The bellowing Canadian Moose, Dr Marc Edge, has spluttered back into life after a period of self-imposed hibernation with yet another of his perennial attacks on Grubsheet and our fellow blogger, Professor Crosbie Walsh. The former Head of Journalism at USP – who was sacked for misconduct – claims that Croz and I have gone quiet because we have “outlived our usefulness to the regime”. No, Marc, in my own case, I’ve gone quiet primarily because my work is done.
Everything that I set out to achieve when I started Grubsheet at the beginning of 2011 and began highlighting the Bainimarama revolution’s achievements has been accomplished. Fiji has a new Constitution that declares everyone equal and everyone a Fijian, is on course to become a genuine democracy next year, gains ever more international support, is enjoying a period of solid economic growth and has resumed its regional leadership. That was and remains my agenda. I’ve also had the immense satisfaction in these columns of having shone a light on your own disgraceful behaviour at USP, a campaign on behalf of your student victims and against your constant manipulation of the truth that eventually saw you banished from the University for good. Deprived of your work permit, you were also obliged to leave Fiji, your reputation in tatters and in the dead of night.
What a pathetic and deluded figure you present in exile at 23,000 Dyke Road. You continue to perpetuate the lie on the closed Facebook forum, Friends of Fiji Media, that you were not sacked from USP without ever providing an alternative explanation. This lie has been accompanied by repeated threats to sue both Grubsheet and the Fiji Sun without any writ ever being issued. Well, Buddy Boy, the game is up. Because your successor at USP, Dr Ian Weber, has now confirmed to prominent members of the Fijian media what the whole of USP has known all along. That you were sacked. Yes, dismissed, removed, dumped. So can we finally put an end to this bizarre pretence of yours and move on? You are not the principled crusader for media freedom that you cast yourself to be. You are a proven liar, dubbed as such by Professor David Robie, the man you described yourself as the most respected media academic in the South Pacific.
Even your professed campaign for the freedom of the Fijian media is a sham. The Fijian media is officially free. That freedom has been guaranteed by the 2013 Constitution since it was promulgated on September the 6th. A free media, along with freedom of speech, expression and assembly. If certain members of the Fijian media still feel constrained, let them come out and say so. But certainly both the Editor of the Fiji Times, Fred Wesley, and the doyen of radio journalists, Vijay Narayan, both said publicly on a recent Close-Up program on Fiji TV that any previous restrictions have been lifted and neither feel constrained in any way. Who are we to believe? You or them? The exiled, bellowing moose or two of the most respected names in Fijian journalism?
This is not to say that some elements in the Fijian media may be self censoring. But that is for them to explain – to tell the Fijian public why, even with a Constitutional guarantee, they baulk at telling the complete story. Frankly, it’s high time for these journalists to step boldly up to the crease and hit a few runs rather than complain in whispered asides that the game is rigged. It’s time for them to test their Constitutional right.
As things stand, the 961 “Friends of Fiji Media” hide behind a closed Facebook Forum. It is the antithesis of freedom of expression yet it is totally self imposed. They have not been forced behind a firewall by any act of Government oppression. They choose to deliberate in private because they apparently like it that way, seemingly bereft of the courage of their convictions to engage in open debate. This is Marc Edge’s natural habitat and where he is most comfortable. Not a genuine crusader for media freedom but someone waging a personal vendetta – a poisoned little man with a gargantuan ego who victimised some of his students, waged war on a clutch of highly respected academics, was the subject of several internal inquires at USP and was then removed. He can sit in his personal Canadian wasteland bellowing all he likes but that is the simple, unvarnished truth.
Mark, you’ve learnt your lesson so please mature up and move on. This is an opportune time to reflect because we can look upon the life and the messages of the great Nelson Mandela and learn a thing or two from him. And why not PIk Botha (who in fact should have been executed) despite being the jailer, was gracious enough to be part of the new South Africa.
There are lessons to be learnt. A majority of the folks I know are good and forgiving people who love life and would like the nation to move forward.
Having said that, our humbleness should not be take as weakness as we will fight if someone comes down and imposes his will on us.
Kind Regards
Old codger Marc Edge is back to ‘liven’ up our lives and add some xmas ‘cheer’ to our mundane existence.
Graham, good to read the truth!
Are you still working for Qorvis?
I saw you, in tow, with our learned A-G and a European woman in a Suva restaurant?
Are you now doing full-time work for our Government?
Take care from the loose Canadian moose!
“Taxpayer”, yes, I continue to work for Qorvis on their Fijian account, though at the time of writing I am in Australia. I come and go. But I certainly enjoy my time in Suva and get immense satisfaction at seeing the transformation of both the capital and the country’s fortunes. Come up and say hello if you see me again.
Vinaka Graham
Definitely, will do! Long live new Fiji
Bula Graham,
Immaterial of the Constitution we still need this forum few forums have stood up to the likes of Coup 4.5 & other garbage sites! As for Mark he has an elevated sense of importance and the less written of him on this site the better. We have more important issues to discuss especially since elections is just around the corner for us, so a shortened time lapses between articles would be sincerely appreciated to be honest.
O yau tale Graham next time get some other photo to use the photo of a moose to compare Mark is an insult to the moose association!
I just looked up Dr Webber – he has no experience of the journalism world – so how the hell he got the job, ISA!
Dr Ian Weber’s Experience
Coordinator, Media & Journalism
University of the South Pacific
Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry
February 2013 – Present (11 months) Suva, Fiji
Teacher-Trainer Vocational Pedagogy
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
Government Agency; 10,001+ employees; International Trade and Development industry
August 2012 – January 2013 (6 months) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Providing train-the-trainer instruction in vocational pedagogy.
Director, Senior Instructional Designer, Course Writer
Myuniskills
E-Learning industry
February 2006 – July 2012 (6 years 6 months) Gold Coast, Australia
Myuniskills provides solution-based, innovative instructional design and student learning systems development for online and distance education providers, as well as personalised and individualised coaching and tutoring services for undergraduate and postgraduate students using online, face-2-face and interactive environments to develop, organise, and communicate ideas and concepts more effectively and efficiently at university.
Education Consultant/Instructional Designer/Course Writer (Myuniskills)
World Wide Education
Educational Institution; 11-50 employees; E-Learning industry
May 2011 – November 2011 (7 months) Wels, Austria
Provided leadership to learning project and production teams to deliver world class online and distance education
• Developed instructional online, distance education and professional development materials to ensure quality deliverables to client specifications
• Supervised internal quality assurance review processes to ensure quality output to client specifications
• Conducted learning needs analyses to identify critical gaps between learning outcomes, content and competency assessment
• Facilitated strategic design sessions with global stakeholders, subject matter experts and project production teams to proactively address quality improvement in deliverables
• Developed and communicated course design processes to other Instructional Designers, production teams, management and clients across the learning development system
• Developed proactive recommendations on design, course objectives and course assessment/competency criteria
• Provided input to content, length of time required to design, develop and complete learning solutions to client specifications
• Represented internal teams, recommend possible solutions, review existing content for usability and accessibility and to include recommendations for changes, where required, to meet client specifications
• Identified detailed training requirements and independently develop all required training manuals, work flow instructions and support materials
• Designed effective online and distance education course materials to reduce dependence on traditional learning approaches and increase consistency across domestic and global learning sites
• Proactively analysed and identified training needs, presented recommendations and delivered learning solutions to address performance gaps on a global scale
• Developed and implemented learning management system frameworks for courses and other learning solutions.
Director/Senior Trainer
LearningCom
April 1998 – December 2006 (8 years 9 months) Brisbane Area, Australia
• Researched and wrote funding proposals for the Queensland University of Technology’s six research centres across the disciplines (total cost $1.2 million).
• Coached managers in professional presentation skills and persuasive proposal writing from the Brisbane Graduate School’.
• Developed instructional design strategies and authored online and distance education courses to be delivered via the Blackboard Learning Management System for the University of Southern Queensland, including Technology, Society and e-Health and e-Health Technologies.
• Designed, taught and assessed “Human Communication” course for 180 first-year Faculty of Health Science students Griffith University Gold Coast Campus.
• Designed, taught and assessed “Organisational Communication” course for Gold Management students the Faculty of Business, Griffith University Gold Coast Campus.
• Taught and assessed “Communication Theory” and “Media Studies” courses for undergraduate students at Bond University, Gold Coast.
Curriculum Consultant, Course Writer (LearningCom)
Singapore Institute of Management
June 2003 – May 2005 (2 years) Singapore
Provided consultancy for the development of the Communication degree program curriculum and wrote 3 online courses for the program.
