OPINION
Something's going on. After months of easing tensions-- no fresh reports of possible human rights abuse, supportive statements from many in Fiji, from this blog and many overseas commentators culminating in the McCully-Kubuabola statements this week, slighter better relations between Government and the Fiji Times, and better than expected economic news despite the recent cyclone -- we have a rash of "aggressive" actions by Government, all within the span of a few days.
Something's going on. After months of easing tensions-- no fresh reports of possible human rights abuse, supportive statements from many in Fiji, from this blog and many overseas commentators culminating in the McCully-Kubuabola statements this week, slighter better relations between Government and the Fiji Times, and better than expected economic news despite the recent cyclone -- we have a rash of "aggressive" actions by Government, all within the span of a few days.
First, international juror and government opponent Imrana Lala was charged by FIAC, the anti-corruption commission, with not having a licence to operate her part-owned restaurant (sic!) and the dismissal of some magistrates. Then Dr Padma Narsey Lal, wife of ANU's Prof. Brij Lal and brother of USP's Prof. Wadan Narsey, both staunch government opponents, was refused re-entry into the country. Then 15 senior Suva City Council employees were sent home pending charges they were using SCC computers and time to write for anti-Government blogs.
Then Bainimarama announces that retired public servants -- and that includes former PMs Qarase and Chaudhry -- who speak out against the Government will not receive their pensions (see comment below on this). The very same day he says the Methodist Church will not be allowed to hold their annual conference until after the elections in 2014. He said Government spies within the Church report ongoing anti-government activity.
Why this sudden hostility and blustering when things seemed to be going so well for Government? Is it pure coincidence, or do at least some of these events, all of which threaten freedom of speech, have a common cause or explanation?
Why this sudden hostility and blustering when things seemed to be going so well for Government? Is it pure coincidence, or do at least some of these events, all of which threaten freedom of speech, have a common cause or explanation?
The Wider Context
The wider context within which these events can perhaps be better understood is one in which Government sees the "normal" workings of civil society, where opinions are freely expressed and exchanged, as distractions and impediments to what it says it is trying to do.
Hence their delayed attention to political change, and their immediate focus on economic and infrastructural changes -- roads, electricity, the use of idle land, and agricultural initiatives in rural areas; getting rid of corruption and poor work ethics in the civil service; reforming national and local institutions such as the NLTB (Native Land Trust Board) and urban councils; opening up jobs and scholarships to all races; support for garment and tourist industry marketing; and a number of actions to reduce poverty, including housing assistance, the introduction of a minimum wage,access to micro-credit, a fairer distribution of land rent money to ordinary Fijian villagers, food coupons and free or subsidized school meals and transport.
Government wants to see major improvements in all these areas before it fully addresses political, constitutional and electoral issues in 2012-13. But just as foreign investors seek political stability to protect their investment, the Bainimarama Government seeks to impose stability (where it is not freely given) so it can get on with the job. Hence its constant references to the need for "unity" to "take the country forward."
This is not the normal way democratic governments operate, but it is not unknown. It is the way Allied governments operated during the two World Wars; how the US military, with and without government connivance, operates from time to time, and, perhaps even more relevantly, how Singapore dragged itself up from a poor, racially and politically fractured Third World country to become the country it is today. In the early days, Lee Yuan Yew was far more oppressive than Bainimarama, and no less of a dictator. This, I think, is the wider context.
The Immediate Context
The more immediate context involves high celebrity court cases with Qarase, and possibly Weleilakemba and others, charged with corruption and abuse of office. My understanding is that these hearings will commence next week. The other big event is the first meeting of the Citizen's Assembly on the 27-28th.
Whenever Government anticipates its opponents will use events to trigger discontent, it is likely to send out strong warnings about "consequences", take measures to break or disrupt opposition networks, and forestall all overt expressions of opposition. This is how it operated in the lead up to last year's Methodist Conference, and this is how it could be operating now.
What we think of as unconnected, vindictive, arbitrary acts could in fact be part of a pre-conceived plan for civil society until 2014 -- modelled on a first-strike military manoeuvre. –- Crosbie Walsh.
Readers are urged to read comments to all posts, and particularly to this post. Just click "Comments" below.
Readers are urged to read comments to all posts, and particularly to this post. Just click "Comments" below.
20 comments:
Hi Croz,
Let me just correct a few things if I may because confusing intepretation of what Frank was talking about flew all over the place this week
I believe the pension that Frank was talking about are for former Senators, parliamentarians, former PMs etc who continue to talk and work against the government yet the government is paying them. It may not necessarily be for those under the FNPF retirement pension scheme.
