# WELL SHE WOULD SAY THAT, WOULDN’T SHE? ANOTHER PERVERSION OF JOURNALISM AND THE TRUTH

Hold the front page. The Roko Tui Dreketi and head of the Burebasaga confederacy, Ro Teimumu Kepa, says the 16-year rule by Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was bad for the iTaukei.

Oh really? This from the former SODELPA opposition leader and Rewa High Chief who has been saying the same thing for 20 years. So what’s new that would justify this being the most important story in the Fiji Times today – July 24, 2026?

Answer: Nothing. It is the usual bullsh*t propaganda from the paper that used to be Fiji’s first draft of history but has been reduced to a pathetic rag under the ownership of the Motibhai Patels of Ba.

QUOTE: “Sixteen years of ‘damage’ inflicted by the policies of the previous government still haunts the iTaukei community today”.

Some damage.

• Free schooling for the first time in Fijian history that propelled thousands of iTaukei young people from streets and villages into the classroom.

• Coordinated assistance and a rebuilding program for the tens of thousands of victims of Cyclone Evan in 2012 and Cyclone Winston – Fiji’s deadliest – in 2016.

• An unprecedented rollout of new health clinics and other services in rural areas and new roads and bridges to improve connectivity to iTaukei communities.

• An unprecedented rollout of affordable access to mobile phones and the Internet that has brought iTaukei in Fiji and the diaspora closer together as never before.

• The successful weathering of the Covid-19 pandemic and the saving of countless iTaukei lives through a successful national vaccination program.

• The survival, against the odds, of the national economy, the national airline and the tourism industry on which the jobs of tens of thousands of iTaukei depend.

• A global campaign to draw attention to restoring the health of the oceans on which the lives and livelihoods of countless iTaukei depend.

• Leading the global fight against climate change through Fiji’s presidency of COP-23, which highlighted the threat to the iTaukei and other indigenous peoples of global warming and rising sea levels. And so on…

Yes, some damage, Ro Kepa, and your propagandists at the Fiji Times.

So what’s your real beef? Let’s get straight to the point.

Frank Bainimarama abolished the Great Council of Chiefs and eroded your own power. He took away the money from iTaukei leases that used to go to the chiefs and gave it directly to ordinary iTaukei. And in doing so, empowered them in a way that was also unprecedented but has since been abolished by the Rabuka government.

Let’s face it. The real damage was to your own position – your privileges and that of other chiefs – not to ordinary iTaukei.

And what are we seeing now? Not only the privileges of existing hereditary chiefs restored and reinforced but the creation of scores of new chiefs – some of whom ordinary iTaukei simply don’t respect and don’t want.

Plus a campaign by the GCC to entrench its power once and for all in a revised constitution that will benefit them but not ordinary iTaukei. And certainly not the Fijian people as a whole. (Yes we are all “Fijian” and that hopefully isn’t going to change despite the best efforts of the GCC).

Let’s also be blunt. None of this is for the benefit of ordinary iTaukei but to entrench the power of the elite.

It is a big lie to say that 16 years of Bainimarama rule damaged the iTaukei. Whatever damage has been caused to the iTaukei – the drugs, the crime, the violence, the breakdown of discipline, the self-entitlement – has been overwhelmingly self-inflicted.

Let’s be blunt again. The chiefs have failed miserably in their duty to lead. And pointing the finger at the last government is not only a crude attempt to shift the blame for the social crisis of the iTaukei. It a lie being perpetuated with the assistance – in this instance – of the corrupt and chronically biased Fiji Times.

NOTE TO READERS:

The record shows that I once worked to promote the efforts of the Bainimarama government but campaigned against it at the 2022 election because I came to believe that it had lost its way and Fiji needed a change.

Whatever misgivings I might have had then about the Bainimarama government , it deserves to be remembered for the achievements outlined above. And especially because at almost every level, the country is now worse off.

There’s going to be a great deal more of this attempt to deflect responsibility and rewrite history in the election lead-up.

It is critical that every Fijian refines their “bullsh*t detectors” in the coming months and especially the iTaukei. Because the ultimate empowerment for them is to be able to see through the cynical manipulation that continues to keep them in check.