The legislation aimed to establish a Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the coup d'état that deposed the elected government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry in May 2000.
On 15 June 2005, Susan Boyd, Australia's former High Commissioner to Fiji, accused the Qarase government of promoting the controversial Reconciliation and Unity Bill for purely political purposes.
The bill proposes the establishment of a Commission with the power (subject to presidential approval) to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the 2000 coup.
Most of those imprisoned for offenses related to the 2000 coup, she told ABC Asia Pacific Focus, were members of the Conservative Alliance, whose six seats in the House of Representatives were crucial to maintaining the government's parliamentary majority.
Making these comments at a press conference at Suva's Queen Elizabeth Barracks, Bainimarama ordered the Daily Post newspaper to leave because they supported the bill and were therefore, he said, against the Military.
Support for the Commander, meanwhile, came from Senator James Ah Koy, who commended him for opposing the Unity Bill and for standing up to the Australian Foreign Minister.
Don McKinnon, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations (of which Fiji is a member) called on the Fijian government to ensure that the legislation reflected the views of its citizens.
"It does nothing to indicate to the victims of their actions that the legal system has delivered justice, and is tantamount to interfering with judicial process," considered Girdhari Lal Sanghi, president of LAWASIA.
"While efforts to establish unity and reconciliation in Fiji are essential and worthy of support, the process must not be allowed to happen at the expense of the rule of law," Sanghi said.
He conceded that there were some good things in the bill, but insisted that "any decision to be able to grant people pardons or to overturn properly constituted sentences should not be left to a government-appointed body."
Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer of New Zealand also condemned the bill on 22 June, calling it "unconstitutional and a recipe for division and constitutional disaster."
He said that this legislation would enable any criminal behaviour to be labelled as "political", and would render the law of treason "inoperative" for the period designated for the Commission to function.
The power to grant compensation to victims and amnesty to perpetrators of the coup is supposed to be subject to presidential approval, but Palmer considered that to be a legal fiction.
Glenn Martin of the Bar Association of Queensland said on 27 June that if the legislation became law, local and international confidence in Fiji would be eroded.
"Unfortunately, there is a real risk that a Bill in this form, which appears designed to interfere with proper judicial processes and outcomes, will erode local and international confidence in Fiji's institutions of State," he said.
General Secretary Fred Higgs said that the bill would set a dangerous precedent and threaten the rule of law, human rights, and democracy.
Meeting in Papua New Guinea under the chairmanship of Fiji Labour Party Senator Felix Anthony on 26 July, the executive of South Pacific Oceania Council of Trade Unions called on the government to withdraw the bill, which, it said, was against the Constitution and the 1999 Human Rights Act, usurped the role and power of the judiciary and of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and discriminated against the victims of the coup in favour of its perpetrators.