By Phil Mercer BBC correspondent in Fiji

George Speight's armed uprising two years ago still casts a depressing shadow across Fiji.

In many ways, the nationalist and racist agenda he championed has prospered despite his arrest and conviction on treason charges.

The Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase is a hardliner, who has offered Fiji's indigenous community much of what Speight did.

Mr Qarase has promised to make his people richer and more politically powerful at the expense of the Indo-Fijian minority.

The regime is under great pressure from the indigenous majority to come up with the goods. For years native Fijians have been the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the country.

Coup leader George Speight is now in prison

Prime Minister Qarase continues to defy rulings by the country's Appeals Court and more recently the High Court to include members of the Indian-dominated Fiji Labour Party in his cabinet.

The constitution, drafted in 1997, says that any party polling more than 10% of the vote at a general election is entitled to a place in a multi-racial government.

Indo-Fijian fears

Fiji's Indians were brought to the Pacific by the British to work on colonial sugar plantations more than a century ago.

At last September's election, most voted for the Labour Party, lead by Mahendra Chaudhry, the former Prime Minister ousted by Speight's gunmen.

Many talk of more uncertainty after the uprising

The party won 40% of all votes. Denied a legitimate voice in government, Indo-Fijian fears and frustrations - raked up by the coup - have re-surfaced.

Fiji barrister Haroon Shah told BBC News Online the Indian community is feeling increasingly insecure.

"There's a general sense of hopelessness," he said. "If there was an escape route, most people would take it."

Thousands of Indo-Fijians have left since May 2000, mostly to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

"Many Indian families are trying to get their kids overseas," says Mr Shah. "Some are marrying off their daughters to rich ex-pats to save them from a lifetime of uncertainty in Fiji."

The poor and uneducated have almost no chance of leaving.

Battle over land

There are reports that tenant farmers forced off their land by traditional, indigenous owners are living in squatter camps alongside Fiji's major highway.

One sugar cane farmer told the BBC that "evictions are rife" and that people who had spent a lifetime on the land had been left with nothing.

In the past Indian cane growers had leased their farms from native owners.

Business is not so good but we have to stay - we have so much stock tied up in the shop... our whole life is here

DL Solanki

But land has now become part of the political battleground, with some nationalist politicians urging indigenous people to throw the Indo-Fijians off, despite their historic expertise and profit-making in the sugar industry.

Fiji's recent economic signals are mixed. The lucrative tourism trade has recovered from its post-coup slump and is on course for a record-breaking year.

Other key industries are not in such good shape. Many clothing manufacturers, as well as the sugar sector, are struggling.

"Business is not so good," says DL Solanki from his jewellers store in Suva.

He is, however, determined to soldier on.

"We have to stay. We have so much stock tied up in the shop. Our whole life is here. If we left, where would we go and what would we do?"

Optimism does shine through Fiji's continued gloom.

Ashok Deoji, a shoe seller in Lautoka, believes things have to get better sooner or later.

"If our leaders can get the breakthrough we're all hoping for, things could just get back to normal. That's what we're all praying for with all our hearts."