# COMMONMAN ON THE ” PUTRESCENT LAYERS OF CORRUPTION” IN RABUKA’S FIJI

GD writes: We now know that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum is going to jail at the end of March irrespective of the evidence against him because of the sweetheart deal between the Chief Justice and the Prime Minister and President that the CJ will convict him in exchange for the PM not lodging an appeal against Justice Dane Tuiqereqere‘s ruling that Sitiveni Rabuka acted unlawfully by dismissing the FICAC Commissioner, Barbara Malimali.

Yes, folks, what Grubsheet outlined in our last article is the sorry state of the criminal justice system in Fiji. The Chief Justice, Salesi Temo – having gained total control of the criminal justice system – is using his power to dispense with the “old order” altogether and ensure they never make a comeback, first by jailing the former prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, and then his 2IC, Khaiyum.

In the case of Bainimarama, Temo overturned a non-custodial sentence imposed on Bainimarama by the magistrate, Seini Puamau, and put him behind bars. And in the case of Khaiyum, he wasn’t taking the same chance. Temo seized the Khaiyum case for himself, heard it from last September to November, is keeping the former attorney general waiting almost five months before he delivers a verdict and will then send him to prison.

It doesn’t matter that a Supreme Court judge has told Grubsheet that in their opinion, there is not enough evidence to convict. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum WILL be convicted. Because that’s the deal allegedly reached in the extraordinary conspiracy we have revealed between the trio at the apex of the state and the establishment. And it is how far the criminal justice system has fallen in Fiji under this corrupt triumvirate.

We will soon know, of course, whether all this is definitively true – whether the information leaking from within the criminal justice of a conspiracy to jail Khaiyum if Rabuka spares Temo the humiliation of a successful appeal against Tuiqereqere’s ruling that it is Temo, not Rabuka, who has the right, as head of the Judicial Services Commission, to hire and fire a FICAC Commissioner.

But Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and his family now know that the most likely outcome when Salesi Temo sentences him and Mohammed Saneem on March 30 is handcuffs and a trip in a prison vehicle to Naboro or Korovou. There’ll be an appeal, of course, but Salesi Temo will have fulfilled his side of the bargain to ensure that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum cannot contest the forthcoming election and make a comeback.

You’ll see none of this in the Fijian mainstream media, with its chorus of community approval – the latest from the Fiji Council of Social Services – of the Tuiqereqere ruling giving Salesi Temo the power to decide whether Barbara Malimali should be reinstated. That too will come at the end of March.

FACT: Two New Zealand Kings Counsel, Professor Philip Joseph – who provided formal advice a year ago – and Dr Andrew Butler – who was hired on the Prime Minister’s instructions this week and then “un-hired” when Rabuka changed his mind about an appeal – say Justice Tuiqereqere got his judgment wrong. It should have been appealed and that appeal was winnable. But then, of course, politics, personalities and prejudice got in the way of the facts and justice went out the window.

Here’s my own prediction: Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum will go to jail but “Bad Barbie” Malimali won’t’get her old job back. Why? Because it would mean that Fiji’s principal corruption watchdog is a woman who can’t even get a lawyer’s practicing certificate in Tuvalu because of her misconduct there. And because Malimali lied under oath in successive documents in Fiji that she had never received an adverse professional finding from anywhere.

It’s all there on Victor Lal’s Fijileaks right now for those of you who might have missed the previous reporting on the subject by Victor and Grubsheet. Even the corrupt Salesi Temo isn’t going to be able to justify reappointing Barbara Malimali to FICAC. The question for him, in fact, is why he even appointed her in the first place. If he didn’t know about the Tuvalu ruling, he clearly should have. He either willfully turned a blind eye to it or was ignorant. But either way, it was a massive fail that puts another nail in his coffin as Chief Justice, along with all the others.

If you think that Grubsheet is alone in thinking the whole thing stinks, I’m not. Because to follow is the view of CommonMan – our columnist in the vanua – who refers to the “depth of putrescence under the Rabuka-led administration”.

Yes, there is something rotten in the state of Fiji under Sitiveni Rabuka, according to our voice from the vanua, and as Grubsheet has reported, it extends to the President and the Chief Justice – the three main figures at the apex of the state.

Read on for a cautionary tale for the three of them. As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

If someone like CommonMan – a farmer and villager with his ear to the ground in the vanua and in intimate contact with the grassroots – has come to realise your governance is rotten, it is only a matter of time before the entire nation realises it.

