Fiji's post-coup leaders vowed yesterday to return the country to constitutional rule after an international court ruled that their administration was illegal.
The acting President, Mr Josefa Iloilo, and the acting Prime Minister, Mr Laisenia Qarase, both promised to accept the ruling by five expatriate judges of the appeal court and urged Fijians to help rebuild the country.
However, Mr Qarase also warned that the "delicate stage of transition" to ensure implementation of the ruling would not happen overnight.
"It is a matter of moving from the certainty of where we are to the uncertainty of where we now have to go," he said in a televised address to the nation.
The deposed Prime Minister, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry, said he had expected the court to uphold the constitution, but welcomed its judgment. "We would like parliament to be recalled and the government reinstated," he said by phone from India.
In a landmark ruling, the judges dismissed the interim government's claim that a new legal order had been established when the military announced it had abrogated the constitution after the May 19th coup.
The government, installed by the army in mid-July, had claimed that under a constitutional doctrine of necessity it acquired legality by exercising control with the acquiescence of the people.
But the court chairman, a New Zealand jurist, Sir Maurice Casey, told the hearing: "We conclude that the interim government has not proved it has the acquiescence generally of the people of Fiji. Accordingly it cannot be recognised as the legal government."