Fiji's opposition leader, Mick Beddoes, says high chief Adi Litia Cakobau's statements in the Senate this week defending the coup were a disgrace.
Adi Litia said the coup and its aftermath were indigenous political expressions and George Speight and others in prison should be released.
Mr Beddoes says Adi Litia's statement must be the joke of the year because everyone knows that the coup was about vested interests, not indigenous rights.
He says the only involvement of the indigenous people was when some of their leaders decided to manipulate their own people to further their individual aims.
Mr Beddoes says most indigenous people are quietly embarrassed by the behaviour and occasional irresponsible utterances of some of their leaders.
He says Adi Litia's comments are the most ridiculous attempt by a coup sympathiser to justify the events of May 2000 as legitimate freedom of expression.
The leader of the Fiji Democratic Party and longtime cabinet minister in the Mara and Rabuka governments, Filipe Bole, has also attacked Adi Litia's statements.
Mr Bole says to equate the coup and the violent demonstrations that preceded and followed it, with freedom of expression normally associated with dissent in democratic societies, is stretching poetic license too far.
Mr Bole says Adi Litia's call to end all coup investigations cannot be justified because an elected government was forced from office.
He says for the future peace of Fiji, the coup perpetrators need to be identified and brought to justice.
Mr Bole says the coup probe must also continue because the legality or otherwise of the sacking of the former President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, has to be established.
He says unless this question is resolved, the issue of the deposed president's pension cannot be settled.
