The Fijian hero who became a villain in six short years

Six years ago Voreqe Bainimarama was hailed as Fiji's saviour. The career military man was credited with rescuing the nation from chaos when he brokered a peaceful resolution to a coup led by failed businessman George Speight.

Speight, 49, and his Fijian nationalist supporters had stormed parliament and held hostage the country's first Indo-Fijian premier, Mahendra Chaudhry, 64, together with more than 50 other officials, for nearly two months. As the just-appointed head of the armed forces, Commodore Bainimarama declared martial law and forced the coup plotters to surrender. He became the head of an interim military government for three months before handing over power to a new administration.

This week Commodore Bainimarama, 52, led a coup of his own, dismissing Fiji's Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, assuming presidential powers and declaring a state of emergency.

'It is hard to believe that man who stood up for the rule of law in 2000 is today its main threat,' the Fiji Times wrote on Monday.

Just as Speight's coup earned him worldwide condemnation and a sentence of execution commuted to life imprisonment on a lonely Fijian island, Commodore Bainimarama's reputation is now in tatters. He stands condemned by the UN, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

The outspoken commander's transition from hero to villain, and his decision to seize power, is intimately connected with the coup of 2000. A few months after the putsch, a group of renegade soldiers mutinied and attempted to assassinate him at Suva's main barracks.

He jumped out of a window and fled down a jungle-clad hillside. The mutiny was thwarted, with five rebel soldiers shot dead, but the commander has not forgotten how it might have ended.