Chaudhry issued a warning to the Fijian chiefs on 17 July, saying that the government could not be trusted to mislead them, having already deceived church leaders about the nature and purpose of the bill.
Krishna Datt, a Labour Party parliamentarian and former minister, said that the government was ignoring the feelings of the people worst affected by the coup, and that "any move forward would have to be founded on a solid foundation of understanding and a deeply and genuinely felt sense of forgiveness."
Senivalati Naitala, a Labour Party member and a Ra Fiji Cane Growers Councillor, said on 11 July that the bill was a recipe for terrorism and would be a direct threat to politicians and diplomats.
Chaudhry's demands that the bill be withdrawn until a consensus version could be produced, and that it should be negotiated through the venue of the Tanaloa talks – which he wrote off as a "failure" – were unacceptable to him.
Labour Party Senator Anand Singh said on 8 September that he had raised the bill at a workshop of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which was holding its annual conference in Nadi.
He reiterated this stance on 7 October, rejecting a compromise mooted by Prime Minister Qarase two days earlier, but offering a bargain of his own: if the bill was withdrawn, the FLP would provide the government with the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to amend the constitution and enact a number of land reforms.
United Peoples Party leader Mick Beddoes called the proposal a recipe for disaster which would license any would-be political activist who wanted to engage in coups, to do so.
On 14 June, Beddoes announced the beginning of a Yellow Ribbon Campaign to promote a petition aimed at forcing the bill to be withdrawn, or at least significantly amended.
On 17 June, he accused Prime Minister Qarase of lying about widespread public support for the bill, which, Beddoes claimed, most people had not been given the chance to see.
Beddoes was joined on 18 June by Bruce Rounds, the General Secretary of his party, who said that there were major differences not only between Fiji's two principal races, but also within them.
Following a visit to cities and towns on the northern island of Vanua Levu, Beddoes said on 28 June that he had heard many complaints from locals about having been misled by the title of the bill.
National Alliance Party founder and former Great Council of Chiefs Chairman Ratu Epeli Ganilau said that the notion that politically motivated crimes could be justified was "insulting to the intelligence of ordinary people," and that it represented a naive and uncaring attitude toward the hurt suffered by many during the 2000 coup.
"The intention to bring a closure to investigations and litigation regarding the 2000 coup would be a severe interference of politics into the work of law enforcement in this country," Ganilau said.
On 23 June, Ganilau condemned what he said was the Prime Minister's "monumental deception" in asking church leaders to support the legislation without honestly explaining its contents to them.
Ganilau reiterated his opposition to the legislation on 7 October, along with his support of the right of the Military to speak out against government policies that it considered not conducive to national security.
Meli Waqa, Secretary of the National Alliance Party of Fiji, said on 25 May that the amnesty provisions of the bill were "repugnant to people's sense of justice."
It could, he feared, provide the Military with a legal mechanism to overthrow the government at any time in the future, as it rendered any politically motivated act excusable.
In a statement on 24 July, Ganilau charged that the coup had not occurred spontaneously but had been "premeditated, well planned with all the personal graffiti being churned out through government offices and business outlets, ludicrous paraphernalia designed to malign the former President's family and character."
Renewing her attack on the legislation on 20 July, Nailatikau accused the government of neglecting "urgent and realistic issues" like squatters, unemployment, poverty, and road conditions, in order to concentrate on a bill which was biased towards the perpetrators of the coup rather than the victims.
She accused the government of misleading the Fijian people, who had been given to believe that the legislation would strengthen indigenous power, adding that she had personally confronted someone who was distributing leaflets, which she said promoted discrimination against other races.
Nailatikau reiterated earlier statements that endorsing the bill amounted to approving the overthrow of her father, and expressed her belief that the Provincial Council members who had voted in favour of the legislation had not understood it – an assertion promptly rejected by Prime Minister Qarase, also a Lauan, who claimed that most people were well informed on the bill and supported it because they did understand it and agreed with it.
In a parliamentary submission on 16 June, Leung called the bill a recipe for instability, terror and payback, and a retrograde step, which could threaten present and future governments.
"It would encourage the belief that if people think they have sufficiently good political reason to topple a government, politicians might consider granting them a pardon," Leung said.
Leung said on 4 July that he was seeing an audience with the Attorney-General to try to persuade him to rewrite the bill after Military Commander Frank Bainimarama called it "ethnic cleansing."
Calling ethnic cleansing a horrific idea, Leung said that every right thinking person would be alarmed that the debate had risen to that level, and that there was an urgent to hold talks to resolve the standoff.
Leung's latest comments drew a sharp response the next day from Cabinet Minister and Leader of the House Jonetani Kaukimoce, who said that he would have expected the Law Society, as the representative body of the legal profession, to behave in a more appropriate and dignified manner.
Akuila Yabaki of the Citizens Constitutional Forum said that "the policy behind the bill should be offensive to right-thinking people," because it would be impossible to have reconciliation without including in the decision-making Indo-Fijians, who he said "bore the brunt of the coup."
Tuivaga played a controversial role in recognizing the Interim Military Government that took power during the 2000 coup, and in an extra-constitutional reorganizing of the judiciary, a move that was later reversed.
"The Fiji police believes the primary purpose of the proposed Bill is to grant amnesty to those who committed serious criminal offences during and after the events of May 2000," the parliamentary submission said.
Commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama called it "Reconciliation bull" on 13 May 2005, and on 16 May, Army spokesman Captain Neumi Leweni said that a meeting of senior officers had resolved to try to prevent the passage of the legislation.