The government has declared a national emergency over the HIV explosion that we are told today now threatens entire iTaukei communities in the vanua. That’s right. So many HIV infections, even among babies, that it poses an existential threat to their survival.
The government has called a special sitting of the parliament next week. But it’s NOT to discuss the looming national catastrophe of mass deaths from HIV.
It’s to consider a new constitution formulated by Siromi Turaga‘s resident white consultant – Professor Anthony Regan of the Australian National University – and try to get it passed before an election.
It’s startling in itself that the Acting Attorney General needs his hand held to revise the supreme law by a white man with instructions to produce a document that increases the power of the indigenous majority over other citizens.
Turaga’s predecessor, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, had the brain-power to do 2013 all on his own after his chosen consultant, Kenyan-born Professor Yash Ghai, came up with a draft that arguably gave more power to unelected members of civil society than elected MPs.
Yet what is genuinely grotesque is that the Coalition government is giving precedence above all else to changing the 2013 Constitution when the country faces perhaps the gravest threat to the health and well-being of its people – certainly since the COVID pandemic and perhaps not since the days of the measles epidemics a century or more ago that culled vast sections of the population.
It isn’t just the alarming extent of the HIV crisis but the complete inability of the health system to deal with it. Yet instead of making the fight against HIV the nation’s number one priority, Sitiveni Rabuka and his cabinet colleagues have made constitutional change the number one priority. As if a new constitution is going to do anything to stop the decimation of the iTaukei even if it gives them supremacy in the country.
You don’t have to take any of this from me. The nation’s top medical practitioners are openly saying the health system is beyond coping (see below). Nor is the threat to the iTaukei being overstated or exaggerated. It is coming from the mouths of the government’s own people, including the Health Minister.
And what is the Prime Minister’s response? To wander around the markets like a lost fart. These loathsome individuals at the top of government are being criminally negligent in not making the fight against HIV the nation’s top priority. Yet once again they have demonstrated that they just don’t care about the welfare of ordinary people, only their votes to enable them to gorge at the public trough at taxpayer’s expense.
What we are witnessing in Fiji is the whole-scale abandonment of any government’s principal duty, to save the lives of ordinary people, simply to satisfy the pet longings of the bejeweled elite to change the supreme law to solidify their grip on power.
It is an obscenity of the first order for which these individuals will eventually be held accountable by the Almighty but before that deserve to be held accountable by every voter. Because they are literally sacrificing the lives of babies while they willfully and deliberately turn a blind eye to this crisis.
But no ability whatsoever to cope.
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Yes, come to Fiji, where you better not have sex with a local and better not get sick. (How safe are blood stocks from HIV contamination?)
But you can rest assured that the nation’s supreme law now favours the iTaukei elite.
Good, eh?
Have a great holiday!
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Yet this is all that matters:
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Who is Professor Anthony Regan?
One of them.
Qori.
Meanwhile I have seen in the media and on social media that the Fiji media are preparing for some conference in Savusavu. Paid for by Fiji taxpayers and I believe Australian taxpayers.
Fiji media instead of reporting on HIV themselves also taking away Prime Minister to open the conference. If HIV is as serious as the medical people are saying that Fiji media coverage is inadequate.
Most of our journalists are overweight from too much free food and drink if you follow them on social media, especially Stanley Simpson, Vijay Narayan and Fred Wesley who are famous on FB. Stanley just talks about food and Suva Grammar while babies are dying of HIV. I think he owns a TV company which is getting big money from government.
Media law was removed, but I think as an observer, our media is worse than it has ever been before and I have always read the news for a long time. Besides the politicians, even the media is letting Fiji down because of very poor leadership in the media.
Priorities, priorities, priorities our leaders please!….you have to stratigise and ensure the looming crisis of HIV is averted and our people/nation is well protected for the future using the policy, education and social instruments.
Thanks GD for raising such important issues of highest priority. The constitution will not save the people. Why is it put ahead of other more serious problems confronting us? Doesn’t the leadership recognise what is important to build and sustain a nation other then self-serving interests?
Your article GD with the references is very informative and highly concerning. It raises and argues potential grave issues that Fiji can no longer afford to minimise. In 2025, Fiji recorded 2,016 new HIV diagnoses—the highest annual number since surveillance began—and 117 HIV-related deaths. Almost 94% of the new diagnoses were among iTaukei, while young people aged 20–24 represented the largest affected age group.
HIV is not an inevitable death sentence of course: with early diagnosis and effective antiretroviral treatment, people can live long and healthy lives and, after achieving an undetectable viral load, will not transmit HIV sexually. But this makes the gaps in testing, prevention, treatment access and sustained care even more unacceptable.
Unsafe injecting practices, limited access to sterile equipment and inadequate harm-reduction services have been identified as major drivers of Fiji’s rapidly escalating epidemic. The Government has introduced response plans and allocated approximately $10 million in 2025–2026 and $11.9 million in 2026–2027. These are demonstrable measures, but the continuing escalation shows that announcements, committees and budget allocations have not yet produced results commensurate with the scale and urgency of the crisis.
Fiji needs transparent targets, published implementation milestones, stronger rehabilitation and harm-reduction services, widespread confidential testing, uninterrupted treatment, prevention education and clear ministerial accountability.
Meanwhile, families and our communities in Fiji are also confronting serrious issues with drugs, theft, violence, cybercrime and persistent pressure on household budgets. Police reported substantial increases in several crime categories during early 2025, including an 18% overall rise in February compared with the same month in 2024. Even where headline inflation has moderated, this does not erase the cumulative increase in the price level since 2019 or the daily financial pressures experienced by ordinary households.
Many citizens understandably feel badly let down. Positive stories are becoming harder to find, confidence is waning, and people increasingly wonder where Fiji is heading. Prayer can sustain us, but prayer must be accompanied by leadership, competence, urgency and measurable action.
The constitutional election window is already open, and the Fijian Elections Office has affirmed its readiness to conduct the election at any time before the final deadline of 6 February 2027. If the Government believes it still commands the confidence of the people especially in the current declining effectiveness from its leadership, it should seek a renewed mandate without unnecessary delay.
Fiji must not be allowed to drift towards deeper social disorder or a point from which recovery becomes immeasurably harder. Our criticism must not stigmatise the sick or vulnerable. It must hold accountable those entrusted with protecting them.
May God Bless Fiji (MGBF)
Just a thought….could the HIV ’emergency’ be used to delay the elections ?
Why not? They are looking for any excuse to do so.