# SNAKE NUMBER TWO. MANOA KAMIKAMICA

It is a national tragedy that the person regarded as the putative successor to Sitiveni Rabuka as People’s Alliance leader and prime minister, Manoa Kamikamica, appears to be as self-serving as the present incumbent.

Beyond his beatific smile, there is nothing sweet about Kamikamica – the meaning of his surname in iTaukei. Indeed he is showing all the signs of being Snake Number Two in the government after Snake Number One – reptilian con-men and opportunists who slither through the corridors of power wheeling and dealing in their own self interests and have no idea about proper conduct, transparency and accountability.

Grubsheet had high hopes for Manoa Kamikamica given my family’s life-long connection with his own. My late father, the Rev Peter Davis, was a close friend of Manoa’s father, Josevata Kamikamica, the former civil servant and politician who many believe was the best prime minister Fiji never had.

Indeed my father urged me to do everything possible as a journalist to steer and promote Manoa to national leadership. Two decades ago, I specifically urged him when he was at Air Pacific (now Fiji Airways) to abandon his business career and enter politics. Sadly he has been a big disappointment, showing none of the integrity for which his father, Jo, was famous in national life.

The first shock was when Manoa Kamikamica supported the unconscionable pay increases that MPs awarded themselves last May, making the risible claim that our politicians would “work harder if they were paid more”. Seriously. Anyone who seeks the trust of the Fijian people to work on their behalf ought to be working as hard as they can without any regard for money. The 138 per cent average increases in pay and perks that our MPs gave themselves were disgraceful when more than half the country lives in poverty. And for Kamikamica to try to justify them by saying it was an incentive for him to work harder was outrageous.

That was followed by another personal howler – Manoa Kamikamica not only falling foul of the nation’s electoral laws and being referred to FICAC but actually interfering in the process. He went up to FICAC for a meeting with the deposed former assistant commissioner, Francis Puleiwai, at which he raised his own case in a manner that she says was highly inappropriate and confronting.

Kamikamica used his power as Deputy Prime Minister to do something no other citizen would be able to do – raise his own corruption investigation face-to-face with the corruption watchdog. And however much he subsequently tried to portray his encounter with Francis Puleiwai as innocuous, it was grossly out of line. In itself – as far as Grubsheet is concerned – it disqualifies Kamikamica from high office. Why? Because of his obvious contempt for what is appropriate and his disregard for proper process in our institutions of state. If he is doing that now, imagine the liberties he would take as prime minister?

Now, Manoa Kamikamica is way out of line again in his public comments in the wake of the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry Report into the “rotten circumstances” (Rabuka’s words) of the Barbara Malimali’s appointment as FICAC Commissioner.

Let’s get this straight. Manoa Kamikamica was one of a number of Coalition ministers who were the subject of FICAC investigations when Barbara Malimali was parachuted into the corruption watchdog over Francis Puleiwai’s head to shut them down. And on the very day that Kamkamica’s fellow Deputy Prime Minister, Biman Prasad, was about to be charged by Puleiwai with abuse of office for allegedly making a false declaration to the Elections Office.

Manoa Kamikamica gave evidence at the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry and according to people who were there, was decidedly less than convincing. Indeed, rumour has it that he receives an adverse mention in Justice Ashton-Lewis’s Report which the Prime Minister has decided to suppress after raising the expectations of the nation that it would be made public.

The Report also reportedly recommends the removal of Barbara Malimali as FICAC Commissioner and the reinstatement of Francis Puleiwai. And it reportedly recommends that the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, be suspended for misbehaviour and put before a panel of judges to decide his fate, as the Constitution stipulates.

You’d think that under the circumstances, Manoa Kamikamica would have the grace and intelligence to keep his mouth shut while all this plays out. But you’d be wrong. At the weekend, he made the following extraordinary public intervention in the Fiji Sun amid the furore over the suppression of the COI Report that again underlines his unsuitability for high office.

For God’s sake, Manoa, why are you publicly backing Barbara Malimali when the COI reportedly recommends her removal? Have you no respect for the judicial process and the findings of the Judge? And how can you possibly “trust the integrity of the JSC, headed by Salesi Temo”, when the COI reportedly recommends Temo’s suspension for misbehaviour in telling Francis Puleiwai that no court in Fiji would hear any case she laid?

Kamikamica is a disgrace who must never be allowed to lead the nation and is unfit to even continue in the parliament after the next election. Because he is not a person of integrity who can be relied on to defend the nation’s institutions and put the interests of the Fijian people before his own.

First, the truth in today’s Fiji Sun from Unity leader, Savenaca Narube, about the government’s squalid efforts to suppress the COI’s findings, including the Prime Minister’s laughable assertion that they are being referred to FICAC instead of being made public when Barbara Malimali is still the FICAC Commissioner.

Imagine. The corruption watchdog who a judge finds should be removed gets to investigate herself as well as her political kai vata. As the old saying goes: Only in Fiji, eh?

Sitiveni Rabuka and Manoa Kamikamica think the rest of us are stupid. But as Narube says, they are guilty of a “cover-up of mammoth proportions” and the current “rot in high places” means that the “people’s interests are swept aside”.

Yes, Rabuka, Kamikamica and the rest of their miserable gang of sleazebags can “never again be trusted”. They have betrayed the Fijian people and Savenaca Narube and other opposition politicians will hound them all the way to election day.

Here’s the full front page article in Saturday’s Fiji Sun in which Kamikamica makes his outrageous comments.

Some of the public response in the mainstream media thus far.

And a flashback to Manoa Kamikamica’s other howlers.

# WHY MANOA KAMIKAMICA IS UNFIT TO LEAD

# MANOA KAMIKAMICA’S SUBTLE BRAND OF INTIMIDATION (UPDATED THURS PM)

# MANOA KAMIKAMICA LAUNCHES A SCATHING ATTACK ON GRUBSHEET IN THE LATEST SIGN THAT THE GOLD ROLEX SAGA ISN’T GOING AWAY (UPDATED MON AM)