparks-row\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiji PM&#8217;s Coup Claim Sparks Row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.sundaytimes.news.com.au\/common\/story_page\/0,7034,4367449%255E401,00.html \">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>FIJI, May 22, 2002: Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has sparked a furious row by claiming a coup two years ago was part of a plan by God to depose the country&#8217;s Indian-led government. Critics claim his remarks amount to blasphemy. &#8220;The SDL coalition won because it was God&#8217;s plan,&#8221; Qarase said. &#8220;I believe God wanted to terminate that government.&#8221; In the coup, Speight and a gang of soldiers stormed parliament and took Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji&#8217;s first ethnic Indian leader, and his government hostage. The military later intervened and installed Qarase as prime minister before eventually organizing elections last year, which Qarase&#8217;s Soqosoqo Duavatani Lewenivanua (SDL) party won. Indigenous Fijians, the bulk of them Methodists, make up 51 per cent of Fiji&#8217;s 800,000 people. Indians, predominantly Hindu, account for 44 per cent, and racial tension has been a constant source of political instability in the Pacific nation.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE FIJI, May 22, 2002: Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has sparked a furious row by claiming a,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}