Sitiveni Rabuka is in all sorts of trouble across a broad front – his “hands up” gesture on the front page of today’s Fiji Times a metaphor for a Prime Minister totally out of his depth and too weak politically to govern effectively.
The economic crisis triggered by events in the Middle East now includes the prospect of power cuts in Fiji and the consumer watchdog already reporting price increases of up to 35 per cent. Yet a form of madness has taken hold at the top as the Prime Minister allows himself to be wedged and bullied by Lynda Tabuya into accepting an increase in the national minimum wage from $5 an hour to $8 an hour.
Totally without cabinet approval, the Minister for Information, Environment and Climate Change has joined forces with Felix Anthony of the Fiji Trades Union Congress in describing this as a “living wage” and giving it her public support. But anyone with even the slightest knowledge of economics knows that a $3 an hour increase in the minimum wage when Fiji is already in crisis would be a “death wage”, not a living wage, with the potential to kill off the Fijian economy altogether.
Here’s what one of the nation’s most successful and respected business figures – Marc McElrath, the head of McDonalds – has told his fellow members of the Nadi Chamber of Commerce.
Yet instead of repudiating Lynda Tabuya and sacking her for her appalling breach of cabinet solidarity in siding with the unions against the government, the Prime Minister has willfully left open the possibility of the $8 an hour being implemented.
It is a shocking betrayal of leadership and a sign of just how much the Coalition has lost the plot at the very time when the nation needs firm leadership and discipline. We know that Sitiveni Rabuka has always been in Lynda Tabuya’s thrall. But let’s be very clear about how perceptions of his own leadership are being deliberately destroyed for her own political benefit.
- Tabuya is siding with the unions as a deliberate ploy to increase her own political stocks in advance of the election.
- She knows she is embarrassing her own leader, openly boasting that her stance “could get her sacked from the cabinet” but knowing that the Prime Minister is too weak to do so.
- Tabuya has a history of reckless economic conduct. Who can forget that her astonishing answer to Fiji’s problems was to urge the government to print more money. And then, of course, she led the reckless and destructive decision by the nation’s MPs to award themselves pay increases averaging 138-per cent.
- Now she has abandoned the government, if not in name but through her outrageous conduct in breaking cabinet solidarity and giving Rabuka the two-finger salute.
- It is rank populism of the worst kind for her own selfish political purposes yet she knows she has the Prime Minister and her fellow ministers over a barrel.
This whole sorry farce must be brought to an end with a public declaration by the PM that an $8 an hour minimum wage would be economic suicide for the nation and political suicide for the government as a whole. But will he do it? Of course not.
The nation has never been under greater threat than we are now but this is a government completely unable to govern, whether it is sensibly managing the economy, fulfilling its promises such as holding the local government elections and coping with the law and order breakdown and the grave threat this now poses to Fiji’s national security.
Another recent front page ought to be sending a shiver through government ranks and the wider community – the prospect of a military takeover if the Coalition can’t arrest the nation’s downward slide, including the drugs crisis which has reached existential levels.
Rumours are rife of active discussions within the RFMF about seizing power under Section 131 of the Constitution, which mandates the military to protect the well-being of every Fijian. If the RFMF Commander, Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai, is said to be prevaricating, the same is not true of some of those around him. (Assuming, of course, that these reports are accurate).
Yet one thing seems certain. Those who have sounded a warning before and have the ability and the constitutional power to act in extremis aren’t going to allow the nation to fall any further than it has under this government. We are in dangerous waters, with no sign of a breakthrough in the Middle East and the prospect of much more economic hardship and an even further breakdown of law and order.
The Prime Minister urgently needs to take control or face the prospect of losing control. As Lynda Tabuya’s conduct shows, Rabuka’s cabinet is unraveling and any semblance of discipline is giving way to ministers like Tabuya heading for the lifeboats and effectively taunting the Prime Minister to sack her.
It is high time he obliges.
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An important sidebar to this story – another comment by the head of McDonalds that very much appears to bust open the myth of an absence of jobs for Fijian young people.
According to Marc McElrath, he has plenty of jobs that can’t be filled because young people want to pick and choose their hours and won’t commit to full time employment. Let’s see what the official reaction is to this.
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Madness has well and truly taken hold. It cannot be allowed to continue.
