Manoa Kamikamica will be in despair at the Prime Minister’s announcement that he intends to contest the 2026 election – assuming there isn’t one before that – because his own leadership aspirations have been scuttled by the old man for the foreseeable future.
Sitiveni Rabuka turned 76 on Friday and will be 78 when the next election comes around. He will be 82 if he serves a full four-year term in the next parliament until 2030. And while he could stand down during that term in an orderly transfer of power within the People’s Alliance, the history of these things is that they are usually more messy than orderly. Old men surrender power very reluctantly even when everyone else can see that it is time for them to go, as we’ve just seen with Jo Biden in the US.
Grubsheet has long reported that Manoa Kamikamica wanted to lead the PAP into the last election and influential voices in the party argued that generational change was preferable to the political baggage Rabuka had carried with him since 1987. But Kamikamica was a political unknown. And harder heads in the party knew that he had no chance in a head-to-head contest with Frank Bainimarama and railroaded Rambo through. It was the right choice. Because had Kamikamica led the PAP into the 2022 election, Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum – for better or worse – would still be in power.
Manoa Kamikamica is 57. So he will now be well into his 60s before he has a realistic chance of getting the top job. He arguably has plenty of time in terms of age but perhaps not in terms of opportunity. The Minister for Bonking and Weed, Lynda Tabuya, still harbours the fantasy that she will be the next prime minister. And as we’ve seen in recent months, the Great Temptress has the fight in her to keep pressing her ambitions against all the odds for other mortals.
Unlike the impatient Manoa, Lynda is more likely to welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that he will be going nowhere fast simply because it gives her more time for Fijian voters – with their notoriously short memories – to forget her antics in Room 233. Fancy a weed-addled sex bomb as your next PM, Fiji? Well, we already have a sex bomb without the weed in Rambo so anything is possible in local politics. And if Lynda can keep on keeping the sordid details of her “sexy time” romp with Aseri Radrodro a year ago out of the mainstream media (and get 233 as her election number?) anything is possible.
For now, Kamikamica and Tabuya have forged something of a political double act with their co-chairing of the government’s Task Force on Porn. Kamikamica has also expressed public support for Tabuya’s parliamentary emoluments increases and her unconscionable campaign to reintroduce the death penalty for the Mr Bigs of the drug trade. But history also tells us that such alliances are alliances of convenience for the short-term and last only until a leadership contest in which there can ever only be one winner.
Will it be the kalavata couple of Manoa Kamikamica and his influential wife, Ann Kaukamea Kamikamica– who has already attracted controversy for allegedly taking part in high-level government meetings – or Lynda Tabuya and her much more controversial husband, Rob Semaan – the co-owner of Fiji’s largest building company, Pacific Building Solutions, who with his colourful and less-than-faithful wife, fled America owing creditors more than $F100-million from their failed fat-busting empire? As the old saying goes, only time will tell. But for the moment Sitiveni Rabuka is going nowhere, unless the Fijian people kick the whole lot of them out whenever a fresh election is held.
A gerontocracy is the word for a country ruled by old people. And while we aren’t yet a complete gerontocracy in Fiji, it’s striking that two of the main contestants in 2026 will definitely be old, assuming they last the distance – Sitiveni Rabuka at 78 and the Labour Party’s sole warhorse, Mahendra Chaudhry, who will be even older at 84. Who are the “new generation” of leaders? Well for the moment in the PAP, Manoa and Lynda are the stand-outs. Unless Rambo’s nephew, Filimoni Vosarogo, can shake off three findings of professional misconduct as a lawyer and make it a trio of leadership contenders. (No wonder Siti wants to continue)
For Grubsheet, the more disturbing story at the weekend wasn’t the Prime Minister’s plan to soldier on but what a People’s Alliance absolute victory in 2026 might look like for the country. Sitiveni Rabuka told the party that the PAP came to office but not to power at the 2022 election in that it had to share that power with the NFP and SODELPA. Quote: “If we have not been able to achieve the things we as a party set out to achieve, it is because of that”.
Crikey, Fiji. These people want more power at the next election with an absolute majority to do what?
1/ They’ve already insisted that the nation’s minorities are “vulagi” – visitors – and embarked on a program of workplace ethnic cleansing in the civil service, offices of state and public enterprises.
2/ They’ve triggered an exodus of our best and brightest that senior figures in government now say has reached 130,000. “Fiji is being depopulated” is how one minister describes it.
3/ They’ve already launched a full-scale assault on the rule of law by ignoring the Constitution and installing a puppet as Acting Chief Justice whose most recent outrage has been to install a PAP stooge at the corruption watchdog, FICAC.
4/ Up to nine government ministers who were actively under investigation by that watchdog until it was shot have been spared, including a Deputy Prime Minister, Biman Prasad, who was about to be charged with making a false election declaration.
5/ They keep promising billions of dollars of new investment that no-one can see while breaking their election promise to reduce the national debt and taking it well beyond $10-billion.
6/ The country is drug-riddled and increasing drug-addled, with some police reportedly even on the payroll of traffickers to steal drugs from other traffickers.
7/ The Minister for Women and Children is pronounced guilty by her own party of being a drug user – “plenty of weed here” – yet remains in the cabinet and a leadership contender.
8/ And we have her “brutal” lover, a domestic violence abuser, as Minister for Education when domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse is at an all-time high. (Grubsheet readers will undoubtedly think of more but that’s sufficient for now to make the point)
For God’s sake, Prime Minister. What more power do you need? And to do what?
Power couples. Your choice, Fiji.
That deceptive smile on that last photo should qualify Lynda to play an evil queen in a horror movie. Oops, she is already playing that.
Everytime I read a post about MK and his wife, I am reminded of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (a Scottish General). Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself.
In the most literal sense, one can only watch and wonder (and shudder) what Lady Kamikamica is telling General Kamikamica about his ascension to the throne and how to get it.
If SLR is any wiser he will never “spend the night at Macbeth’s castle” and be very wary around the Lady and General Kamikamica.
GD-Leadership issues aside, it would be interesting to see what issues any current member of government will be bold enough to face the people on and campaign about given their current scorecard. I feel the public is more informed these days then in the past. The promises from 2022 mostly remain that and new policy developments have been skewed towards few. Lets see who has the gall to seek peoples trust when very little has been given when so much more were expected.
Abu Jamin: the current lot will not only be bold enough come electioneering season, the electorate will embace the current lot at the polls.
Why, one might ask? They will play the race card, the boogie man of land and promises of great prosperity and wealth.
Simples.
For Biman at least he doesn’t hide what he wants. In obvious reference to Chaudhry he told a meeting of Suva Rotary last week that one of his loudest critics won’t be around for too long.
This is completely unprecedented in civilised discourse for a politician to publically issue a death wish on one of his detractors.
Biman should be called to account by the Prime Minister. Only God calls, we lesser mortals have no right to usurp his right and wish death on our enemies.
Such is the nature of this fanatic. The sooner he is charged and brought to Court to answer charges for non disclosures under the Political Parties Act the better for Fiji.
I wanna take a dump on Sitiveni’s face.