It was meant to be a celebration of the government’s success – the taxpayer-funded party at the GPH that has again triggered national outrage close on the heels of the public revolt over the massive pay and benefits increases our politicians gave themselves, which had them already branded as greedy pigs.
Biman Prasad cuts a forlorn figure in the government Facebook pictures of the event – sitting apart from the iTaukei ministers next to his wife and with a look on his face that suggests he already knows the party, and the photo, are not a good idea. And he’d be right. Within hours, the Labour Party leader, Mahendra Chaudhry – who has effectively become the main opposition leader from outside of the parliament after Inia Seruiratu allowed himself to be neutered – took to the Coalition with a baseball bat, rightly describing the whole event as “sickening”.
What did Biman Prasad do? Instead of grasping the political reality that the 82-year old former prime minister was speaking for almost the entire nation in his withering criticism of the Coalition living it up at the GPH, the NFP leader went on the attack against Chaudhry. To try to create a diversion, Prasad raised the historical skeletons of the Labour leader’s offshore bank accounts and threatened to sue him over his comments about the alleged misuse of government funds for Girmit commemorations. But it was an own goal that left egg all over Biman Prasad’s face.
In his knee-jerk attempt to defuse Chaudhry’s criticism by lashing out at him, Biman Prasad broke the first rule of PR of never elevating your opponents. Both men appeared in one of those “war of words” or “trading blows” stories that are a staple of Fiji Times front pages. But amid a tsunami of public disgust about the profligacy and self indulgence of the GPH event, the war was already lost. And to underline the weakness of the government’s position, here was the Deputy Prime Minister defending the indefensible against a man who isn’t even in the parliament. No prizes for guessing who won.
In his heart of hearts, Biman Prasad must have known it was wrong for the Cabinet to hold an expensive party for itself at the GPH within days of him receiving charity of $86-million from the Australian government and as he was about to sign a new loan agreement for $160-million from the Asian Development Bank. Small wonder the “Ten Billion Dollar Man” who sits on top of our national debt mountain looked so isolated and downcast.
The wonder of it is that no-one else in the Coalition seems to have known it was wrong. And that Biman Prasad was too timid to raise his voice and remind the Prime Minister of how he was bound to look on the night – a modern day version of Nero fiddling while his political capital burns.
We know that Biman Prasad has tried to curb the excesses before. He spoke out publicly against the obscene pay and benefits increases for MPs that the Queen of Tarts, Lynda Tabuya, spearheaded wearing her cloak of Chair of the Emoluments Committee. The NFP leader knew two things. 1/ They were wrong and the country couldn’t afford them. And 2/ There would be a backlash against the government that would imperil its electoral stocks.
But Lynda Tabuya turned on him, publicly accusing him of lying and trying to do a deal with FijiFirst. And Biman – the serial political weakling – simply caved in. Incredibly, he ended up arguing that the pay rises were justified. And so the NFP piled onto the ship with its gormless partners in the PAP and SODELPA that the government’s resident siren – the Minister for Bonking and Weed – lured onto the rocks in the political equivalent of the RFNS Puamau.
Equally incredibly, Biman Prasad now tells the Fiji Times that the NFP will be a major player at the next election in 2026. No, Biman. You are going to be decimated. And let me tell you why.
Before the implosion of FijiFirst, you had almost 18 months to use your five seats in the parliament to keep the Coalition on the straight and narrow. You could have drawn a line in the sand against the undeniable incidence of workplace ethnic cleansing in the civil service and offices of state that has seen an army of iTaukei moving into key positions once occupied by the minorities. Not on the basis of merit but ethnicity.
With your control not only of the parliament but the purse strings at the Ministry of Finance, you could have said a firm “no” to the government’s spending excesses and preached a message of austerity and the need for Fiji to live within its means. It is down to you, for instance, that you could sanction the construction of a new GCC complex when you knew that the CWM, our main teaching hospital, was in a scandalous state of disrepair.
You could have used your five votes to prevent the repeated violations of the Constitution – to tell Sitiveni Rabuka that you would not accept John Rabuku as Acting DPP, Tomasi Bainivalu as Chief Registrar after his drink driving conviction or the unconscionable and illegal conduct towards the suspended DPP, Christopher Pryde, who has been kept waiting 16 months for a Tribunal hearing into the allegation of misbehaviour against him and has now unlawfully been deprived of his salary for more than three weeks. You have control of the government’s finances. Why haven’t you paid him? The man who decided not to press charges against you over the Taniguchi affair and if he had, might have seen you behind bars today and certainly not where you are.
