Air Pacific is in the process of reaching an agreement with the Cook Islands Government for a three-year contract on the weekly flight that will also offer Cook Islanders direct north-bound connections to the Hong Kong service, and enable the islands to better market tourism from Europe and the UK. The international airport in Rarotonga, the largest of the nation's 15 islands, has daily internal flights to some of the other islands.
N0073. MORE BLOG DISTORTIONS. Two news items have been published on housing in Fiji late last week. One was about the Housing Authority easing the lot of its mortgagees if they were poor or unemployed; the other was about the eviction of squatters who were thought to be drug dealers.
The anti-government blog, Fiji Today (I still hopefully call it moderate) ignored the first news item that reflected favourably on Government and then distorted the report on the other by missing out what a squatter had to say about the police action.
Its heading-cum-comment read: "The disciplined forces are targetting people ALLEGEDLY involved in criminal activities. Kicking people out of squatter settlements simply moves the problem elsewhere it does not solve it." It then went on to report the first half of the Fiji Times report on the eviction of some people from the Wailea and Viria settlements along Fletcher Road in Vatuwaqa, Suva who were suspected marijuana dealers and black marketeers.
In the part they missed out (and I quote the Fiji Times), "Jone Vitukawalu, who lives in the area, said the community were grateful of what the police were doing. Some people are starting to have the perception that this settlement is made up of criminals and of people who support criminals. "
I agree that kicking people out of squatter settlements will not solve the squatter problem but why did Fiji Today not cite what Jone Vitukawalu had to say? It puts a totally different perspective on the evictions.
N0074. MORE ON GOVERNMENT VISITS TO VILLAGES. A reader had this to say on my"Government and the People: Three Examples" posting: "This, of course, will be branded as pro-regime propaganda by the unholy alliance of activists from the SDL and assorted "human right" and media types. But the fact remains that a remarkably constant theme emerges from these village visits; that no senior government representatives have ever bothered to show their faces there before.
It seems incredible that given the grass roots nature of Fijian politics, previous elected governments seem to have treated ordinary constituents with such disdain. If this is "the first time" government ministers have got out and about to listen to ordinary peoples' concerns, what on earth has been going on? Have they just assumed that everyone would fall into line and vote for them? Or have they relied on the chiefs to deliver Fijian votes in a collective bloc? It's really quite extraordinary.
In colonial times, district officers and commissioners were constantly holding pow-wows in villages all over Fiji, explaining the government's policies and seeking local opinion. Even successive governors, who were treated like gods, made a point of going on " treks" to the inland or outer islands to show the flag and gauge local opinion.
If it takes a dictatorship to finally bother to listen to the concerns of ordinary people, it doesn't say much for the quality of democracy Fiji had before. It struck me that Frank Bainimarama was being rather hopeful when he said he was planning to win the battle for the hearts and minds of village people over his opponents. But perhaps listening to them and finally delivering some basic services will change attitudes for the better and pave the way for lasting change. Fascinating stuff."
N0075. BA IRON SANDS. Foreign exchange earnings from the mineral resource sector are expected to increase significantly now that Australian-based mining company, Amex Resources, has negotiated a long term (45-year plus) lease agreement over a substantial area of Fiji's major bulk shipping port at Lautoka. The tenure will allow the stockpiling and export of the company's Ba Delta magnetite iron sands concentrates, and with direct access by barge, it now has easy access to the magnetite deposit located 30km away. The length of the lease indicates the expected potential life of the iron sands resource. The company estimates the resource contains 220 million tonnes with further potential both inland and seaward. Initial exports are likely to total an annual 750,000 tonnes.
N0076. FIJI SUGAR FOR JAPAN. Fiji could soon start exporting sugar to Japan. Sojitz Corporation officials from Japan will visit Fiji soon for direct consultation with FSC officials on proposed quota and shipment arrangements. Fiji's Tokyo Embassy has briefed the visitors on the Fiji sugar industry and the prospects/projection of production from 2011 onwards based on the restructure and streamlining of the various bodies within the Fiji Sugar Corporation, the current crop now under cultivation, and the availability of farm lands for large scale farming as opposed to small scale family unit cultivation.-- Based on 2011, No: 0161/MOI. Given the FSC record to date, we keep our fingers crossed!
6 comments:
We are chasing new markets for Sugar we don't have ?
Croz,
What makes you think the Fiji Times is now a accurate record of what is happening in Fiji ?
Your own reporting should declare - "censored media" or "governemnt propaganda release"
Croz,
Thankyou for your piece on the Roadmap. I still can’t understand Governments refusal to publish the one document we are all supposed to believe in
To complete the picture on why the PM conducted the coup and why he has been so unsuccessful in delivering his only ‘published’ roadmap readers should consider the following points.
1. Status. This is a very very big personal driver for people in Fiji. There was a real chance the PM would lose his role as Commander of the armed forces and all the status and privilege with it.
2. Self Preservation. Beyond status there is no doubt that the Commander feared he might actually be implicated in the deaths of CRW soldiers in 2000. Also after calling for the coup again and again he feared he would be arrested for sedition.
3. Pride. The Commander does believe that he ‘saved the day’ in 2000. He believes it was him alone who put the former PM in power. He believes only he can ‘save’ Fiji now.
Readers should not under estimate how powerful drivers. Status, Self Preservation and personal Pride can be.
As to why he has completely failed on the first road map I suggest the following:
• He completely underestimated how hard it is to run government. In the army he says something and it happens. It’s a chain of command thing. He says something and people are trained to agree. The real world is completely different.
• He overestimated (and continues to overestimate) how “good” his soldiers are. For all the training and training what do soldiers actually do – not much on a day to day basis. What real world experience do they have – none.
• He thought the law would support him. He supported the law until it stopped supporting him then he threw it out. It comes back to self preservation.
"We don't have any idea what is happening. We have not received any authorisation from the Government to begin printing and we are swamped with complaints daily. It is very embarrassing for us," said Mr Bulivou.
The Education Ministry referred all queries to earlier statements made by Minister Filipe Bole who said textbooks should be available by the end of the first term.
He also said that "getting the textbooks ready and printing was going to take a lot of time and as such, parents should not expect textbooks in schools from day one of term one...
Welcome to the brave new world of a 'military regime reformed education system' that appears to run worse then when they started. Heaven forbid you actually get the have the text at the beginning of the schoool year. No word from Croz on this... perhaps all too negative and impolite to even mention it ...but at least we have a rarotonga flight to distract us.
@ The role of Status, Self Preservation and Personal Pride......
You surely are under some illusory misapprehension if you think that:
Status
Self-preservation
Personal pride
can be secure values on which to base Good Governance? In Machiavelli's famous sixteenth century observation 'The Prince' they did feature as drivers for the wielding of political power but, as we see today in both Tunisia and in Egypt and in adjacent countries of the Middle East, these shifting sands may not endure even after thirty years of wielding authoritarian rule. Any leader who has denied himself an insight into this, is 'Whistling in the Wind'. Check out Machiavelli and his recent commentators: Jonathan Powell (PM Tony Blair's longtime Chief of Staff) and Lord McAlpine (PM Margaret Thatcher's Hon Party Treasurer). They all have an astute handle on this. So do the Chinese, by the way. For almost five thousand years their empire has endured in one form or another. The vagaries of governance are well understood by them and they are well-versed also in the Art of War and poets like Wang Wei (Tang Dynasty) write of political exile. Status and the elite who covet it? Of what real value are they? Merely passing fancies, follies and inevitably destined to pass the way of all flesh. Wang Wei was exiled more than once to the remotest regions of China. Not much escaped his soulful view.
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