You have been warned.

“The President, the Prime Minister, and the President of the ruling party in the land are all implicated in treason. No wonder there is such licentiousness, turpitude, dissoluteness and corruption in the land.“

Both mainstream and social media are abuzz with stories and varying perspectives on the High Court ruling regarding the legality of the removal of the former FICAC Commissioner, Barbara Malimali. Everyone seems to have waded into the conversation surrounding that ruling, from her lawyer, Tanya Waqanika, to the average citizen on the virtual streets of FaceBook.

And there are layers and webs of concealed corruption emanating outward from it, like the concentric rings of a peeled onion. So this case is like the tip of an iceberg that can potentially expose the depth of putrescence under the Rabuka-led administration.

It could be the main reason why Sitiveni Rabuka offered to resign when the Courts ruled against him.

In reading between the lines, it’s clear that there are factions within the People’s Alliance that are trying to leverage each other to influence both policy direction and influence or use the Prime Minister to achieve their own objectives. While the PM attempts to present a united front, a complex power struggle is happening behind the scenes.

But the unanimous support calling for the retention of Rabuka after he had offered to resign reveals his role as the essential stabiliser – the fulcrum that balances this juggling act, holding competing interests in check. Without him, the internal power vacuum would lead to the eventual fragmentation of the party.

However, the pandemonium can easily distract from the following facts:

Francis Puleiwai, the former FICAC acting commissioner, was removed as she was on the verge of prosecuting or investigating the following individuals:

The deputy prime ministers Biman Prasad and Manoa Kamikamica, Barbara Malimali herself, Lynda Tabuya, Siromi Turaga, Charan Jeath Singh, and Kalaveti Ravouvou.

Ms Malimali seems to have been appointed to stifle it.

In gathering and evaluating the chatter about the issue, it seems this faction prevailed upon the then unsuspecting President, the Tui Macuata, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, to hastily convene her appointment to that end two months before he left office in 2024. Manoa Kamikamica is the likely head of this faction.

Which brings me to the second faction within the PAP. The CAMV or Conservative Alliance Matanitu Vanua faction is composed fundamentally of the Tui Cakau, the Vakalalabures (who Tanya referred to as the Natewa Vikings on social media) and other members like Mosese Bulitavu.

CAMV is one of the parties that grew out of the ashes of Rabuka’s SVT ( Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei) after his loss in the general elections of 1999. CAMV had embedded itself within the SDL (Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua) in a coalition after the elections of 2001 and also later as SODELPA (Social Democratic Liberal Party).

Some prominent members of CAMV who were appointed to Ministerial positions were Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu as Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources and Ratu Rakuita Vakalalabure (the oldest of the three Vakalalabure brothers) as Deputy Speaker of the House. Ratu Rakuita is currently the Executive Chair of Fiji Pine.

There is every chance that the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, is also a member of this clique as a matter of convenience. My observation over the years leads me to believe that Temo is a partisan figure whose career is defined by strategic alignment with the dominant political power.

For instance, after the abrogation of the Constitution in 2009, having accepted appointment and promotion to the position of Puisne Judge of the High Court, Salesi Temo publicly acted as an advocate for the military government, notably criticising New Zealand for refusing to cooperate with the regime’s extradition requests. In all appearances, CJ Temo will not bite the hand that feeds him. He will instead kowtow in its general direction.

After all, it was Rabuka who had nominated him to the Chief Justice position. It was also under the SVT administration that he had started his legal career in 1994 as a resident magistrate under Rabuka’s Affirmative Action policy. Generally, it takes 10 – 20 years of accumulated judicial experience before progression to chief magistrate (amongst other pre-requisites). It’s interesting to note that Salesi Temo achieved it in three.

This CAMV faction within SODELPA also orchestrated Rabuka’s return to politics and catapulted him into the Party Leader position in 2018.  And another CBM plant – MP Mosese Bulitavu – was inserted into Fiji First to influence the defection of nine of its MPs to the Coalition.

The sudden removal of Barbara Malimali and appointment of Lavi Rokoika as Commissioner FICAC (who is married to Tevita, the youngest of the three Vakalalabure brothers) reveals how much clout this faction has. Ms Rokoika’s appointment came after Ms Malimali had initiated investigations into the alleged corruption of the Fiji Sports Council CEO, Gilbert Vakalalabure (the middle Vakalalabure siblings).