Education Consultant (LearningCom)
Griffith University
Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry
February 1998 – May 2002 (4 years 4 months) Gold Coast
. Instructionally designed, delivered and assessed “Human Communication” course for 240 first year students each year within the Health Science Faculty
. Supervised a team of 5 tutors to deliver the Human Communication course
. Wrote and published “Interpersonal Communication for Health Professionals” textbook, specifically designed with relevant health care case studies
. Delivered professional communication course to 60 nursing students
Lecturer Communication
Queensland University of Technology
Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry
February 1998 – December 2001 (3 years 11 months) Brisbane Area, Australia
Taught persuasive proposal writing and professional presentation at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business (BGSB MBA program)
Distance Education Course Writer (Consultant)
University of Southern Queensland
Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry
August 1995 – June 1996 (11 months) Toowoomba, Australia
Instructional design and authored 2 distance education courses for the Health Communication program.
Thanks for your research..kindly appreciated.
Going by his CV, if I were to itemize my work history, including frequently looking at the boobs of my fellow workers, din maro and the occasional sneaking into the Metropole Hotel for a quickie beer and not forgetting the often “taki mada”, I should consider myself as being the most eligible do-it-all guy in the country. Any offers for a job USP???
Word is that the ‘moose’ is jealous of Ian Weber and trying to disrupt the program.
Who the hell checked this chaps quals?
Journalism program at USP is in a mess, no Wansolwara, staff is fighting, last few years a lot of problems. me and my friends demoralised and we want to change from the course. we wasting out fees. we still suffering from damage by Marc Edge who is interfering. We prefer Ian over Marc any day.
Oh my…………………
Please ………………………..
When ……………………
Whatever!
OK – Please ………………..
OMG this will not end???
But I thought the war was over?
WE HAVE A NEW CONSTITUTION! A FIJI FOR ALL.
Oh………. Marc has something personal against GD?
But he has already lost!
Marc’s war isn’t over?
What is he fighting for?
OMG, I share your frustration but could we perhaps be more economical with the line spacing? Although what you say is true, you have used up a great many lines to say very little. Vinaka.
He’s fighting an idea by attacking the man and not the idea.
Marc Edge will fight till the end, and beyond. He is like the Bollywood hero who won’t die even after the bad guy pumps 50 bullets into him. Or we could be seeing a variation of S&M. The more Graham belts him, the more he likes it. He can’t get enough! Seems to love the ‘pain’. Keeps coming back for more!
What happened to that so called wanna be poet guy who was Marks boss??drinking buddy??
Oh and how I miss Terry Tevita and his side kicks. And that convert with a black pants and a tie Daya Nand.
The “drinking buddy” is a very protected being thanks to the grace of the almighty god of USP saving him from murders (anotherJournalism academic’s affair gone wrong saga), offensive and bullish behavior, special services, grants and leaves. Such beings live in glass houses believing that nothing will happen to them, but one wonders for how long, how long. God bless the drinking buddy, the almighty god of USP and the damaged souls at USP and those who lost their lives.
As far as I know this Marc Edge is a rubbish academic and analyst or he would have been able to find a job in Canada – that’s a fair comment. I recall reading his article somewhere that Fiji Times was practising good journalism in its coverage of Mahendra Chaudhry’s government.
Is it good journalism to assign Margret Wise to cover the man who beat her lover for the job of prime ministership? Where on earth is this Marc Edge fellow coming from?? Was it any surprise that day-in day-out, Margret Wise wrote nothing but highly negative and inflammatory stories about the Chaudhry government? Is this Marc Edge guy really an academic? He doesn’t even seem to understand basics like conflict of interest. Good God, was he really teaching at USP? Where do we pick up these riff-raffs from? Enough of the parachute experts already!
Yes Graham’s work is done for we now have a new Constitution that promises a brighter future.
GD and many of us who blog in here agree with this vision by VB – A Fiji for All.
I think it’s not wrong to want this dream.In fact its a noble vision that will unite and move us forward together.
Otherwise what other better option was there?
So in my view – Graham is no propaganda man. It really was a good thing a man such as him was around on a time such as this to put things in proper perspective.
God bless Fiji.
By the way, thank you Graham.
And Merry X-Mas to you and your family.
Wishing you all bloggers including you Marc a Merry X-Mas and a happy New Year.
God bless.
Vinaka vakalevu, Riverside, for your very kind remarks. They are much appreciated. A very happy and blessed Christmas to you too. We all hope for a wonderful 2014 for each other and the nation we love.
Seasons greetings also to every Grubsheet reader, wherever they may be. And that includes The Moose. May the frigid desolation of his Canadian home be filled with the warmth of the Christmas spirit and may 2014 bring him enlightenment and peace.
Happy Christmas!
Thank you very much Graham. It is really frustrating to see the moose trying to smear our beloved country and its competent and professional government. His claim that the press is not free is ridiculous, he should read the Fiji Times more often to see brave, investigative journalists supporting our great leaders with constructive, free and fair reporting. We clearly have the best government ever and I really hope that we will confirm our AG and the competent military officers as our permanent government.
Moose is writing tell-all book, as he threatened.
His other books were underwhelming so you can be sure that it will be a very slim volume, full of grotesque fantasies and conspiracies and guaranteed to be largely unread.
“This is not to say that some elements in the Fijian media may be self censoring. But that is for them to explain – to tell the Fijian public why, even with a Constitutional guarantee, they baulk at telling the complete story.”
Graham, I have to say this was one of the most gobsmackingly laughable statements of 2014.
Now let me count the instances why a Fijian media outlet would self-censor …. hmmm … even the good Professor (David not Croz) has said in writing that he believes there is the media equivalent of a witch-hunt against the Fiji Times. Certainly Fiji TV’s shareholders were taught a very sharp lesson on the limits of their constitutionally mandated freedoms when they aired interviews with 2 former prime ministers eighteen months ago and suddenly found their 12-year licence whittled down to a rolling 6-month licence. On a personal level – perhaps you could ask Vijay Narayan, knowing what he knows now after his brother’s dismissal from Fiji TV, whether he still feels as confident that no journalist or editor should ‘feel constrained in any way’ about the retributive, highly personal and vengeful actions emanating from sections of the government. Satish (like Vijay) was a well-respected broadcaster who made the mistake of offering up legitimate criticism of the staging of two sport events. That was all. What lesson would a moderately paid journalist, perhaps with spouse and kids to support, loans outstanding etc draw from this?
And sorry your criticism of Friends of Fiji Media is ridiculous in the circumstances of a media that is effectively shackled by licence and fear of the capriciousness of saying the wrong thing about the wrong person connected somehow to someone somewhere. There is much criticism of the government on this forum but equally those who criticise are subjected to much more cross-examination than any government member or statement is willing to put themselves through.
And, might I add, the conduct of Friends of Fiji Media is done ‘en clair’. No fake names (except for the phantom accounts many of which seem mysteriously to lead back to Qorvis). No anons. You state your position and you put your name to what you believe in.
[Graham do you remember writing this, of those who would criticise you?: ‘They are cowards and thugs because they do not reveal who they are.’]
So when a Rajendra Chaudhry (or a Marc Edge) have their say on Friends of Fiji Media, they can expect a good going over from those of us who want to draw their attention to things they said or did in the past that were not so consistent with the convenience of the positions they take now.
The more I think about the more I am surprised at your lack of willingness to participate in a forum which, while probably on balance does oppose your wholehearted belief in Project Frank, at least has the intellectual honesty to require its membership to debate with you in the full knowledge of who they actually are.
Charlie, the fact that you appear to seriously entertain the notion that Qorvis makes phantom postings on Friends of Fiji Media makes me seriously doubt your grip on reality. Communications companies such as Qorvis are in the business of persuasion. But 961 journalists and their camp followers who will never be persuaded of anything other than their own shibboleths? Why bother? Seriously, mate. Aren’t you in PR yourself?
I recently joined “Friends” for a brief period after Jyoti Pratibah became concerned about the number of personal attacks being made on me and persuaded its gatekeepers that I at least be allowed to answer them. I appreciated the gesture but having gained entry, rapidly found myself in pointless scraps with the likes of Marc Edge and Samisoni Pareti and decided that it was not for me. I wished everyone well and left. Whereupon my access was terminated, along with any ability to contribute to the dross in this particular closed shop that invariably passes for debate. End of story.
Charlie, the new Constitution came into effect in September, well after the incidents you cite. It guarantees a free media and freedom of expression, as you well know. So you can bang on as much as you like about an alleged climate of fear but that is the situation and it is hardly risible to suggest that it is up to the media and others to test that right.
It’s extremely tiresome how certain elements of the Fijian media use the pretext of repression to mask their lack of resolve, lack of attention to detail and lack of adherence to the most basic journalistic standards. You call it fear. I think a better description is abject laziness.
Charlie, my apologies. Having done a little checking up on you, you appear to have been in marketing, not PR. though I’d imagine the principles of persuasion are more or less the same.
Note with interest that on your Linkedin page, you describe yourself as Chief Fib Teller and The One-Eyed King, along with your authorship of “rectum clenching thrillers”. A liar? Partisan? Surely not.
If your Wikipedia entry is anything to go by, you also seem to be rather proud of your notorious mother-in-law, who’s currently facing charges of conspiring to overthrow the Bainimarama Government. She makes it into the third sentence of your bio, the dear old thing. I see that she still intends to contest the 2014 election. Can we expect your marketing skills to be employed on her campaign? It’s going to be an interesting year, that’s for sure.