So much you could have done and didn’t. And now it is too late. Why? Because with his gaggle of “independents” from FijiFirst, Sitiveni Rabuka doesn’t need you anymore to govern. One move of defiance from you and he can cut you and your four cabinet colleagues loose. You have lost the one bargaining chip you had to keep the Coalition honest. And now you find yourself in a Faustian Pact with the Devil, or more pertinently the Snake, in which the Snake has you cornered.
Sitiveni Rabuka has total power to decide your fate – whether you are Deputy Prime Minister, whether you are in the cabinet or whether you and the other members of the Less Than Magnificent Five are propelled back onto the opposition benches. The Fijian people aren’t stupid. When you make your public statements of praise for the Prime Minister like the one yesterday (see below), they know you now have even less choice than before but to suck up to him.
They also know that you are completely deluded to think that a rosy political future awaits you and the NFP. With the nickname of “Betrayer”, what could possibly lead you to think you will be forgiven for that, let alone rewarded? Your entire period in government has been an exercise in betraying the voters who put you there to restrain the excesses of your Coalition partners – to keep the bastards honest. And you are going to pay the ultimate price for that betrayal in the form of electoral oblivion. Mahendra Chaudhry knows it. We all know it.
Worse, you are a hypocrite. The Fiji Times opinion piece you wrote back in 2021 about the excesses of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and FijiFirst ( see below) will haunt you all the way to the next election. Because far from curbing government spending and the burgeoning national debt, you have made it worse. You were both fond of trading the insult of being practitioners of “voodoo economics”. But you are no better than Aiyaz. You are both the same. The same kind of witchdoctor trying to conjure up a mirage of national prosperity based on grants and borrowed money instead of genuine productivity and cutting the national sulu to fit the available cloth.
For anyone who voted for the NFP at the last election, it beggars belief that you have done nothing to prevent the excesses of your Coalition partners – the blatant racism and your failure to stand up for your supporters when they were branded “vulagi” – visitors – in their own country. Your failure to condemn the scandalous conduct of a cabinet minister in business with a Chinese gangster, a domestic violence abuser as Education Minister or a Minister for Children who uses drugs and lost her position as deputy leader of the PAP but remains in place as a minister, lording it over you and your supposed “champion of the poor” as her assistant.
It is genuinely sickening, which is why – in Grubsheet’s humble opinion -you are political toast. Richard Naidu – the NFP stalwart who you made Chair of the government’s Fiscal Review Committee and whose first act was to give a seven-year tax holiday to one of his clients – said something very telling in yesterday’s Fiji Times. Arguing for reform of the “restrictive” electoral laws, he called for the abolition of the requirement for any political party to acquire 5000 signatures and said anyone who had 10 supporters should be able to stand for parliament.
We can all see where he is coming from. Because you will be lucky to have 10 supporters when the next election comes around, such is the white-hot disillusionment and anger in the country about your leadership and the NFP generally. You seem oblivious to the danger, just as you seem oblivious to the disaster facing the country as tens of thousands of our best and brightest leave.
More than 100,000 Fijians are believed to fled, most of them since you came to power. It is a repeat of the exodus that took place when Sitiveni Rabuka first seized power in 1987. And while there is undoubtedly a “pull” factor of better job prospects and better education and health care, it is the “push” factor for which you are partly responsible. People waiting to see if the Coalition was better than its predecessor and then deciding there is no hope. That Fiji is a nation in terminal decline.
Here’s the thing, Biman. From a population at the last census in the 900-thousands, Fiji is presumably back into the 800-thousands. It is already being described as “depopulation” by certain people at the top of government. And if the people leaving are our best and brightest, there won’t be many of them who earned below the tax threshold of $30,000 a year. Most will be among the estimated 20,000 Fijians who WERE paying tax when FijiFirst was in power. And their departure is inevitably a crippling loss.
How many are now left to make up the tax base you need to keep the country going? Perhaps you could tell us. Because all in all, the inescapable conclusion is that instead of strengthening the Fijian economy and the political fortunes of the NFP, you are driving both of them over a cliff. And a single “act of God” in the form of a cyclone that wipes out tourism threatens to have the entire nation splattered on the rocks below.
You say “people are extremely happy with this government”. You are deluded. Vote for you again? In your dreams.
Richard Naidu wants parties of 10 people to have the right to register. An accurate reflection of the NFP’s likely support in 2026?
And the blatant hypocrisy of Biman Prasad. The article from 2021 that has come back to haunt him. A carbon copy of Aiyaz. Ouch.
Oops. Biman and Aiyaz one and the same. The Bobbsey Twins of debt and mismanagement.
