Later Years
In 1985 he resigned his seat in the House of Representatives and began work as chief executive of the Sugar Cane Growers Council but this career was cut short by the Fiji coups of 1987. In order to bring pressure on the regime in Fiji to restore democracy, he lobbied at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Vancouver in October 1987 to have Fiji expelled from the Commonwealth. He succeeded but was barred from returning to Fiji, having been declared persona non-grata. He then settled in Australia. After the restoration of democracy in Fiji he returned and resumed his law practice in Suva in 1991.
Singh's last public contribution was his book, Speaking Out, published in 2006, in which he recited his version of the events surrounding the coups in Fiji. The book offended Saula Telawa (the leader of the fringe New Nationalist Party), who called for the book to be banned in Fiji. Singh's strident criticism of some ministers of the Methodist and other churches for supporting the coups was insensitive to Christian beliefs and to the predominantly Christian indigenous Fijians, claimed Telawa, whose party calls for indigenous supremacy and for Christianity to be established as the state religion.
Singh's memoir also made controversial claims that Sitiveni Rabuka, the architect of the 1987 coups, had personally told him that he was the main instigator behind the scenes of the 2000 coup also, and that his main target was not the government of Mahendra Chaudhry, but the aging Ratu Mara, who was now President. Pleading sub judice, Rabuka refused to comment. In an audio interview broadcast on Fiji Live on 17 August, barely six weeks before his death, Singh claimed that an emotional Ratu Mara, who had abruptly resigned the Presidency in the midst of the coup crisis, had told him of his own suspicions about Rabuka. Although unsubstantiated, Singh's claims were not new: Mara's own last recorded interview had expressed strong suspicions about Rabuka's possible involvement in the 2000 coup. Singh's claimed conversation with Rabuka was, however, the first known purported confession from Rabuka.
Sir Vijay R. Singh died on 25 September 2006 in Brisbane, Australia, after a long battle with cancer.
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