I did not wish for any coup, but where was democracy shrine, and friends of fiji media after 2000 coup? back than many journalists were embedded with speight in parliament, supporting the method but not the cause. correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall a single statement from Charlie. now all of a sudden he is so concerned? Is it because his dear Indian-loathing mum-in-law is on the receiving end? Mere gave free bread to coupsters to sustain them. Now she is a democratic? The hypocrisy is staggering. And friends of Fiji media might want to discuss how margaret wise who was sleeping with rabuka was covering chaudhry government stories day-in, day out. Before Margaret Wise another Fiji Times journalist was sleeping with Rabuka and getting front page scoops. This is the level journalism had sunk to at The Fiji Times. But we are expected to ignore these issues? One thing media is good at everywhere is hiding its mistakes and covering its arse, using media freedom as a convenient smokescreen. Where was the concern for fairness and ethics when we needed it in 2000 charlie? There were two causalities of Fiji’s Times arrogant and unethical journalism. One was Chaudhry government and the other was the Fiji media, which compromised democracy due to lack of professionalism and ethics. Fiji Times smugness was short lived. Whenever such issues are brought up, the likes of Charters conveniently play it down. Unfortunately this attitude has been of no help in the long run. Fiji media is paying for refusing to acknowledge and address its failings, and so is the public. Self-serving closed clubs like friends of fiji media doesn’t impress anyone because Fiji media never takes responsibility. has friends of Fiji media asked Netani Rika, Russell Hunter and Margaret about skirt journalism at The Fiji Times? In fact Netani Rika as editor re-employed Margaret Wise Wise even after such a serious transgression. pathetic judgement and poor leadership borne out of a sense of arrogance. Anywhere else, Margaret and her editorial handler would have both been sacked. As they say, only in Fiji. At Fiji Times skirt journalism had become part of the culture it seems. Reminds one of how Qarase government re-employed disbarred lawyer Qoriniasi Bale, who was behind Speight coup prosecutor Peter Ridgeway’s overnight expulsion from Fiji. There was hardly any outrage over this.Whole media and government system in Fiji had corroded and was morally corrupt, and something had to give. Fiji media is very much part of the problem. Only they believe their bullshit that we just report the news fairly and objectively. Charlie and others think we are stupid as they paper over these issues. Everyone is paying the price now.
Skirt Journalism… as I have said dozens of times on this forum and others, I abhor all of Fiji’s coups for the simple reason that they have not advanced Fiji one single step and never will. There is no such thing as a Good Coup. A simple bit of GDP analysis would show each coup has reset the development clock back at least 20 years behind where Fiji should have been had the natural evolution of the country – driven by a maturing and prospering civic society – been allowed to take its course.
Coup Four is no different in that respect to Coup Three, Two and One – all of which were detestable events, orchestrated by a self-serving elite who stood to lose so much with the change of power that threatened their status.
From 1987 onwards Rabuka sold Fiji on a vision as big and as bold as Frank’s, even with some of the same elements (‘Look North’). But in the end it proved as empty and self-serving as many away from this column believe that Frank’s will. Ultimately it’s never about delivering about the vision – it’s about holding on to the power.
Had there been a Friend of Fiji Media facility in 2000, I know for a fact that it would be a very lively debating chamber. I would have expressed the same views then (in 2000) as I am doing now. But there was simply no forum so perhaps that’s why you assume that I am somehow pro-2000 and anti-2006. They’re all unmitigated catastrophes, in my book, from which are dealt the next hand of problems that the country faces.
Had Friends of Fiji Media existed in 2000, the grave issues that the Fiji Times faced with Margaret Wise would have been thoroughly ventilated – with everybody giving their names as they commented. It’s really not a cheerleading club, I can promise you.
I worked on the Fiji Times during another ‘skirt journalism’ ethics issue that I note you have chosen not to comment on: the relationship between the paper’s chief reporter and the then leader of the opposition. This issue was widely known in 1988 and 1989 and led to me, as a humble downtable sub, being given special instructions in how to handle the chief reporter’s copy. To the extent that you believe Russell Hunter failed in his duties, then so did Vijendra Kumar. But Mr Kumar has made positive noises about Frank in this column and his Rawlings-like statesmanship, so perhaps we can assume that Russell’s alleged ethical breaches are more noteworthy. Or perhaps the only real lesson is the venality of the politicians concerned.
Like traindrivers and surgeons and waitresses in restaurants, newspapers, the media in general, are no more immune from making mistakes than any other endeavour involving human beings. Some of them are conscious mistakes of commission or omission (the most reprehensible) but most of them are about newsrooms being under-resourced and overtaxed (in Fiji, and elsewhere in the world), and as a consequence falling for the pap handed to them by politicians, their spin doctors and those paid to be ‘in the business of persuasion’.
You cannot imagine the bad press we used to get when I worked at the FRU. Much of which was absolute tosh. Old players and coaches grumbling about this and that, things they didn’t understand or didn’t want to. But it never in a million years crossed my mind that Fiji would be a better place if we had the protection of the huge media regulatory structure that Fiji now has, and the ability to bring down huge fines on the media.
On to the tired old canard of Mere Samisoni. Yes, she is the grandmother of my children, a blood tie that will always bind me to her. Despite your confident (but anonymous) assertion that she is Indian loathing I have not seen any evidence of this and I don’t believe it to be true. Yes, she believes that the cultural pressures on Fijians and Indians are different and therefore the same stimulus invested successfully in a Fijian will not necessarily have the same happy outcome on an Indian (and vice versa). But I don’t think you could call this loathing, or if you do then Wadan Narsey and others would also be Indian-loathers. Yes, in 2000 she went into the Parliament building (as did many others) but I can’t answer for her on these points.
[I do know that Speight didn’t take over Parliament by waving long loaves, cream buns and meat pies in people’s faces. It was a corrupted splinter group from within the obviously unstable but lethal armed forces commanded by Frank that caused Coup Three … and yet it is this same armed forces, apparently teetering crazily between pro- and deadly anti-AG factions, that requires, demands even, ultimate sanction over whoever the 2014 political process produces as the civilian government, as well as complete immunity for all the things we know about and what we don’t know about as well.]
I know through the creation and growth of HBK Mere has done more than perhaps any woman of her generation in the private sector to genuinely uplift the lot of the urban marginalised female Fijian. She won Lami Open in 2005, and won more votes in the first four rounds in 1999 than the eventual seat winner (and got pretty well trounced in 2001). That’s a mandate. More than Graham or I have ever achieved at the actual business end of all this talk about constitutionality and democratic engagement.
In terms of politics there is probably more that Mere and I disagree on than agree. I worked at the FRU during the time of the SDL government and was, frankly, stunned at some of their people and their decisions.
But let me give you an example: myself and several others fought furiously to stop a particular SDL cabinet member trying to introduce slot machines/pokies on the back of a promise that a percentage of the revenue would go to Fiji Rugby. Thankfully it never happened but there was a significant whiff of ethical compromise if not corruption in the whole process.
Does this prove the SDL was corrupt? What to make therefore of what this government has done on the very same issue? It’s introduced not just pokies but a whole frigging casino. (Thankfully this has been done so incompetently with such a manifestly dubious partner that the only gambling to be done is betting on what day of the week the solitary contractor will show up to turn over the digger’s engine and so maintain the façade.)
I don’t think it’s possible to know which is the worse – what we had in the days of the SDL (when at least the media operated without fear of government fines, closure etc.), or what we have now when so many of the issues have been unexplored because of the gigantic clenched fist (or at least the shadow of which) that looms over all newsrooms (and sports departments, see Satish Narayan).
Graham suggests Fiji’s media may not be telling truth to power because of ‘abject laziness’.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think Fiji’s media (and the boardrooms that ultimately control them) are much more intuitive than you give them credit for. The constitution may contain all manner of hands-off assurances to the media from the very same draftsmen who gave you the blanket ban on public assembly, press censorship and a solider in every newsroom, but, to quote Ry Cooder, ‘some things you see with your eyes and some things you see with your heart.’
Charlie, yes there is such a thing as a good coup, a revolution to assert the principle of equality of opportunity for all citizens and establish a genuine democracy of equal votes of equal value. That is what the Bainimarama revolution has achieved in a process that will reach its climax with the election of a new parliament before the end of next September.
Contrary to your assertions, your mother-in-law has a record of appalling racism, of overt support for the Speight outrage, of refusing to employ Indo-Fijians and a string of public utterances that are racist in that they assert the superiority of indigenous Fijians over the rest of the population. She is not the kindly, misunderstood grandmother that your family portrays her as but a dangerous ideologue with a record of inciting extreme indigenous opinion.
She has been charged with a serious criminal offence – of conspiring to overthrow the Government – yet you attempt in these columns to downplay those charges. I think you are perilously close to being in contempt of the proceedings and would ask you to respect the conventions that apply not only in your own country but in Fiji when it comes to commenting on cases before the courts.