Some case in point of people who fall under this pension scheme are Qarase and some of his former cabinet ministers, Chaudhary and Rabuka as both former PMs, senators such as Rev Tomasi Kanailagi and a few others.
In the case of Dr Padma Lal, she is the sister of Wardan Narsey.
In the case of the Methodist ministers, what Frank was talking about was that during the SDL reign right up to 2006, some ministers were paid by the Qarase government to spy on the the military. They were informers for the police as they were on the Police Special Branch payroll. This was revealed to Frank by the Commissioner of Police Esala Teleni.
Some ministers continue to work against the governmnt which was probably the reason why Frank cancelled the Church Conference until after election 2014.
In the case of the SCC workers, those who sent home were not only casual employers but senior staffs and other permanent employees. They were found out to be blogging against government during official working hours. You may also remember that a few months after the 2006 takeover, some blogsites started popping up with official confidential information leaked from SCC.
Now all municipal councils have been abolished and all municipality comes under the jurisdiction of Special Administrators selected by the Minister for Local Government hence they have moreorless become employees of government bodies. I suppose this is probably how these people were given letters and told to go home while more investigations are carried out.
Another person who continue to criticize the government yet is paid under the scheme is Mere Samisoni. So why pay them when they work against you?
Croz, if you dissect these events, a case can certainly be made that the regime has embarked on a new campaign of repression. But what strikes me most of all is the fundamental mishandling of all of this from a public relations perspective. Why on earth Bainimarama shoots his mouth off at every turn is beyond me. If he wants to deprive certain civil servants of their pensions, why telegraph it in the media? Just do it. If he doesn't want any Methodist conference to be held till 2014, why announce the fact in January, months out? Similarly, why is the AG going on Radio Australia to mount a counteroffensive against Imrana Jalal? If, as he says, it's an independent matter for FICAC, why buy into it publicly himself? Why give oxygen to stories that can only be damaging to the regime's position? They all need to realise that the Government's current PR effort is a disaster. Bainimarama badly needs a resident spin doctor to curb his habit of lobbing verbal grenades. And those around him with responsibility for "information" are just as woeful. I saw Lt Col Leweni on Fiji TV the other night announcing that Berenado Vunibobo was being recalled from the UN. What an appalling performance. You just can't front the cameras and give no reason for such a dramatic development, just as the AG can't go on Radio Australia refusing to say why the magistrates have been sacked. If you can't give a plausible explanation, don't take the journalist's call and under no circumstances do an interview. All basic media management techniques that the regime so glaringly lacks but so desperately needs. I say if you're going to run a dictatorship, for God's sake run it properly!
Travel bans on people like Dr Padma for family reasons make Fiji's action the same as New Zealands and Australia and make us look pathetic. Everything is in place for the government to move foward sucessfully but it needs to be a coordinated effort and not a group of individuals charging around contradicting each other.
I agree with the post above. For petes sake get a spin doctor and learn when to shut up and say nothing. There should be a concerted effort to show Fiji as a country under control of the government with strict rules and regulations but stable and not run by idiots.
Anon & Colin are spot on - THe PR effort is woeful, hopeless, pathetic!!
You can waste your own lives by trying to justify the pathetic fool that is rank or you could help give our Fijian people a life by getting rid of him.
Your bias is ugly!
@ Anonymous 10.54pm
Rank and pathetic fools got us into the mess we are in in the first place: the proverbial "March of Folly". Barbara Tuchman has wonderfully catalogued that march from Troy to Vietnam. It serves as a reminder to all who care to read. Now we must crawl and march into a better place. Be wary of what you wish for!
Oi, anon at 10.54. Too much yaqona or what? I assume "rank" is Frank and "our Fijian people" refers to your kai vata in the SDL. Hey, take a look in the mirror. Now that's ugly!
Would question the use of 'high celebrity' to describe coming court cases. Nothing to celebrate about these people. Let them have their day in court and then let us rapidly move on to where we ought to have been twenty years ago.
"This Land Gone Wrong" Anna Funder's description of East Germany under the feared STASI. Winner of the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize. The book describes the climate of paid informers in a one party state run by Communists. If we are to find that the Methodist Church of Fiji harboured Ministers paid by public money to inform against us, what will the citizens of Fiji make of that? Will they express surprise? Because the conduct of the Fiji Police has in many instances been less than it professionally ought to have been. Using taxpayers money to compensate greedy, grasping Church Ministers eager to meddle in politics is the very foundation of a Police State - like the former East German Democratic (sic) Republic. This is how sick and confused 'democracies' like North Korea, East Germany, former Yugoslavis carry on. If this is proven to have been so - and we need a sound investigation - why would anyone want a Methodist Church Conference any time soon?
