Woo hoo!, as the famous cartoon character, Homer Simpson, is fond of saying. It’s a red letter day when the “citizen journalist” and fashion plate, Charlie Charters, gives Grubsheet a plug on his Facebook page. And that day has come as Charlie praises the excellent article we featured yesterday by our mutual friend, Richard Thomson, on the proposed Saweni waste recycling monstrosity.
The sting in the tail is that Charlie – who a Grubsheet reader has described as “Homer Simpson in a mumu” – has another go at Grubsheet, driving traffic to this site but again opining that I am “so reliably wrong about so many things”. Oh really?
Perhaps Homer is smarting because Grubsheet was the first to reveal the Death Certificate of the murdered Jone Vakarisi, which derailed the RFMF’s attempted cover-up that he had died of a “sudden medical episode” caused by a “pre-existing condition”.
Why have Charlie and the other Three Amigos of Suva – Richard “I have the means” Naidu and Wylie “Coyote” Clarke – been so silent on the torture and killing of Vakarisi? Nothing from Charlie, a link to Maryann Lockington from Richard Naidu on Facebook but no thundering condemnation and no statement from Wylie Clarke as President of the Fiji Law Society when the rule of law has been so blatantly violated.
Or is it that they are squirming with embarrassment that having pilloried Grubsheet for years for having gone to work for the alleged human rights abuser, Frank Bainimarama, the same thing is happening under their hero, Sitiveni Rabuka?
Whatever the reason, the Three Amigos are conducting themselves like the proverbial Three Monkeys (See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak no Evil), demonstrably trying to ignore the fact that a man was tortured and killed and the “buturaki culture” continues to thrive under the new order they support.
Homer, sorry Charlie, keeps saying that I get things wrong. I got the Jone Vakarisi murder so wrong I wound up in a front page story of The Australian newspaper. He wouldn’t have liked that.
And then there are the other stories Grubsheet “has got wrong” – like the first to break the news that the Prime Minister is appealing the Tuiqereqere judgment on the Malimali sacking; the first to reveal that Frank Bainimarama is behind the new FijiansFirst Party; Plus a whole lot of stories we have broken in these columns over the years that were way ahead of the mainstream media pack.
They include some that still haven’t seen the light of day in Fiji, like full uncensored coverage of the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry Report and the letter signed by the Prime Minister that accused Lynda Tabuya of a “sex and illicit drug scandal” and removed her as deputy leader of the People’s Alliance.
D’oh! (as Homer is also fond of saying).
We’re now watching Charlie, Richard and Wylie very closely to see whether they are finally going to have the cojones to call out the culture of extrajudicial killings they once condemned so vociferously under the “old order” but seem to be having trouble condemning under their own. Because despite the efforts of sections of the mainstream media, this is story that isn’t going away.
This is where we’re at as of this morning – “survivor stories” from the Camp that are as bad as anything two decades ago.
In sharp contrast to the Three Amigos, full-throated condemnation from the human rights watchdogs at Amnesty International…
More damning publicity for the RFMF and Fiji as a whole from the foreign media…
Blatant spin from a Coalition government facing an election, having promised better standards of governance yet carrying the same burden of human rights abuses as its predecessor.
But from the normally-voluble Three Amigos – Charlie, Richard and Wylie… silence.
—————————
And with that, I am resuming my medical leave. For the information of those of you kind enough to have left supportive messages here, my shoulder replacement has been delayed because I contracted sinusitis and they won’t do the operation until after I have fully recovered.
In the meantime, I am trying to persuade Richard Thomson to write more articles for Grubsheet, partly because of his ability and lifetime of experience in Fiji and partly to try to attract more positive mentions from Homer.
Woo hoo!
Please could we have an article about how a Fiji business can be given a tax holiday? If we could know the process of applying, who to apply to, and how to get one in these challenging times that would be really great.
Step one: point legal work in the direction of Munro Leys. Step two: lobby Richard Naidu to use his position as Chair of the Fiscal Review Committee to lobby the government on your behalf. Presto.