Fiji has a fully functioning judicial system. As with every other criminal case, the police gathered the evidence and took it to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who made a decision to prosecute on the evidence before him. Your mother-in-law’s trial will take place in due course and that process must not be interfered with or subjected to running commentary. Unlike her co-accused, Mere Samisoni has ample resources to defend herself using a top New Zealand silk. So let’s allow justice to take its course.
I am bit old fashioned on the whole evidence-based thing and would rather not take your assurances on the character of my children’s grandmother. I am sure you are going to point me in the direction of published statements made by Mere in which she supported Coup Three (but I don’t know of any) and of her appalling racism (but I don’t know of any).
I do know for a fact it is unequivocally not true that she refuses to employ Indians. I have no involvement whatsoever in the business and never have done, but HBK has at least two senior managers at their Lami HQ who are Indo-Fijian, and I know personally of three shop managers that are also Indo-Fijian. I am sure if I were involved in the business – I could name many others.
On straightforward taste test you would seem to have served up a fact that is wholly untrue and demonstrably so.
Graham
I run two LinkedIn profiles – one for my book-writing (aka fib-telling) and one for my actual paying job which is head of sales for FIFA’s hospitality company.
We are coming up to the start of year three since Mere was arrested and still no closer to these allegations actually being tried in court. I could give you my own view (off line) about how flimsy the charges are and how shameful the whole process has been – such serious charges, one key witness, and so much money spent on high-powered Hong Kong SCs and QCs, yet so many delays that one of the accused died before being able to test the claims against him and clear his name – but I wouldn’t want to outrage the decency of the so quick to be outraged prosecution.
We may have our differences but I genuinely don’t begrudge the things that Frank has done that has served this country well, and which you chose to hang your hat on. But – tip of the hat from me to you – this case against Mere is not one of those things.
Charlie, refer to above. Never mind a tip of the hat in my direction, it is not for either of us to discuss your mother-in-law’s case in this manner before her trial takes place. While I don’t want to censor anyone, let alone an author such as yourself, there are certain laws that must be obeyed and you will know more than most that I have a legal responsibility not to publish anything that is in contempt of the proceedings in your mother-in-law’s case or that brings the judicial system into disrepute.
Charlie since you have not heard of what Mere has said of Indo-Fijians nor know of her dislikes of them i suggest you keep shut about that. Graham has already pointed out of recordings! I can attest to her racist remarks on various occasions. As for your beliefs in her involvement in trying to get rid of the Government of the day- its not a “cock & bull story” ! Flimsy you say you just might be very surprised! We should leave it at that as the issues we now discuss are before the court-all will be revealed in good time
Media is good at finger pointing, blaming and holding others accountable but do not apply same standards to themselves. Hide behind phoney an and faulty self-regulating mechanism. When challenged, they conveniently use another decoy, the ‘shooting the messenger’ cliche. Sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude of Friends of Fiji Media stinks. Media is innocent, righteous, always correct, must have the upper hand, and the last word on everything. Media knows best. Everyone else is wrong, all of the time. Typical arrogant attitude thinking displayed by fiji media in 2000, which public became quite sick of. No wonder there was virtually no support for Fiji Times when it was threatened with closure.
Charlie, you’ll notice that your last comment has been excised. It breaches the laws of contempt and you know it. You cannot bring the justice system into disrepute in the way that you did. One more such comment and I will feel bound to exclude you from this site altogether. You may regard yourself as beyond the reach of the laws of Fiji but I am not.
I’m pleased to hear that your mother-in-law is now employing a handful of Indo-Fijians and accept that her previous stance may well have changed in line with new laws that prohibit racial discrimination of any kind. But let’s not try to cast her as a pioneer of non discriminatory employment practices. I stand by everything else I said about her. I might also make the observation that she was quite willing to benefit from the gravest illegality in the past as long as it suited her purposes but screams long and hard about her current predicament. The case against her will be decided in due course.
Graham, all I asked for was evidence to stand up everything you said about Mere Samisoni. You have not provided it, and despite being politely asked to so do, you seem unwilling to extend to the targets of your polemics the same basic courtesy you require .
You demand that people debate with you based on fact which is far enough, yet all I have asked from you to stand up your accusations is a) you point me in the direction of published statements made by Mere in which she supported Coup Three (I don’t know of any) and b) her appalling racism (I don’t know of any). [Perhaps the clue might be in the fact that she stood and won once, almost twice, in an ‘Open’ seat.]
It’s a pretty shallow dig you make to claim she has only latterly employed a handful of Indo-Fijians and that this may be some tactical switch made following recent antidiscrimination laws. Absolutely not true on both counts.
Last point on your despicable and demonstrably untrue claim that Mere is an appalling racist and refuses to employ Indians, I leave to her. I didn’t want to raise this myself as a very obvious rebuttal to the complete nonsense you have written because it is family matter. But as she has chosen to raise the subject, posting this comment on another blog site when similarly baseless (and anonymous) charges were made against her earlier this week, I am quoting what she wrote below:
‘FYI my family adopted an Indian boy who is now in his 40’s. If he thought I was anti-Indian like you describe, he would have broken our mother child relationship a long time ago and returned to his father and people. He has not done so because he is loved and comfortable with this love.
Otherwise, if he had been treated badly, like you, he would be bad mouthing me.
I have always told my son the truth. He knows who his biological father is, family and community. That is his right as a human being which I have always respected as a mother. He has the freedom as an adult to know, associate and choose. The key word to his rights to information and knowledge.’
Charlie, yes, Monsieur Candie of Django fame and a string of other white racists have also had blacks in their households. It doesn’t mean they regarded them as equals.This is a big whitewash of a very dark chapter of Fijian history in which your mother-in-law was a central character and I am mildly surprised that you have taken up the challenge to defend her.
I repeat. She is among the most notorious of indigenous supremacists – not least because of her intellectual ability to dress up overt racism as a noble cause of behalf of an allegedly embattled people – and no amount of re-invention is going to persuade me otherwise. You are flogging the deadest of horses. But let the Fijian people decide when the time comes.
If your mother-in-law isn’t convicted of the charges against her, she will be free to stand in the election like anyone else. But rather than the racially-weighted stitch-up that put her into Parliament last time, she will have to face the judgement of electors of every race and in a national constituency way beyond the confines of Lami. Ain’t genuine democracy a wonderful thing?
Adopting an indian boy as you say is well known-so what does that prove?
William Wilberforce was the Leader of the group who fought to get rid of SLAVERY yet he was slave owner -big time?
Catholic priests taken in orphan boys to care for yet they the very ones that abuse these kids!
Some of us know what has emanated out of your mother an laws mouth even in parliament when she took her 7 loaves & 5 fish to feed the multitude. Do you think she went to Parliament to say a prayer for the Labour party members or wish her own relative who was also captured by Speight mob well! Its best you not mention things you know little about otherwise you just might hear things you just might not really like. Just stay happy in the belief your mother an law is an Angle just like the happy pretend marriage?
Charlie, your mother-in-law actually fed the “coup” makers – sustained them with bread and other items – in what you term Coup Three but which is almost universally regarded as a bunch of treasonous thugs making an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. She was party to the gravest illegality for the most ignoble of causes and there is no getting away from it. So kindly spare me the sanctimonious indignation for calling the spade a shovel.
My God, I poke my finger into your strident assertions and, lo and behold, the whole thing turns out to rest on a series of fabrications, to wit:
a) I have already demonstrated the lie that you put up that my mother in law refuses to employ Indo-Fijians
b) Sorry to disappoint your latest lazy demonization, but my mother in law is not Monsieur Candie of Django fame. The son Mere Samisoni talks about is not some punkawallah who sleeps under the stairs. He is my brother in law, her son, uncle to my children and godfather to my daughter. He is a full shareholder in Hot Bread Kitchen by virtue of being a much loved member of the family and a full and equal partner in the business with his other siblings (I am not, by the way). His role in the family and the family’s embrace of him is the very antithesis of the mean-spiritedness you would wish it to be in order to serve your Frank-pandering.
True, none of this makes Mere a saint. But please don’t reach for the next by-the-numbers slur – that this was somehow a calculation to broaden her electoral appeal – the sort of tactic the persuasionists at Qorvis might advise: the adoption happened many years ago, before she even contemplated a business let alone political career.
Suffice to say my brother in law and I disagree with her very vigorously on a number of issues. But, as someone who was abandoned by his own biological father and still raised within the loving embrace of a family, I feel this issue personally and I am sure your readers do to. I think the specific Django white racist contempt and general mocking disregard you have expressed for what Mere and the late Dr Jim have done (and, by extension, for anybody who has ever raised a child other than their own biological offspring) shows your commentating in the worst possible light. How far you have travelled since winning those deserved awards for your fact-based reporting.
By all means disagree with Mere and her politics, and with as much passion as you want, but this is different: you are simply making up stuff, reams of stuff, and pretty wretched stuff too.