When I see this man I can’t articulate, am filled with rage etc. He has let the Indian community down. And had the nerve to say he left a job that was paying more than the PMs salary. Why he is still in politics is beyond me. As for Mahendra Chaudhry, whilst not a fan of his have to give him credit for still being so fearless. People may or blame him for $2m but does anyone realize the trauma he went through being violently removed twice by coups. Wonder if he ever went through counseling etc. How he manages to carry on is reflective of a true patriot and a person of great strength. I hope one day all those who suffered from the coups find comfort and healing. For MPc I think he should sue the country and Rabuka. Hey maybe we should all sue Rabuka. Because soon someone will get smart and actually do this.
(Amended for legal reasons)
Come next election he and NFP will be history. This same loser will quickly run abroad to NZ where his son and he has some property interests knowing very well new govt will unearth all his abuse of office scandals which will lead to his prison term…(amended)… He has placed all his FNP cronies including failed politicians in govt boards and municipal councils reeking of nepotism. He is aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing and racism of Rabuka govt and part of worst govt in Fiji’s history. He has increased debt to 12 billion in just 2 years and will drown economy into oblivion.
A very powerful article GD. You’re spot on in the commentary. But what happens to PAP next? Will Rabuka continue to lead? I feel that the writing is on the wall and we’re in for a major correction at the next elections.
Fiji needs strong, bright leaders, at which the current lot fail miserably. Biman’s first act as Minister for Finance was to appoint NFP youth leader, Jone as his PA without any advert, who was suspended due to some misdoings.
Biman is truly a Baimaan whose main aim was to in ASK’s words ‘ride the black van with red lights’.
We’re back in the SVT days of indulgence at taxpayer expense, but the fact is that this is the Information Age, leaves nothing hidden.
Hopeless man he is. I even loath wasting my precious words on him.
He’ll get what’s coming for sure along with the rest.
These overseas donors should simply stopping extending funds/ loans to these crooks.
Thanks GD you said it all.
Biman is delusional and a betrayer indeed.
The betrayal is remaing MUTE while Immunity Treasonous Rabuka plays his communal card in government and in high places that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the non-iTaukei.
And to belittle Mr Chaudhry is not going to work either.
Contrary to him boasting about the NFP being in existence for around sixty years, he may well be the last NFP leader to preside over its demise at the next election.
Fiji needs another coup.
Exactly, the country needs to be saved. Who is bold enough to clean up ?
Who is bold enough to clean up, and REMAIN CLEAN?
If anything we’ve learnt in this country it’s that every dog will have it’s day. Time is not only a healer but a revealer of injustices past and present.
Let them do what t they please ..in the end they will either have the people to answer too in this life or the creator in the next.
Your comments are not fair. First of all after the 22 elections, the first and foremost priority was to get rid of dictatorship from Fiji. No price was too high. In hindsight, the power of 5 never existed. The supervisor of elections would have done then what she did now… deregister FFP. Having worked closely with Biman for 7 years at NFP, I can, with clear conscience say that he would never do a favour to anyone if he thought was unethical. His understanding and grasp of economic management principles is profound. The voting population will see this, as I do, come 2026 elections.
“No price was too high to get rid of a dictatorship”. Sorry but we have paid far too high a price for the change of government because your lot is no better than the last lot and on the issue of racial equality, among other things, it is much worse.
I’m afraid you are destined to be disappointed in 2026. As someone who urged my significant readership before the last election to vote NFP to “keep the bastards honest”, I intend to campaign against the NFP in 2026 because they have become bastards themselves. And Biman the Betrayer is the biggest bastard of all.
Before we had an authoritarian government.
Now we have an authoritarian, racist and incompetent government.
I agree, Fiji is now free and people can criticize without the fear of a 2 am knock on the door.
I will take Bimanomics anyday over Khaiyumnomics.
The people will gave the ultimate day in 2026.
Rajiv, you too are deluded. I have been specifically warned by Fiji’s High Commissioner to Australia not to return to Fiji because he cannot establish whether I would be detained. So much for tolerance of criticism.
For the record, when we were still on speaking terms, I specifically asked Biman Prasad if it was OK to return. He said he would check with the relevant authorities and didn’t get back to me. What does that tell you?
This government may not do the 2 am knock on the door but still employs the same secret “detain on arrival” and “stop departure” practices. The supposed “freedom” under the new order is a sham.
Before we had overt media control, now we have covert media control. Overt narcissism in leadership versus covert narcissism. Both as bad as each other. One just takes longer for people to recognise.
That’s what a guji would say.
Kick the gujis out. They are the biggest problem
Wait. This guji is nfp treasurer as he shamelessly says on fb.
Chodhu does not see the funny side of his endorsement that baimaan is …….read on: “7 years at NFP, I can, with clear conscience say that he would never do a favour to anyone if he thought was unethical. His understanding and grasp of economic management principles is profound.”
ROFLMAO!
Perhaps he didn’t see this from another contributor–
Begin cut and paste:
No shame from baimaan in girmit-granting $200,000 to his wife (no accounting), granting $5m to LA lackey for ‘geo tech school,’ (where?) appointing LA buddies to FSC, ambassadorship, statutory boards.