There’s a truckload of misdeeds waiting to be investigated at the Fiji Sports Council as all this goes on. Much of it has stalled because the Commissioner of FICAC and the FSC CEO are in-laws.

It was also through the Vakalalabures that Sitiveni Rabuka was able to acquire the support of the Tui Nadi to be President of PAP so as to court the votes of the West. The wife of the Tui Nadi is also a Vakalalabure. With the Tui Nadi came the Tui Nawaka, the Tui Sabeto, the Tui Vuda etc.

Having achieved his aim, Rabuka discarded the Tui Nadi after the elections, duly replacing him with a lackey Senator from his SVT days from Macuata, Joe Dimuri. What a slap in the face for the Westerners who had voted for him.

Ratu Jo Dimuri was complicit with the Tui Cakau in the coup of 2000, specifically the takeover of the Sukanaivalu military barracks in Labasa. After spending 11 days in prison, he was released and quickly exiled himself after the 2006 coup, only returning with the triumph of the patron saint of all coups in 2022.

The PAP leadership is beginning to sound like a who’s who of coup makers. The President, the PM, and the President of the ruling party in the land are all implicated in treason. No wonder there is such licentiousness, turpitude, dissoluteness and corruption in the land.

And now Justice Dane Tuiqereqere has found Barbara Malimali’s dismissal illegal.

Tuiqereqere’s verdict also calls into question the legality of Ms Rokoika’s appointment.

Here is a list of things that I find suspect – that the concerns regarding the validity of Malimali’s appointment came from within the Prime Minister’s office itself. And that it was the PM himself who had insisted on a Commission of Inquiry into the matter.

In my opinion, his strategy had two objectives: to mire the former President, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, in controversy regarding the legality of his appointment of the head of FICAC so as to elicit his resignation and consequently remove Malimali in the process.  And then usher in his real picks, the Tui Cakau and Lavi Rokoika. And use the Ashton-Lewis CoI as his default and justification (subsequently absolving him from blame) so as not to antagonise the two competing factions within his party.

It becomes clear from analyzing Rabuka’s leadership style of Coalition patronage and placation of mismatched and disparate political parties that his priority is the preservation of his own power.

But what does all this mean for the man on the ground? To the common man, it means the government has just wasted $4-million of taxpayers’ money and yet is back at square one with the case, while leaving corruption unaddressed, wantonly flouting the rule of law and operating with impunity.

This preoccupation with all kinds of legal shenanigans means that government attention and resources have been diverted, and it has not addressed grassroots needs, specifically those bread-and-butter issues that affect the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. So much so, that it was nonplussed that the Consumer Competition Commission had approved an electricity tariff increase even though the government had a majority stake in Electricity Fijii Limited’s shares and had its representatives on EFL’s Board.

This reveals two things: one, a distinct two-way communication gap between the government and its representatives in various statutory bodies. Two, a government that just doesn’t care.

Amid all this, there is a storm (in a teacup) brewing within the Great Council of Chiefs between members who seem to still have some nostalgic loyalty to the colonial royalty and the so-called proponents of decolonisation. There is a deep ideological rift between traditionalists and modernists. On one side are those who see the GCC’s legitimacy inherently embedded with the Crown because of its origins, and those who wish to completely unshackle it and reinvent this body as a standalone authority answerable only to itself.

Two prominent chiefs have cast their lots in with the modernists. Ratu Tevita Mara, the Tui Nayau/Tui Lau, has been more direct and concise, saying any connection to the crown ended at Independence. The more sophisticated Vunivalu of Rewa, Ro Naulu Mataitini, however, was more nuanced. But anyone who follows Ro Naulu’s posts on FaceBook knows he shares the same sentiments as the Tui Lau.

Most chiefs still have an affinity for the Crown, and in many chiefly houses around the country, one can still see pictures of the late Queen Elizabeth. It’s an interesting paradox of conflicting positions because the heads of the three confederacies, which both chiefs are “subservient” to, still have deep-seated reverence for the Crown. So too are the heads of many provinces who take a lot of pride in being the direct descendants of the signatories to the Deed of Cession.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the GCC Vale ni Bose when the BLV ( Bose Levu Vakaturaga) sits for its deliberative sovereignty talanoa about what course of action it will take.

We can expect that Sitiveni Rabuka – the person who initiated all this and abolished the Crown from the governance of Fiji in 1987 – is unlikely to feature in that discussion.