You will notice that I am not defending Mere’s politics as you suggested I am. I don’t do Defending Mere’s Politics and never have done, apart from anything else BECAUSE I DON’T SHARE HER POLITICS. All I have asked is for you to back up your sneers with some actual published statements of fact, rather than even louder hectoring from the pulpit.
While I wait for you to point me in the direction of any published comments that help stand-up your other claims, if you are looking for people to demonise, who were ‘party to the gravest illegality for the most ignoble of causes’, directly involved in Coup Three and who conspicuously refused to condemn Coup Three contemporaneously [unlike Mere Samisoni], one of them is currently serving in the Frank cabinet.
[‘A campaign of destabilisation… began when Ratu Inoke said to the SVT Management Board Meeting on May 27th 1999 (in which I was present) that they must be prepared to fight and to shed blood if need be to return political power to the indigenous Fijians’ Jone Dakuvula, 2000/Café Pacific]. And this was not even Ratu Inoke’s first experience in fomenting a violent pro-indigenous coup, see Islands Business May 1988 [‘We asked Rabuka to prepare that (military option) side and when the time, when we reach a stage when he must step in, he must be ready to step in. We changed it [the coup] to Thursday on Wednesday night in my office at the Bible Society with Rabuka’].
Where is your outrage on this point? Where is the consistency in the argument you are trying to make? If your condemn Mere with such shrill vehemence for her bit-part, post-coup role then by the law of the Goose and the Gander, you should be shrieking at the very top of your voice, bull horn and all, about Ratu Inoke. His involvement is self-admitted in Coups One and Two, and reported by Dakuvula in Coup Three (for whom Dakuvula was working as a parliamentary advisor when the May 1999 ‘fight and shed blood’ meeting took place).
Strangely [pause …] I hear only silence. The Biblical admonishment about specks of sawdust and planks springs to mind.
Charlie, I have said all I am going to say and am not prepared to engage in a blow-by-blow commentary on your mother-in-law while the current criminal case against her is before the courts. The proper time for this will be if and when she is cleared and puts her name forward to contest the election. Then there will be ample opportunity to highlight her record of support for indigenous supremacy, including her public utterances. In the meantime, I stand by every statement that I have made in these columns. Our correspondence on this matter is closed.
Instead of posing as heroic freedom fighters after compromising democracy and freedom of speech in Fiji with their abject unprofessionalism, certain Friends of Fiji Media might want to ponder how their own failures as journalists contributed to where Fiji is today. As someone wrote, Fiji media mainly write stories about trivia, because that is what they capable of. Deep thinking is beyond them. There is nothing more dangerous than arrogance combined with ignorance when it comes to journalists. We saw plenty of it in 2000. It was nauseating, and it has left a very bitter taste to this day.
Instead of blindly supporting Speight’s ’cause but not his method’, Fiji media might have been better served if journalists were doing more investigation pieces. On the most, Fiji journalists have little idea about what is news, or what is the public interest, or ethics. Some were cavorting with Speight in parliament, one hugged him outside court, they were eating his food in parliament, and some journalists were having sex with some coupsters. Is this what they mean by media objectivity in Fiji? Is this what Fiji journalists do when they have freedom of media? If we have censorship today, you are partly responsible. Your past actions caught up with you.
Address these issues first, Friends of Media, instead of the sanctimonious bullshit we hear from you. Fiji media’s behaviour during the Speight coup was a disgrace and a stain on journalism that has yet to be fully confronted by the profession which prefers to deny or skirt around the issues.
First learn basics of media law, such as defamation and sub judice. The lack of knowledge in this area across Fiji newsrooms, from editors to rank and file journalists, has been a disgrace. When caught with pants down and fined in court, Fiji Times, predictability, turned it into a freedom of speech and shooting the messenger issue to divert the lack of basic knowledge in its newsrooms, including among senior staff. what a sickening farce!
It took someone from outside the industry to show so-called mainstream news scribes the way. Thakur Ranjit Singh wrote an excellent piece about FHL share scandal that puts Fiji media to shame. It shows up how ineffectual Fiji media are in their watchdog role and how much they missing. Thakur’s piece on “How the Fijian Provinces were looted and betrayed by the Fijian Initiative” is an excellent read. It can teach Fiji journalists a thing of two about research and analysis, which is lacking in our media. Journalists time will be better spent in self reflection and education rather than forming useless groups and wasting time in endless empty discussions rather focussing on productive things like training.
http://www.fijibuzz.com/fiji-resource-ownership/fijian-provinces-betrayed-by-fijian-initiative-2A
Totally agree with everything you say – now they all trying to play ignorant of their roles of what has happened in the past to Fiji. The same mob that were grabbing Rabukas cause also supported Speights-when Frank arrived on the scene they seemed to have all hated him cause he kicked out Qarase whatever the reason. But Qarase was playing the racists card so well to the iTaukei & putting up another face to the media who were so dumb to know the difference.
Graham you keep attacking Mere Samisoni for taking bread into parliament but I have never heard you criticize Frank Bainimarama for feeding the actual hostage takers.
It was soldiers under the command of Bainimarama who delivered rations to the RFMF hostage takers in parliament. These rations were delivered from QEB on a daily basis.
The RFMF hostage takers continued to be paid whilst they were holding Fiji’s Prime Minister at gun point. Bainimarama the Commander of the RFMF could have stopped their pay at any time.
An RFMF officer under the command of Bainimarama delivered Leave request forms to the RFMF Hostage Takers in parliament. They had to fill out these forms otherwise they would have been AWOL. Can you believe that Bainimarama’s RFMF encouraged the Hostage Takers to carry on holding parliamentarians captive and they could claim the time as paid leave.
Bainimarama the Commander of the RFMF brought the leader of the RFMF hostage takers back from retirement 3 weeks before he stormed parliament.
So please can you be consistent in your criticism. If you are going to attack Mere Samisoni then please also attack Frank Bainimarama.
Oh of course you can’t do that because his regime pays your salary.
S&G, don’t be so ineffably ridiculous. The historical record shows that Frank Bainimarama ended the siege of the Parliament by tricking George Speight into surrendering and then arresting him and having him tried for treason. So the entire premise of your ridiculous side-show is laughable. FYI, I am paid not by the Fijian Government but by Qorvis Communications through its GeoPolitical Solutions arm, which has a range of sovereign clients, the vast bulk of whom are much more lucrative than Fiji. So your underlying premise that the “regime pays my salary” is also demonstrably flawed. Ergo, on both major premises of your argument, you are wrong.
Yes, Frank and Frank’s faction of armed soldiers eventually crushed Speight and Speight’s faction of armed soldiers, and then dished out the Mother of All Hidings (and yes, we all cheered and said Frank, you are our hero).
But how, as a journalist, can you be so dismissive, so strangely incurious as to assume that just because Frank eventually crushed Speight that the questions S&G raised can be dismissed as ‘ineffably ridiculous’.
That would be the journalistic equivalent of showing no interest in the Saddam-connivance of the GW Bush administration contributed to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait or how the spineless, hand-wringing of the British government over the Falkland Islands may have encouraged the Argentinian invasion (even though both invaders were soundly beaten in the ensuing military campaign), or even if Whitlam’s government may have inadvertently or mistakenly signalled their pre-approval or at least tacit consent of Suharto’s invasion of Timor.
There are many people in Fiji – not just myself and S&G – who would welcome a fuller exploration of these pre-2000 coup issues. Yes, Frank may have saved the day (very late in the day) but to what extent did he know of, or contribute consciously to the fracturing of the army’s command structure that allowed this elite unit of highly armed soldiers to peel away in the first place. It is a matter of public record that the Army continued to feed Speight’s soldiers throughout most of their occupation of Parliament and (as S&G alleges) even facilitated the paperwork to have Speight’s soldiers claim holiday entitlement to cover their time terrorising, looting, bashing and (apparently according to one of your contributors) even fornicating with members of Fiji’s fifth estate.
The Moose has been roused but in an astonishingly tentative and pathetic way. Witness the following post on Friends of Fiji Media:
Marc Edge
I am blocked from commenting on Grubsheet, but Grubby and Charlie Charters have been having an interesting discussion about press freedom that I think is worth weighing in on. I always like to play guess the commenter, and I’d almost bet that Skirt Journalism is Peter Lomas. It’s amazing how some people can cite an ethical violation as justifying press repression.
http://www.grubsheet.com.au/splutterings-from-the-edge/#comment-9434
# SPLUTTERINGS FROM THE EDGE
http://www.grubsheet.com.au
The bellowing Canadian Moose, Dr Marc Edge, has spluttered back into life after a period of self-imposed hibernation with yet another of his perennial attacks on Grubsheet and our fellow blogger, Professor Crosbie Walsh. The former Head of Journalism at USP – who was sacked for misconduct – claims t…
Like · · Share · Get Notifications · December 28 at 1:56pm · Edited
Marc, why bother with this moose-shit. Peter Lomas is running a newspaper, for God’s sake. I haven’t spoken to him about this but why on earth would he engage in this pointless debate? You are dead and buried. Sacked for misconduct and banished from Fiji. Whichever way you try to spin it, your bellow has been silenced, except perhaps in the Canadian wastelands where you belong. Happy New Year!