Baimaan outdid his shamless self by strategically ‘opposing’ the huge unprecedented pay and benefits increases among themselves, including duty free cars, luxury housing, luxury furniture for the speaker (for doing what?) and gutless leader of the oposition. They all continue unlimited business class travel (same airline he said was ‘sinking’), UN per diem rates, 5-star hotels and meals, call girl in dehli hotel, sexting married women.
Wiping out student loans, granting billionare a 7-year tax holiday via the self-interested farcical fiscal review committee, VAT increase, rising debts, soaring inflation, cronyism to appoint statutory boards, FSC, economic advisor in finance ministry (for a so-called professor).
Baimaan riled against the previous goverment for years about access spending, unaccounted public funds, etc.
And now he is behaving in exactly the same manner, even worse. No longer can he use ‘but, but the last 16 years’ for his inept handling of finances and the economy.
The above and much more are the real issues being ignored by goverment. There is no relief in sight for the suffering people. What a cluster fcuk.
Tired of the nfp BS by the nitwit proxies espousing all that is good is be ause of baimaan and anything bad still belongs to the previous group. Find solutions. Stop the BS. End copy
Bula Graham, in regards to Biman losing his leverage now with those independents lurking, I agree with that. And I believe Biman is very much aware of that fact also. But I think he should not let that hinder or cloud his judgment because I reckon the snake Rabuka will face a huge backlash if he does get rid of NFP. People will see Rabuka for who he truly is if he does go down that route. And that is that Rabuka is a traitor, opportunist and big time liumuri. His political popularity will plunge. I wish Biman could see this, and grow some balls to stand up not only to Snake Rabuka but also to the weed bonking minister who absolutely drilled him unashamedly on social media. The fact that Biman has not done so has shown me that he does not have the political nous nor the cohones to lead Fiji. In fact none of this current crop whether they are sitting in govt or opposition have the required ethical capacity to lead Fiji. This is the biggest shame. Because if none of them are fit to lead, then who can lead us post 2026? Slim pickings if ya ask me.
Well put Graham. And burnt toast at that.
I think we need an iTaukei finance minister simply because they have greater financial smarts and more importantly they will be assisted by God. The prayers and fasting will help a great deal.
What is more, people fo Fiji will be more accepting of what he or she does.
I believe Lynda Tabuya ticks all the boxes for this role!!!!
Please do not give the role to Manoa.
Or what is another idea is that the PM should pick a chief from the GCC to do that role. Such a person will have mana and the support of the Vanua and God of course. We all know that the GCC is full of people with a lot of wisdom.
Lynda Tabuya is a lying, cheating, shameless excuse for a human being. She is unfit to lead anything in government. She fled the USA with her family because they were selling fake products and they owed millions of dollars to people. Is that the person you want to lead the finances of govt? You might as well throw in some hookers as well coz thats what Lynda is. Shes a prostitute to the highest bidder and a sucker for weed, Jack D and Naitasiri D
But the people of Fiji love the prostitute!
They love a dickhead dinosaur from 37 years ago to be their PM. He is their true saviour.
They love anyone who is iTaukei in poistions of power. It does not matter if they are bonking and weed smoking dickheads. As long as it is not a vulagi.
So replacing Biman with an iTaukei – whether a prostitute, a dickhead or a wife basher or child abuser will bring a lot of nuance to the finance ministry. All of Fiji’s problems will be solved as God is on the side of the iTaukei. What is more, iTaukei have all the solutions to problems and the iTaukei are the only ones practicing true Christianity in the whole world. They understand the principles of the Holy Book and the Holy Land more than anyone else. Just ask them.
This is problematic issue we have here in Fiji. We over respect those in authority. Where’s the electorate on this? We have a lot of loud voices when it comes to other matters of National interests, but when it comes to holding these dishonest politicians to account, we suddenly bow the head and curtesy!! What idiocy!! Come on Fiji, let’s raise the voices in the public arena and let’s get the concerns raised in the appropriate places. Until then, and no offence meant to Grubsheet and GD, if this is the only platform that we feel comfortable sharing our views, then we possibly won’t achieve much. Yes, it’s a big ask but, enough stones in a container will surely attract someone’s attention.
I wasted my vote on this textbook professor twice. Not anymore come 2026.
If a man keeps breaking wind in a small car he should not be surprised if the other occupants ask him to get out
In light of Fiji Leaks disclosures of Biman’s alleged failure to declare in the past 3 elections that his wife is a trustee of the Global Girmit Institute to which he gave public money without calling tenders, he should be charged by FICAC for being in breach of the Political Parties Act.
We await with anticipation.