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Fijians are to be blitzed with a big media advertising campaign to encourage voters to register for the promised elections in 2014. The campaign includes three television commercials with a heavy multiracial component and - naturally for Fiji - an accent on sport and a need for teamwork on and off the field. The most startling is a clip that has … [Read more...] about #96 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY – THE ADS

Three of Fiji’s political leaders – Laisenia Qarase, Mahendra Chaudhry and Mick Beddoes – have said they are “reviewing their stance” on discussions on a new constitution while accusing Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and the military of making threats and spreading fear. The statement amounts to a threat themselves to withdraw from the … [Read more...] about #95 THE THREE AMIGOS COUNTER THREAT

The ordinary people of any country – what Richard Nixon famously called the silent majority – hope for leaders with judgment and Fiji is no exception. All of which makes it extraordinary that a senior politician like Mick Beddoes has taken to taunting the military with the threat of life-long jail sentences in the current political environment. … [Read more...] about #94 TOUGH TALKING LITTLE BIG GUY

One of the last living links to Fiji’s colonial past has been severed with the death in Britain of Philip Snow - a colonial servant, author and celebrated cricketer who retained close links with Fiji long after he left the then colony in the early 1950s. Philip was already a minor celebrity when, in 1938, he sailed half way around the world to … [Read more...] about #93 VALE A MULTIRACIAL PIONEER

Wadan Narsey is one of Fiji’s most gifted academics, an economist with an international reputation now living in Australia. He was once a member of parliament for the largely Indo-Fijian National Federation Party and is on the public record complaining vociferously about racism in Fiji. Yet he harbours a particular loathing for the … [Read more...] about # 92 WHEN RHETORIC GETS RIDICULOUS

Fiji is playing an important but little known role in China’s latest and most ambitious space mission, which is scheduled within days. For the first time - if all goes according to plan - a manned spacecraft will dock with an orbiting experimental module in a major advance for the Chinese space program. And its progress will be tracked by a highly … [Read more...] about #91 FIJI’S ROLE IN SPACE