Sorry, I forgot that Peter is Fijianatheart.
Hey, I’m not blocked any more.
Marc, more bizarre behaviour. You tell people on a closed Facebook site that you’re banned from these columns when you’re not but post something here anyway. Then you are obliged to do a second post stating the bleeding obvious because you’ve exposed your own false claim.
Perhaps now that you are here you might finally acknowledge the true circumstances of your departure from USP. We’ve heard it from everyone else but not from the Moose’s mouth.
Oh no, not Marc Edge again, in typical Grinch style!
Graham,
This is S&G by the way but I had problems posting under that name and email address.
You have become lazy since you have become a political spin doctor.
I love the way you pompously say “S&G, don’t be so ineffably ridiculous. The historical record shows that Frank Bainimarama ended the siege of the Parliament by tricking George Speight into surrendering and then arresting him and having him tried for treason.”
I suggest you read the RFMF Board of Inquiry report on the 2000 coup. It is all there in black and white from a number of different officers and men.
The RFMF DAILY delivered food to the hostage takers.
The RFMF continued to pay the hostage takers
The RFMF gave the hostage takers leave application forms
Major Ligairi was brought out of retirement on the orders of Bainimarama only 3 weeks before the coup.
Bainimarama was commander of the RFMF and had returned from Norway. He was briefed on these actions and he was the officer in overall command. He was responsible.
I really don’t see how you can condemn Mere Samisoni for feeding the hangers on in parliament and not Bainimarama for feeding the actual RFMF hostage takers. Surely if one is guilty both are guilty.
By the way if you want a copy of the BOI you can find it on http://www.truthforfiji.com. It does require a lot of reading and a good grasp of the Fijian language. It would have been something you would have relished doing when you were a journalist looking to uncover the truth. But now….
With regards to your paymaster Bainimarama you are simply playing with who signs the cheques. We all know you are paid by Qorvis. But you are employed by Qorvis to work on their client, namely the Bainimarama Regime. Qorvis charge the taxpayers of Fiji over $1m per annum and a portion of that is paid to you. Why are you so squeamish about accepting that you are paid by a Dictator? The way you write about him, I would have thought it would make you proud.
Yes, G&S, I am proud to perform work for Frank Bainimarama through my engagement with Qorvis. As everyone knows, I have publicly supported his mission to create a level playing field for all Fijians right from the start. It is you who is having trouble grasping the nature of the arrangement. I work part-time for Qorvis, not the Fijian Government. And last I heard, Qorvis is not a dictator but a Washington PR company. But you are welcome to construe it any way you prefer because you will do it anyway.
It is you who is also engaging in semantics over Bainimarama’s role in 2000. It was Bainimarama who smashed the 2000 rebellion, smashed George Speight and the rest of his criminal gang, defeated the mutineers who subsequently tried to kill him and 14 years on, is leading Fiji as it becomes the first genuine democracy in its history. That is the overarching truth and every Fijian knows it. But you are similarly welcome to construe it any way you prefer because you will do it anyway. Happy New Year.
Graham,
I love the way you are trying to claim you are not taking the Dictator’s shilling. Your explanation is as lame as they come. It is like Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum saying he does not receive a ministerial salary from the Dictatorhip. In his excuse he would say he is paid by his Aunty Nur Bano Ali and not by the Government.
But everyone can see through that lie. The money that Nur Bano uses to pay the AG is from the Fijian Tax Payer. The money that Qorvis use to pay you is likewise from the Fijian Tax payer. All funds from the Fijian Tax payer are currently controlled by the Dictator.
I understand you can’t actively admit to getting paid by a dictator because that would damage you already slim chances of ever getting another job back in Australia.
I have to say you are turning out to be an excellent Spin Doctor and you will never admit when you or your paymasters are wrong.
Charlie Charters made the very good point that Ratu Inoke Kubobuola is a DOCUMENTED racist and a REGULAR coupster. But because he is employed by your paymaster you sing his praises on this blogsite (Which you claim in independent). Instead of attacking him in the same way that you have attacked Mere Samisoni on regular occasions. Laughably you cannot find any evidence to support your attacks on Mere Samisoni. But still as a professional spin doctor you do not need evidence.
Additionally you try to bluster your way past the DOCUMENTED FACTS, namely
• Bainimarama’s soldiers fed the hostage takers in parliament.
• The RFMF hostage takers were allowed to take their time in parliament as paid leave
• The RFMF hostage takers continued to get paid whist in parliament.
• The coup leader was brought out of retirement personally by Bainimarama only 3 weeks before the coup.
Oddly enough it was Colonel Mara who captured George Speight. He did so without orders from Bainimarama. We all know how that piece of heroism was rewarded by Bainimarama.
Graham you are behaving as all publicists believe. Shout your rhetoric loud enough and it will drown out the truth. Fortunately the truth will come back to bite you on your ample Ass.
S&G, this looks perilously like repetition. But do bang on, if it makes you happy.
Graham,
You know damned well why I left Fiji. I left because you relentlessly hounded me just for doing my job. You objected when I disagreed with your laughable “Pacific media at peace” meme and to retaliate you published email correspondence of mine both on your blog and in the Fiji Sun. You accused me of violating journalism ethics for merely granting an interview to the Fiji Times about how much I liked living at the Suva Point Apartments. You ridiculed a symposium I organised, dubbing it “Edgefest.” You claimed that I insulted the government of Fiji (I mean the illegal military dictatorship, for which you indirectly worked) by proposing to invite two journalists who had been declared persona non grata, one of whom told me that Shazzer was considering letting him back in. You claimed that I insulted two other South Pacific governments in a Call for Papers that was written and revised in consultation with the Great David Robie. You repeatedly threatened that my work permit would not be renewed for such indiscretions as telling a joke about Qorvis at a function and forwarding to certain people a hilarious S&G letter mocking you and Shazzer. I didn’t sign up for that kind of abuse from a professional asshole such as yourself. So I left. Nice job, jerk.
What you didn’t count on was me giving you a taste of your own medicine once I was safely out of the country and could blog freely. I hope you enjoyed being made the laughing stock of the Pacific. Just try sliming Bruce Hill again and see what happens. As for your buddy Croz, I think he’s probably also had his fill of my media analysis.
Meanwhile, my book is almost finished. My first academic journal article about Fiji is about to be published. I am now writing one about Qorvis and its social media smear campaigns against critics of repressive regimes worldwide. I leave next week for California to take up my next appointment. It’s a considerable step up from Fiji, that’s for sure. Hopefully there will be no propagandists there hounding me just for doing my job.
Sayonnara, sucker. I hope that 2014 treats you better than I did in 2013. Just keep your head down and your big mouth shut. Maybe then you’ll be able to get a job as a journalist again.
You can go to california, calcutta, Timbuktu or wherever, as long as you out of our lives we are happy.
I will ALWAYS be in your lives . . . virtually, from afar.
Yes, Marc, more lies and dissembling, just as we’ve had from you all along. Your departure from Fiji had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was the USP hierarchy who decided that you had to go and you were dismissed, sacked, terminated, rogered, shown the door, whatever one wants to call it, for professional misconduct.
You didn’t “leave”. You were axed, pushed and shoved. And you left a string of influential people behind in the region, including some of its most senior and respected academics, who know the full story and who will never let you forget it.
Where’s the writ that you have continually threatened me with? The fact is that you cannot win a defamation action against me because my defence will be truth and, in any event, you have no reputation left to defend (as in “The lies of Marc Edge” by Professor David Robie and other equally damning references) So you can write as many books as you like but your pathetic attempt to rewrite history and your miserable tenure at USP will surely fail.
California is perfect for you, a place where fantasies are as good as reality and where I gather they’ve just made a film about you – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty aka Marc the Moose. The “scholar”, “sailor”, “author” and “blogger” who when stripped to the bare essentials, is not only a remarkable fantasist but a social and cultural misfit who used his power to wage war on some of his Pacific Islander students because they would not bow and scrape at his feet and was obliged to leave his island paradise in disgrace. Here’s looking up your sulu, Marc. They’re going to love it where you’re going and you are bound to be feted as a great hero. Until they discover the truth.
Happy New Year to All. 2014 will be a crucial year and we cannot be distracted from our path towards a strong and free democracy led by our great PM and his visionary AG. What we don’t need is people like the Moose making mountains out of mole hills. His relentless campaign against our leaders is appalling, his professional record is so poor that not even Qorvis would offer him a job. He should leave us alone.
Notice that Marc Edge never specifically denies that he was removed from USP. He can’t because that would leave him open to exposure. Instead, he establishes the myth that he was placed under so much pressure that he decided to leave Fiji of his own volition rather than continue to be “abused by a professional arsehole” (me).
