The Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, was making it known that he had no idea where his Deputy, Manoa Kamikamica, was going when he ran into him as “Mr Sweet” boarded the same plane at Nadi Airport on Saturday – in the PM’s case, to attend Fiji Day commemorations in Sydney. And in Kamikamica’s case, to change planes in Sydney and head for Dubai.
We are only just finding out now that Manoa Kamikamica’s final destination was, in fact, Rome to attend a gathering of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). And if you examine the following images, Rabuka’s number 2 is conducting himself very much as Fiji’s number 1 – to all intents and purposes giving the appearance of being the nation’s leader.
It all raises a number of important questions:
1/ Why did Manoa Kamikamica not inform the Prime Minister that he was leaving the country, if indeed, it came as a surprise to Sitiveni Rabuka that his deputy was representing Fiji at the FAO?
2/ Why was there no public announcement in advance that Kamikamica was to be in Rome?
3/ The Prime Minister is expressing surprise to find Kamikamica on the same plane to Sydney en route to Dubai and Rome. Was he informed but is now too gaga to remember? Or did his Deputy keep it secret?
4/ Why did the Prime Minister confirm in a subsequent interview with the Fiji Times that he and six other ministers (it was actually seven counting Ifereimi Vasu) were absent from Fiji for the Independence Day weekend and fail to mention that Kamikamica was also absent on his way to Rome?
5/ Why did it take Grubsheet’s story yesterday recounting Caesar’s surprise that Brutus had left the country without telling him for the following Facebook posting to subsequently appear?
6/ Why would Manoa Kamikamica as Trade Minister be going to an agricultural function at FAO headquarters in Rome when he is not the Agriculture Minister? Even if there were discussions covering small to medium businesses under his portfolio, agriculture has its own specialist portfolio and own minister, Tomasi Tunabuna, for whom food security is a central responsibility.
7/ Why is Kamikamica giving all the appearances of being Fiji’s leader in waiting when he is being investigated by FICAC on the recommendation of the Supreme Court Commission of Inquiry for allegedly interfering in a FICAC investigation into a fellow People’s Alliance minister, Kalaveti Ravu?
8/ Were UN officials informed in advance of this visit of these grave allegations against their honoured guest. who two former ministers have sworn on oath offered to use his friendship with Barbara Malimali to halt a corruption investigation into Ravu.
9/ When will either Julius Caesar or Brutus give the Fijian people an explanation as to why Brutus went to Rome reportedly without Caesar’s knowledge and at a time when it is an open secret that he is campaigning behind the scenes to remove Caesar and take the leadership prize for himself?
10/ When will the Rabuka government under its new Minister for Information, Lynda Tabuya, finally get its act together and inform the Fijian people precisely what is actually going on with these overseas trips, including her own to Australia?
There is only one plausible explanation for this astonishing saga in which the PM is being deprived of knowledge of the activities of his Deputy – that a fierce leadership struggle is playing out behind the scenes unbeknownst to the Fijian people.
Manoa Kamikamica is making a desperate last-ditch attempt to claim the leadership as rumours swirl that he is about to be charged by FICAC after being adversely named in the CoI Report into the Malimali affair. And he has somehow persuaded the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations that he is still Sitiveni Rabuka’s putative successor and deserves to be treated as such.
This whole episode is a farce and the most glaring example thus far of the dysfunction in the Coalition government and the splintering into factions of its dominant party, the People’s Alliance, one of them headed by Manoa Kamikamica.
In the interests of stability in the country, and especially the business community and Fiji’s exporters, this simply cannot go on. Kamikamica should stand aside until the allegations against him have been tested and resolved. And if he declines to do so, the Prime Minister should remove him from the ministry without delay.
All the appearances of Manoa Kamikamica being fêted as Fiji’s leader when he is facing allegations of serious criminal conduct.
———————-
A brief synopsis of the story of Brutus and Caesar (courtesy of Wikipedia).
Brutus was a well meaning technocrat, Caesar’s most trusted. Manoa may be well meaning, in his own dystopian way, as long as he is the Messiah leading that warped world, and is certainly not the trusted servant of our sorry version of Julius Caesar. When he had the chance to end the nation’s misery from Julius Caesar’s erratic reign, he hesitated and in so doing wrote himself out of history,
No, not et tu Brutus, MK is more a Cassius, that dangerous man with a not so lean and hungry look. Cassius was known for his misinterpretation of events on the battlefield and signifies his tragic end after a loss to Mark Antony and Octavian’s forces.
Fiji awaits the new Mark Antony.
I want Fiji Indians to become extinct.
I would much prefer for you and those like you to become extinct.