Lynda Tabuya has publicly accused Biman Prasad of lying. She has publicly accused him of trying to do a deal with FijiFirst behind the Coalition’s back. She has ruined his budget strategy by requiring him, at the last minute, to find an extra $8.1-million for increased salaries and benefits for the nation’s pampered MPs. She has dragged the NFP’s reputation through the mud, along with the rest of the Coalition, with her scandalous drug-fuelled sexcapade with Aseri Radrodro in Room 233 of the Windsor Hotel. But now Biman says he has “no fight” with her after she launched easily the most outrageous attack on a political leader by a minister in the same government in the entire sweep of Fijian history.
We asked yesterday how much humiliation is the NFP leader prepared to take? How many more shit sandwiches are his Coalition partners going to force-feed him in public before he gags and says enough is enough? The answer, it seems, is as many as it takes to placate them and keep Biman Prasad in government.
Biman is the Coalition’s lapdog – the tame Kai Idia that a moral vacuum like Lynda Tabuya can hurl insults at with impunity, who Sitiveni Rabuka can threaten to “take action” against and call his position into question just because he refused to vote for an obscene, unconscionable outrage. And no matter how many taunts and insults come his way, little Baimaan comes rushing up, tail wagging, to have his tummy tickled by the Queen of Hearts or happily poses with Sitiveni Rabuka grinning from ear to ear to save their collective bacon.
What’s that dribbling out of the side of the little doggy’s mouth? The remnants of the latest shit sandwich he has just eaten. He is the tame enabler and appeaser of a bunch of economic savages who have raided the piggy bank he presides over as Finance Minister to enrich themselves further when a third of the nation struggles to put food on the table. How else can you describe someone who says there is “no conflict” when they have humiliated him to the point that his own credibility has been shredded? As Grubsheet observed yesterday, they can pin him over a barrel and shake the saqamoli out of his pockets and he still grins from ear to ear saying “no problem”.
No-one gives a damn if Biman Prasad the man ( though that’s an open question ) wants to play puppy dog with his abusers. But the money in question isn’t his. It belongs to the Fijian people. And they have a right to expect that he does the job he is paid to do as Finance Minister and spend it judiciously and wisely. Not to featherbed the nests of a bunch a fat cats who don’t deserve it.
Biman Prasad got a lot of kudos last week for voting against the emoluments package. But what has happened since? He has simply caved in and accepted the package being bulldozed through by the economic savages. He has remained silent while Sitiveni Rabuka and Lynda Tabuya lied that the measures weren’t yet law when even as they spoke, they were published in the Government Gazette and became law. And now he happily poses with those who have humiliated him, wrecked his budget strategy and have been so reckless that they are triggering a wages explosion in which everyone else is demanding pay rises that will wreck the spending power of ordinary Fijians through higher inflation.
What Biman Prasad doesn’t get is this: Those who voted for the NFP at the last election didn’t vote for him to enable and appease the excesses of his Coalition partners. They voted for him to keep them in check. To use his five seats in the parliament to keep the bastards honest. It has been a fundamental breach of trust to give in to them and Biman Prasad no longer has the confidence of those who voted for him to remain as NFP leader.
He remained silent when the Prime Minister said it was OK for iTaukei to call Fiji’s minorities vulagi – visitors in their own country. He remained silent when the Coalition embarked on a program of workplace ethnic cleansing in favour of the iTaukei in the civil service and offices of state. He remained silent as illegal appointments have been made to the judiciary and the ODPP and there has been a fundamental assault on the rule of law. And now he remains silent as the reckless oafs around him in government destroy what remains of his own integrity by setting out to wreck the economy.
Today’s front page image of the little puppy dog sucking up to the Queen of Hearts after what she has done to him and the government’s standing is the utter end. Pio Tikoduadua and the rest of his colleagues – who include some of the best and most genuinely honourable members of the parliament – must move against him and remove him as leader to save themselves and save a once great party from being extinguished at the next election.
It is time to put the lapdog down.