Also notice the tactic here. When he cannot satisfactorily address the core issue – in this case, his removal from USP and the events that led up it – Edge constructs an elaborate ruse. He has left Fiji not because of professional misconduct but because of a deliberate campaign of vilification orchestrated by me on behalf of Qorvis and the Fijian Government. He attempts to set himself up as a political martyr – a lily white Arthurian knight whose quest for media freedom in Fiji was suppressed by the wicked dictatorship and its “chief propagandist” (me).
Never mind that my original criticism of Edge predated any association with Qorvis by more than six months. He says he “was hounded out of Fiji” by me and “owes me a big one”. So he turns the blow-torch on me in a lengthy campaign of vilification on his own website and in every other conceivable forum. It’s a crafty attempt at transference and creating a diversion but it is a preposterous and fantastic invention.
The fact is that had Marc Edge’s professional position at USP been rock solid, he would have still been there. Instead the University received a flood of complaints about him from both students and staff, prompting several internal inquiries. He also managed to offend senior academics at other institutions in the region on whose collaboration the USP depends. Edge had his supporters- notably Professor Sudesh Mishra- yet in the end, the internal clamour at USP for the hierarchy to act on the complaints against him was simply overwhelming. He was first removed as head of the journalism program and then obliged to leave USP and Fiji altogether.
These are the facts and no amount of dissembling by Marc Edge can change them. He describes himself as a “counter propagandist” and actually has the temerity to add this to his professional qualifications. But the truth is that he is waging his own propaganda war to rewrite the history of his tenure at USP and cast himself as a media freedom campaigner who was sacrificed by an evil dictatorship. Judging from his comments thus far, this will doubtless be the dominant narrative of whatever account emerges from Marc Edge’s own pen about the circumstances of his departure.
But let there be no doubt that it was the University, not the Fijian Government, which decided that Marc Edge had to go. There had simply been too many internal complaints, too many students claiming victimisation, too many fellow academics upset by his arrogant and high-handed manner and also the way in which he claimed credit for the work of others. So he was terminated and left Fiji, though with minimum public comment from the University in deference to Edge’s own sensibilities (he had developed a martyr complex and continually threatened legal action) and the difficult circumstances of his tenure and removal.
Those are the facts and no amount of spin or reinvention on Edge’s part will alter them.
Peculiarly, Marc Edge has lodged a case against a Fiji journalist with the media authority in Fiji. I recall reading about it on this blog. It is quite baffling. Why use the same system you condemn? Marc Edge has recognised and legitimised Fiji’s media system. People can be forgiven if they see this as hypocritical.
Graham,
Good to see you are no better than Marc Edge when it comes to not answering direct questions..
When Charlie asked you for evidence of Mere’s racism you stopped answering his questions and even more glaring was your complete inability to answer anything about Kububuola and why a documented racist such as he should be in cabinet with you regularly singing his praises on Grubsheet.
You have also been quite unable to answer the documented evidence of the RFMF continuing feeding of the hostage takers in parliament; and yet
Congratulations on resorting to attacks on Marc Edge as a way to divert attention.
S&G, I will not be interrogated by someone who hides behind a cloak of anonymity. Fiji is having a democratic election within the next nine months. It’s high time for cowards like you to show your faces or shut up.
History will judge us however for the time being perhaps everyone who comments in respectable forum should also analyze their opponents comments in case something is misinterpreted by third parties. And post these analyses in here for the records.
Graham,
The reason you won’t answer my questions has nothing to do with my anonymity. It is purely because there is no way you can justify your praise for the Racist Inoke Kububuila and your attacks on the not racist Mere Samisoni. You also seem unable to answer why Bainimarama and the RFMF continued to feed the hostage takers in Parliament but you still attack Mere for supplying bread.
Graham we expect nothing less of you than out pourings of self righteous pomposity in a bid to hide the fact that you are nothing but a paid dictator’s hack.
Happy New Year and may you discover some truth in 2014.
S&G, you talk tough but will not show your face. I have said before in these columns. I will not box with shadows. I may be pompous and a paid hack but you are a coward. And one with an obsession with non sequiturs. I suggest that you stay in hiding and await the events that will unfold over the next nine months. Maybe then you will discover the courage of your convictions and come out of the closet.
Graham, I always feel victorious when you disregard all the arguments and attack my anonymity.
You say you will not box with shadows but you seemed happy to do so higher up the page.
To be accurate you should have said I will not box with shadows when I am losing.
S&G you naivety, idealism and tendency to be repetitive is annoying. You must have heard of the saying politics makes strange bedfellows. Example, mahen chaudhry was once ready to jump into bed with rabid nationalist Butadroka. It was mahen who helped Rabuka become PM in1992. Ratu Inoke has not changed his political stripes. He is just being smart and expedient. He knows indigenous Fijians as the majority now hold power. Indians are virtually insignificant. Ratu Inoke has moved on from that mission while others are still foolishly stuck on the indian bogey. Ratu Inoke is now in a power struggle with other Fijian elites, and winning …so far. Just think more pragmatically instead of idealistically and you should get the picture. Politics is a dirty game.
S&G, I have a name and you do not. Victors need names and faces to be seen to be victorious. Ergo, you are a nobody. And you have already lost.
Graham, if you believe Mere Samisoni is so deserving of the rather shrill level of criticism and contempt for her bit part in Coup Three and her alleged racism, how would you best express your criticism and contempt for the current foreign minister? He has had direct roles in Coups One and Two (admitted) and Coup Three (alleged by Jone Dakuvula), and has acknowledged being one of the primary instigators of what became known as the Taukei Movement. Or would it be to Ratu Inoke and fellow Cabinet member Filipe Bole that Frank was referring to when he spoke of ‘the diseased political behaviour of the past’?
Charlie, Ratu Inoke has renounced his previous support for indigenous supremacy and says he has come to realise it was wrong. As a member of the Bainimarama Government, Ratu Inoke axiomatically supports the provisions of the 2013 Constitution.
If, as reported, your mother-in-law intends to stand in the 2014 election, she will be challenged to answer the following:
1/ Has she altered her previously stated position that indigenous Fijians deserve more political, social and cultural rights than other citizens?
2/ Does she accept the principle that every person born in Fiji – no matter what their cultural or religious background – deserves precisely the same rights as other citizens?
3/ Does she support the principle of genuine democracy in Fiji – of one person, one vote, one value – instead of the racially weighted electoral formula employed under previous Constitutions?
4/ Does she support the principle of every person in Fiji being called Fijian?
5/ Does she support the principle of a secular state, the separation of church and state and the right of every Fijian to pursue whatever belief they choose?
If the answer to all of these questions is “yes”, then the whole country would like to hear it.
The point is that Ratu Inoke now subscribes to all these universally accepted democratic principles. Does Mere Samisoni? That is the key consideration under the circumstances, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Graham, thanks for the reply. I genuinely don’t know what Mere feels on this issue. I have not had a chance to talk through these points with her, and I am sure it is best left to her to explain.
Out of interest, exactly when did Ratu Inoke renounce his support for indigenous supremacy, and while he was renouncing did he apologise for the Taukei villainy he stoked over almost 20 years and the three coups he either authored or is accused of, and is there a transcript of this? Or was this as a general ‘axiomatic’ cleansing of the sins as he passed through the doorway and into the Cabinet?
Charlie, somewhat taken aback that you defended your mother-in-law so vigorously but now say you don’t know what her opinions are about the central issues of the moment, and especially her stance on racial equality. Ratu Inoke is a side show. You introduced him into the strand of debate, not me, as if to say “well what about him?” It’s not about him. It’s about Mere. And yet you say you don’t know what she thinks? Decidedly underwhelming.
Graham, I know you need to manipulate the terms of the debate, so as to be able to pronounce yourself underwhelmed, and thus score one for Team Frank … but Mere Samisoni’s politics are not my politics.
As I have said ad infinitum she and I hold different views and I could no more explain to you her views than I would expect her or you to justify mine. (But she and I are agreed about the complete hollowness of the Free-Anything-and-Everything-Forever-So-Long-as-Frank-Is-Voted-In-and-the-Army-Remains-Becalmed that seems to be all that we have to show for the years 2006 to 2014.)
You brought up Mere Samisoni not me, and in so doing were caught telling a barefaced lie about her – that she refuses to employ Indians. Instead of having the good grace to admit this you tried to reverse out of your lie with more deliberate untruths thrown at her (that she only employed Indians because of changes to employment law, and that her adopted son was some kind of Django Unchained houseboy). You were caught lying three times.
Ratu Inoke is not a side show.
He represents the very thing that is so obviously fraudulent about Frank’s claims that this whole process represents some kind of national rebirth and break from the past: Ratu Inoke is a relic from the revolving door of Fiji’s diseased political past that is holding high office but has no more seen the light than Filipe Bole, or Mahendra Chaudhry or Ratu Epeli Ganilau et al.
Again, I ask when exactly did Ratu Inoke renounce his past beliefs and/or apologise for his action, and can you point me in the direction of what he said or wrote so that I – a registered voter – can be certain that this is a genuine conversion, and not the latest convenient zig or zag in his grasp for power?