Congratulations to all the traitors for supporting and cheering the genocidal, sex abusing torturers, apartheid, Christian-hating nutty-yahoo’s (Netanyahu’s) ill-conceived war with the mullahs.
The mullahs are winning the war by not losing – and as with any 5000-year-old civilization- they chose fight to the death.
Strange rho, the Fijian lost tribe have so far not offered to join the war to fight for their Nutty-yahoo hero.
The total failure to realize the consequences and this misplaced patriotism for another country is coming home to roost.
This is demonstrated by rising fuel prices, proposed rolling power blackouts, increased electricity tariffs, stagflation, shrinkflation/rising food prices, and resulting follow-on social ills.
Not only do the mullahs have energy resources, but they also have -surprise, surprise – qoliqoli rights over the Strait, that has proved to be a not so straightforward problem. Who woulda thunk?
Somehow, Nutty-yahoo’s military experts and the Lunatic-in-Chief’s experts seem to have been caught off guard because the enemy–are you ready? — fought back. Who woulda thunk?
So now, the Lunatic-in-Chief is threatening to resume bombing the mullahs until access to the Strait returns to how it was before the Lunatic-in-Chief started bombing the mullahs.
A quick note to all who think the Fijian electorate will vote for change of government: we fail to realize the latest episode of dysfunction in government (Linduh & the Snake) simply highlight how much more the electorate arrogance and ignorance has gotten exponentially worse from an already disgusting level.
Notice the people’s silence.
And don’t be surprised when the electorate decides in 2026 to continue to opt for more decline.
This 8.00 an hour minimum wage is a cheap vote buying stunt for individuals desperate to cling on to their perks. This needs to be read in conjunction with the proposed IR changes and you can see what this will do to business.
The price hikes from fuel and supply chain-driven inflation together with wage inflation will impact all sectors of the economy, especially tourism, outsourcing, manufacturing such as garment industries.
There is no mention or even a cursory look at productivity in any of this and there is no credible economics based debates in any of the local media.
Pay increases much better backed up with productivity gains.
God help the SME or those business who don’t benefit from government procurement or projects such as the proposed VUDA eye sore.
And you are right; this is coming from a minister who’s economic solutions include printing currency, eating a toy aeroplane or allegedly leaving investors out of pocket to a tune of millions in the US.
Yes, Miss Brutality needs to be fired but alas Mr “I was not aware” remains in the abyss.
I agree with the McDonalds owner!
A rise in the basic wage from $5 to $8 is a 60% increase! How many employers can meet this? And if they do it would mean less employment and a price hike. Then of course there would also be a corresponding FNPF contribution increase.
The only group in Fiji to have such a wage rise were the members of parliament and who led that charge? The one and only Lynda Tabuya!
Inflation in Fiji is now at 1.3% and a pay rise of this magnitude would flow through to inflation within weeks.
Then of course Government wage costs would go up as employees below the increase would need to be compensated. Government operating costs have already contributed to the debt levels and this will only rise even with a rise in VAT collections.
No country in the world would contemplate a 60% rise in its basic wage. No one!
A bit rich coming from her while her husband employs hundreds of Bangladeshis in Fiji and denies them the usual employment rights and benefits. It says something when a couple who fled the US owing millions makes it to be a Minister of Government in Fiji.
Fiji Government = Scammers.
And the US want to blacklist Fiji because of Grace Road.
Who does more for Fijians – Grace Road or Linda Tabya?
Hands up and pants down. Let’s go Fiji, let’s see the economic geniuses dig themselves out of this hole. BTW the Ministry of Education can’t pay their bills left right and centre. I hope someone can dig into the incompetency that’s happening there together with the incompetency across the board.
I reckon she is pegging him whilst she has him over the barrel.
Ewwwww!
CAN’T RUN A BBQ STALL …want to run the Country. DVC.
I thought only Fiji media self censor. Grub shit While claiming to be the paragraph of free speech has censored a post in defence of Biman Prasad. Deep down inside GD is envious and scared of Biman.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if this “paragraph of free speech” has censored anything you have submitted, please submit it again and I will publish it.
I am not “envious and scared of Biman”. I just think he is a person bereft of integrity who has betrayed NFP voters and is destined for the political scrapheap. Which is grounds for neither envy nor fear.
@lamusona — now is a good time to ask karia motar lal batti doghla baiman if he is envious of himself right now.
Since his stay application got thrown at his face.