But where’s Aseri Radrodro? The SODELPA leader is also humiliated by being excluded from the “we’re united” photo call. An emperor with no clothes.
The Coalition is “strong” after this? Part of what Lynda Tabuya said about Biman Prasad last week ( the full version in our previous story)
Now the “lying” little puppy dog has “no fight” with Lynda Tabuya. How brutal does she have to be with him before he bites back?
It isn’t about him. It is his duty to the country to do so.
A lesson in principle from a politician from Viti Makawa. Before the rot set in.
As the Labour Party reminds us, Charles Walker did what Biman Prasad refuses to do. Resign rather than accept a pay rise for MPs.
We already have the answer to that. No.
Moral dilemma? Biman Prasad doesn’t have them.
And as the fat cats get their cream, here’s what ordinary people are now having to pay for butter. As inflation soars because of our politicians’ economic recklessness, this is a just the start.
Davis,
Professor Biman is a man of principle while your lady in RED is full of sexual brutality and self-interest with no respect to the poor people of the Fijian community, that is the difference…the Coalition Government will survive until the next GE but the Fijians need to change the leadership, the next PM should be a Fijian of Indo-Fijian blood…Vinaka
Paula Raqeukai stubbornly sticks by his former USP lecturer Biman Prasad insisting that he is a principled man. I hope Paula reads the example of the late Charlie Walker included in GD’s current post? He quit rather than submit to pressure from his PM to include civil servants pay rise in the budget.
Walker’s principled position was that the country can’t afford the pay rise.
Mr Raqeukai as a learned man. The question Is like to ask him is this, it’s an axiom of economics that all economies face real constraints.
Fiji is no exception. The RBF’s recent quarterly report confirms it. If your hero economist were a principled man, Paula as you say, what would you expect him to do at this time?
Ignore the most basic axiom of his profession?
For if he “finds-the-money@ as he has reportedly been instructed to do he would be doing just that.
Now is that the action of a principled man?
The answer is clearly a resounding, No.
“Why you do me like that, Lynda? How about we just make out..I mean… make up!”
Lenora should be the leader of NFP. Biman is a lapdog.
Careful what you wish for. It does not take much for the entire lot to turn on a dime.
Biman is the epitome of weakness and will go down in history as NFP’s worst, most ineffective leader. We thought he was finally showing some spine when he voted against the pay rise but it seems that too was another political ploy of some sort to perhaps regain lost mileage for NFP – I don’t know. In any case, it is shocking to see how much of a pushover he is.
Lynda has her hand in Bimans pudding. If he pulls away, he’s bound to lose.
It’s self serving behavior rather than anything else. Let’s wait and see which of his friends benefit in the next budget and if the minimum wage earners can get that 50 cent raise that will send them over the moon.
It’s possible that given the decisions Biman has already taken and the potential various inquiries he’s in self preservation mode. He knows what happens now if he doesn’t play ball with Lynda.
Or let Kalavo play the ball. Happy ending all around. And no GD, baimaan does not wag his puppy dog tail. Rather his tail is used to wag him!
Dear Graham, could you please include a facebook link on your stories so that we can easily share these to facebook? 🙂
I cannot do this myself because I am not on Facebook. But you can by posting the link to a Grubsheet story on your own Facebook page eg. for this morning’s story the link is: https://www.grubsheet.com.au/give-me-a-hug-baimaan-rolls-over-for-the-queen-of-tarts/
You can send the story in a draft email and the link will appear. Just copy. Then go to Facebook and paste it. Presto.
“If you can’t beat them, join them”.
Baiman Prasad is the girmityan descendant of those who would sell their own to get a better deal from the colonial masters. He took the easy way out in life, BA in economics is the easiest degree one get from a university. I mean it isn’t engineering is it. Get most you can out from minimum effort is his demonstrated motto.
If you had a more principled, competent yet highly argumentative motor mouth like Chaudhry, this would have been all over last week. If not by resignation, by being sacked or by a military coup. Simply because he did not know the art of leading and working in collaboration. Chaudhry knew how to rub the masses the wrong way. It remains to be seen whether he has improved on this. The field is opening wide for him to get back in parliament.
