When you dish it out like Grubsheet does, you have to expect to also take it. So I welcome the personal attack on me by the ubiquitous “Rajend Naidu of Sydney” that the Fiji Sun has chosen to put at the top of its Letters page today.
Why? Because it is a hell of a lot better than the Fijian media dismissing me as an unnamed “former communications advisor to the Bainimarama government” or writing off my articles as “information on social media”. There it is – “Graham Davis of Grubsheet Feejee is a bastard”. Vinaka!
As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity and the only thing worse than bad publicity is to be ignored. So it is terrific that I finally have a name and Grubsheet Feejee gets a free plug to drive even more readers to these pages.
Rajend Naidu and the Fiji Sun have broken the first rule of PR – never elevate your opponents by mentioning them. But for the record, I have never supported human rights abuses under the Bainimarama government or anyone else. On the contrary, I strongly and very publicly condemned a notorious instance of torture by Frank Bainimarama’s forces in 2013 when I was writing Frank Bainimarama’s speeches.
In 2012 – well after the events of 2006 – I accepted an invitation from the Bainimarama government’s communications consultant, Qorvis, to work on its Fiji account because I supported the Bainimarama government’s commitment to a common and equal citizenry and an equal playing field for every Fijian, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. That is something that is being steadily eroded under the current government and I am unashamedly fighting it with everything I’ve got.
I returned to Fiji to work for Qorvis on the proviso that we were all working for the restoration of parliamentary rule. Indeed, I have written that when Frank Bainimarama told me in 2013 that he was thinking of not having the election but a referendum on whether to have an election, I specifically reminded him of his promise to hold an election in 2014 and he did. Fiji returned to parliamentary rule and the rest is history.
It is a matter of opinion whether my work for the Bainimarama government was “propaganda” or communicating government policy. The same could easily be said about the Rabuka government’s information effort. But I am proud of my modest role in assisting with the restoration of democracy and a great many of the Bainimarama government’s achievements, including the introduction of free schooling for the first time and Fiji’s oceans and climate campaigns, on which I worked.
The Fiji Sun‘s headline “Living with lies” is a pretty blunt propaganda instrument in itself. But the Fijian mainstream media is clearly smarting from my attacks on it for its generally woeful performance in keeping those other bastards – the Coalition government – honest. Grubsheet has broken repeated stories that the Fijian media – including the Fiji Sun – have studiously avoided. So who is really “living with lies”, Fiji Sun?
What they really hate is that Grubsheet – along with Victor Lal’s Fijileaks – has become a powerful alternative to the mainstream media in Fiji and is stealing their readers. And solely because of their failure to keep the Fijian people fully informed. So from this bastard to you bastards, thanks for the plug and I look forward to another one soon.
Victor Lal gets his own free publicity this morning with an attack on him by one of Biman Prasad’s “lady friends” in the letter’s columns of the Fiji Times. After years of seething resentment, maybe it is now gloves off on the part of both papers. Bring it on. As a British politician once said: “Like being savaged by a dead sheep”.
Fiji Media has become a brothel house. Political predators are using them at will.
More Fijians are reading Grubsheet than Fiji Times and Fiji Sun. Both most useless mainstream media in Fiji. Close shop. Your days are over as spineless media.
Thank you Graham for speaking the silent truth that Fiji’s other media doesn’t.
Your articles are about holding leaders accountable. This is something Fijians have not learnt well yet. They treat their MPs like some God who they put on a pedestal and make celebrities of.
Investigative journalism is alive only through Grubsheet. And an ounce of democracy that we hold dear to right now in a racist and troubled Fiji.
Fiji Sun,
You have embarrassed yourself further. What people want is the NEWS especially after 16 years of repression. You are keeping the country back from advancing out of a brutal era by holding back stories or not even investigating in the first place!
All I know is real journalists go to the ends of the earth to uncover the truth.
Now I know it’s also hard because you don’t have qualified intelligent journalists that ask hard questions or can write a story properly. So Grubsheet is a big threat to you.
But it’s no excuse. You are a sellout!
Kirti, what qualifies you for your current role?
Is it merit or nepotism?
A genuine question.
Answer via letters to the editor.
We will enthusiastically wait.
Graham, a few years ago, the US Embassy rejected Rajend Naidu’s visa application to visit the mainland. Rajend was infuriated that some entity could not recognise his greatness, and adopting a chip on his shoulder, whinged about that rejection in the open columns virtually every week like a nipple-deprived toddler. It became a miserable circus, causing some of us avid readers of The Then Fiji Times to give him the moniker Unhappy Rajend. Thankfully, the editor of that time, who had more leadership spunks than today’s impotent incumbent nipped the problem in the bud and closed the mono carriage of verbal carping emanating from the Laucala Beach digs of the Perpetually Offended Unhappy Rajend – POUR.
That may seem like a singular incident but it gave us some insights into POUR who seems to have been perpetually unhappy ever since. He’s also easily offended when anyone dares to disagree with him, and vengeful verbal insults are never far away, nor with the finitism associated with mature debating and discourse. You have joined such a big group of said offenders, Graham, that you can forget to ever get to meet them all. His monocular “wisdom” emanates from Al Jazeera, the ABC, The Guardian and ABC, all having the slant of the equally and perpetually unhappy Left.
Ignore him. We all do.