Couldn't agree more with anon at 9.32. A very perceptive observation. Methodist Church clergymen like Manasa Lasaro and Tomasi Kanailagi aren't purveyors of the Christian message of love but the extremist taukei message of intolerance and hatred. The fact that they've not been purged by the church itself - despite all the evidence of their appalling racism - shows that the current Methodist Church leadership is powerless to act. I've also yet to see one word of condemnation from their supposed brothers in Christ - the Uniting Church in Australia and the Methodist Church in Britain. Both these churches are quick to condemn the Bainimarama regime for its behaviour towards the Methodist Church in Fiji without acknowledging a brutal truth; that its role in national life is all too frequently malignant and it's a bastion of indigenous extremism. If, indeed, church office bearers have been on the public payroll to report their fellow citizens to the authorities, they should be exposed and punished. Banning the annual conference indefinitely should be just the start.
Bainimarama is right so let him do his job.
Carry on Frank, I'm with you all the way. Don't worry about these naysayers just do what you have to do to ensure that Fiji regain what it lost in the 20 years since coup 1987.
Sometimes we will understand what you do while at other times we won't. But we know what's done is all for the good of all in this beloved country.
There is no time for fancy diplomatic languages. This is the time for action and let the result speak for itself when everything is done. So in that case, if your language doesn't translate well to some, who cares, let that be their problem.
We see your vision and we will persevere with you to achieve the dream of making this country "Fiji - The Way The World Should Be". This was Air Pacific's marketing theme song back in 1986 before Fiji was destroyed by Rabuka.
I still vividly remember going to school with a bright smile on my face right after I hear this song played on Radio Fiji at about 7.30am every morning.
I had pride in my heart for being a citizen of this beloved country then. After what happened afterwards, I was frustrated and disappointed at my own indigenous Fijian leaders and Methodist ministers for their sinful act. They will pay the price one day.
Those who masterminded the destruction of this beloved country are still going at it and are still hell bent of destroying the "jewel" of the Pacific that is Fiji.
Some of these people are cloaked in the robe as a Christian minister and are going about manipulating the minds of the congregation with their own ideology devoid of the true Christian message of Love. So if it is right to ban the Conference, SO BE IT.
So once again, I'm with you Frank. All the way to 2014.
@ Croz,
The story about the pension scheme Bainimarama was talking about is on the link below:
http://www.fijivillage.com/?mod=story&id=1501105c36f882650b0b4e7f3abfce
@ All Posts above
The Methodist Church of Fiji has conducted itself like a 'christian' version of the Taliban. Steeped in politics of racist hatred it has been a purveyor of instability and anti-democratic proseltyzing. No where in either the Old Testament or the Four Gospels of the New is such behaviour required. And, as someone mentioned above, the fact that most of the churchgoers did nothing to condem them speaks volumes about their Christian Virtue? Nothing came from the Methodist Churches in Britain, NZ or Australia either to curb this activity. Were they failing to act out of ignorance? Or were their own interests too closely allied? The cat is now out of the bag. No going back and a day of accounting is coming. The gathering of Filthy Lucre through the annual Methodist Church Conferences is over.
To put it mildly, Fijian governments have acted like schoolboys who want to be treated like adults. Nobody takes them really seriously!
Has Bainimara ever sat down with NZ and explained just what Fiji wants to achieve? The answer is, of course, is no!!!
Bainimarama's attitude is he dosn't have to explain to anybody outside of Fiji.
@ Kiwi Riverman
Wow wow wow...where did you arrive from? Late starter huh? We've gone past your late argument. Go and learn some more. The one who's not taken seriously here is you.
Good grief!
Gender: Male
Industry: Communications or Media
Occupation: freelance writer
Location: Lower Hutt : Wellington : New Zealand
No wonder the New Zealand population is so blimmin' ignorant of anything remotely to do with Fiji - look who's keepin' 'em informed.
Talk about unbiased media.
And, pray tell, why would Frank have to go crawling to Wellington Wallies to explain anything, you arrogant, uninformed Wellington ignoramus.
Cornileus
@ Kiwi Riverman
You sound like a loser....what happened? Go back to RawFijiNews and spit your garbage there.
Now come on kiddies, this ain't RawFijiNews or Solivakasama. We all like a good biff but the insults on Dr Walsh's site need to be clever. Or are you only tuning in here because your usual seedy hangouts have nothing new to say? Stick around and you might learn something.
Thanks, last Anonymous (ps use a pseudonym).
I think Kiwi Riverman's knowledge of Fiji is limited to what the NZ mainstream media report. Don't blame him for his ignorance. Blame the media, and present reasoned arguments that may persuade him to have a re-look at the Fiji situation.
Reason not insults win friends.
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