I am hoping against hope that Baiman has a strategy rolled up in his sleeves. That he doesn’t want to come down to Lynda’s level of politics. That he is better being in the coalition to make a difference than being outside it.
While Sitiveni “ I gave myself the authority to do the coup” is a self professed lifelong apologist, maybe, just maybe Baiman is a discreet smiling assassin yet to reveal himself and his game plan.
“…… is the girmityan descendant of those who would sell their own to get a better deal from the colonial masters…”. Those are Indian Christians
Really, idol worshipper ?
Baiman had one goal to become Minister for the economy even if that meant shaking hands with the devil of 87. Baiman is definitely not a smiling assassin lol. He sold his soul. He never even commented on anything vulagi related like Warids comments before the election or PMs vulagi comments after elections lol. He can not stand up to the depraved Tabuya. She will look at him and he will sit down lol.
When you’re dealing with the amount of Narcissism that entails constant manipulation and deceit, in or out of the Coalition, Baiman can make no difference. All that can be done is wait for the party to completely implode and rebuild. Strategising with those in power who keep changing the rules is impossible.
Biman’s problem is he suffers from what former Fiji Airways Employees Union president, G.P. Singh described as “Billy can syndrome.”
Biman would be the type of character in Girmit times who would take a Billy can of roti, curry and dahl and leave it at the door steps of his white overseer.
It’s a common practise in the indenture experience which gave rise to the term, to “curry favour .”
These individuals are the most despised of girmiteers.
A man who has traded his soul for power. Some of his former colleagues at USP maybe would say that he never had any soul in the first place.
Just as Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum existed to serve Voreqe, Baiman exists now to serve Rabuka. But the at is known as a “smart kaidia,” Biman, on the other hand, is regarded as the “coolie kaidia.” Some might even venture to suggest he is a “koli kaidia (dog) or errand boy.
Income inequality has exploded around the world over the last 4 decades. The transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, worldwide, has increased wealth for the 1% exponentially.
In Fiji the decision by this PAP, SODELPA, NFP govt is that it adds wealth to those at the top by taking from those at the bottom.
The only part of our world that has the ability, and power, to stand between predatory action and the rest of us has always been Government.
But when Government itself has become infected with a social rot and allows itself to be part of the economic rape culture we can only fix it by voting And if we don’t fix it that way, our system is going to collapse under the weight of its own greed.
I may or may not be around long enough for an “I told you so,” but something has to be done, and that is only one of the myriad of problems we have as a result of a feckless. self serving government.
Graham Leung is now AG .
Biman is a true “coolie”, a descendant of the Girmityas and doing as they did in the old days – just accept the abuse and the embarrassment and continue, as there was no other choice really in those days, if you wanted to survive the slavery.
The diffrence is, this is 2024. He does not have to accept the abuse and embarrassment and continue. He does not have to eat the shit sandwiches. But as a true and faithful coolie with that DNA running in his veins, he has chosen to. He has chosen self-preservation instead of standing up for what is right.
And I support his god-given right to choose to be stupid. Hundreds of thousands of other Fijians have as well. That is what makes Fiji unique!
Looking forward to your writeup about the new AG appointment.
Graham, it would seem that it’s open slather to conduct Indian bashing now on this site. I wonder why the commentators don’t talk about their own racial misgivings .
Just another day in la la land. All is hunky dory. The lapdog wags its tail to the masters with a smile to save him being sacked as DPM which would be the end of his career and end of NFP. He always wanted to be in power and for that he has sold his soul, moral conscience, self respect and worst fooled the gullible voters into believing he and his party of 5 will bring any good to the nation. Fiji will dig deeper into debt and future generations will continue to suffer and remain poor while the skilled and rich continue to migrate in huge numbers leaving Fiji into the hands of bulk of incompetent self serving old school politicians who will self enrich themselves and their families..
They all have dirt on each other and Lynda has more on each of the lecherous man in government and opposition. They will of course forgive and pretend everything is good because they all have a lot to lose.