As Frank reminded me in his New Year Message: The only authority to obey is your own conscious (sic).
Charlie, you have chosen to defend your mother-in-law – a notorious indigenous supremacist and someone facing grave criminal charges – without being able to answer the most fundamental questions about her political views. I posed a serious of questions about her attitudes that go to the heart of her fitness for public office and you can’t answer a single one. Yet you feel quite capable of defending her in the most strident terms about my allegedly “despicable” charge that she has discriminated against Indo-Fijians ( Indians, as you call them ) in the past.
My information comes from normally reliable sources so excuse me for not immediately issuing a fulsome apology. Mere Samisoni has a track record in Fiji that won’t be so easily erased, even by someone with your intellectual and verbal dexterity. As for your last quip. So there was a typo in the Prime Minister’s New Year message. Big deal. Is that all you can hang your hat on? And you accuse me of cheap digs?
Frankly, the mere fact that you refer to your fellow citizens as Indians when they are Fijians indicates that you too have something of an attitudinal problem adjusting to the new Fiji. Your own mindset is evidently rooted in the notion that these people – most of whom go back several generations in Fiji – are foreign. In the lexicon you employ here, not only are they not Fijians ( as in Fijians of Indian descent), they are not even Indo-Fijians. They are “Indians”. Frankly, if you make references like this in open forums, is it any wonder that others might make certain conclusions about general attitudes in the Samisoni/Charters households?
I repeat: you have created a sideshow with Ratu Inoke to deflect attention away from your mother-in-law when you know full well that one is a valued member of the Government – and supports its multi-ethnic, multi-religious policies – and the other is on trial for allegedly conspiring to overthrow that Government. You are to be commended for your family loyalty. But your judgment on the relative merits of the two individuals sucks.
Graham
I am not defending Mere Samisoni’s politics because her politics are not my politics. I am defending her from the lies you and your source have spread about her, and the so-far uncorroborated accusations you continue to make [please point me to a published statement of hers that corroborates your ‘notorious indigenous supremacist’].
You have already established the principle that you can speak up for someone without having to agree with them, when you mounted a contextual justification for Frank’s unconditional support of the officers who beat the crap out of the prison escapees: (‘I have my view. [Frank] has his. We disagree. I’d venture to say that as a military commander, he thinks he has to back his men every time. I don’t think that should extend to those who bring the government and the country into disrepute.’)
There was no quip intended when I quoted the spelling mistake. I was quoting from Frank’s speech (from the government website) and using a standard way of showing that I knew my direct quote contained an error.
Perhaps, a more appropriate quote from the same New Year speech, given the inexactitude with which you have deliberately referred to Mere Samisoni and your so-far unproven allegations against her would be this reminder from Frank : ‘Negative political and personal attacks and distorting the facts are corrosive and manipulative’.
On to the Indian, Indo-Fijian, Fijian thing that has got you so worked up … your manufactured outrage over my failure to be sufficiently ‘New Fiji’ is nothing more than a magic card trick to flatter the eye and fool the brain – like the empty gesture of the digger parked outside the ‘Casino’ – and simply designed to frame the national conversation in as positive a fashion as possible, so that those who might think to quibble about the competence of those responsible for ceaseless power- and water cuts, while the leader and his entourage are holidaying on his supposed $75,000 salary on the Coral Coast, can be thrashed by the New Fiji thought police with the convenient sasa-brush of neo-colonialism and ‘attitudinal problems’.
Before you erupt in indignation: I Googled your article Fiji Army Chief Has A Valid Cause (The Australian, November 25 2006) and counted three specific references to ‘Indians’ and no references to Indo-Fijians, and four specific mentions of Fijians (as in indigenes, and not a sighting of an i-Taukei). Does this mean you share my ‘attitudinal problem’?
Or is it the case that for you there have always been Fijians and Indians in this country, until it became politically convenient for you and Frank to require us to think otherwise, allowing you to lambast those who are simply withholding their consent to this pointless name-rearranging because our consent was neither asked or given?
The truth would seem to lie in your own words, pre- and post-December 2006.
I accept that you are a believer in Frank’s cause and have always given you that respect. And have always campaigned for you to have access to channels of dialogue (like Friends of Fiji Media) where you might make your case.
But any time a government (any government, any where in the world, let alone an unelected one which took power by military force) requires me to only use certain words or otherwise be condemned by the local lexicon police I am reminded of the timelessness of George Orwell’s warning: ‘Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’
Charlie, your sophistry knows no bounds – a melange of isolated and sometimes unsupported points (the PM’s $75,000 salary, for instance. Where on earth did that come from? ) woven into an ostensibly compelling narrative. Guess that’s how one becomes a best-selling author but unfortunately it doesn’t wash.
I’m not going to bother to answer every single thread but I repeat – your mother-in-law has been a notorious indigenous supremacist, supported both the 1987 coups and the 2000 outrage and was a member of arguably the most racist government in Fiji’s history. The record is replete with arguments from her justifying her position and will become part of the public debate when and if she can again stand for public office. For moment, she is facing grave criminal charges and I have said all I am going to say.
You have been decidedly disingenuous in quoting my piece for The Australian before the 2006 coup. I actually said, in the first reference, ” descendants of the Indians brought to Fiji…” and then used the term “Indian” twice after that in close proximity to that sentence. This is hardly the way you’ve portrayed it.
But leaving this aside, to equate this to your own use of the term “Indian” more than seven years on is contextually and intellectually dishonest. We now have a Constitution that describes every citizen as a Fijian and I support that provision and adhere to it. You plainly don’t. Fine. But for you to delve back into history with a Google search trying to catch me out on this shows how just how desperate you’ve become to score a point.
It was customary back in 2006 for many people in Fiji to refer to “Indians”, as you well know. Now it isn’t. Indeed it is seen by many to be offensive. The point is that times change. You don’t. And it is patently because you and your family just don’t buy the notion of every citizen in Fiji being called a Fijian (“pointless name rearranging”). No, it’s actually to establish a common and equal name for everyone in Fiji that reflects where live now, not where their descendants came from. As in Australian, American, Canadian etc. Far from being pointless, as you say, it is a fundamental pillar of the new Fiji that the Bainimarama revolution envisages – one nation in which every Fijian is equal and every Fijian belongs.
It is very cheeky of you, to say the least, to pretend that you don’t know what your mother-in-law’s attitudes are to the burning issues of the moment – racial and religious equality, the secular state, the common name for all citizens – but to weigh in on her behalf so comprehensively. OK, what’s YOUR answer to the questions I posed? Maybe that will give us a clue to the current thinking at the House of Samisoni, even if it comes from the horse’s emissary and not the horse’s mouth. We now know what you think about everyone being called a Fijian. That’s why you continue to call people Indians, in defiance of the 2013 Constitution. Which other bits don’t you like?
Annoyance,
I am neither surprised or disgusted with Inoke’s expediency and pragmatism. It is to be expected from “Dirty Politicians” to use Bainimarama’s favorite phrase.
No what gets my goat is the hypocrisy and double standards demonstrated by Graham. First he attacks the media of this country without taking into account the draconian media decree; the high fines and prison sentences on hand for journalist editor and publishers for publishing something in the undefined public or national interest.
He attacks Mere for being racist but can provide no evidence but he talks glowingly about Inoke, a proud self confessed racist.
He attacks Mere for taking bread to parliament but Bainimarama is the hero of the day after feeding the hostage takers for 55 days, after paying them to hold hostages for 55 days and for taking them leave forms so they can take their hostage taking as a paid holiday.
Once upon a time Graham was a respected journalist. Over the years I have spent a lot of time in Australia and I always read his articles with pleasure. I was proud that a local Fiji boy had done so well. Now to see him writing this pompous drivel just angers me. He has so obviously sold out to the bad guys.
Still he is stuck now. I have not seen his byline in the Australian press for ages and his TV show is no more. I guess the only place he can find work is writing propaganda for a dictator.
S&G, you have made these points repeatedly in these columns and I allow you to do so freely and without hindrance. You are entitled to your opinions about me or anyone else. But you do not have a licence to bore so please stop boring me and everyone else by making the same points over and over again.
I don’t want to ban you but I will if you keep banging this drum. You have said your piece. Now tell us something we haven’t heard or eff off. I do what I do and am proud of it. You may not like it but tough. But at least people like Charlie Charters and I have the courage of our convictions to put a name to what we say rather than slink around in the shadows as you do.
The 2013 Fijian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and we are about to hold the first genuinely democratic election in Fiji’s history. It is high time for people like you to come out into the light of day, argue for your own position and subject yourself to genuinely open debate. That is true democracy – the politics of challenge and persuasion- whereas your preference for snide and anonymous character assassination is patently anti-democratic and the refuge of the timid and the cowardly.
There will not be a Parliament of phantoms come October but real people putting forward worthwhile ideas and policies. You need to meet the challenge to take part openly in the national debate on Fiji’s future or stay where you are – faceless, marginalised and impotent.
Graham please do us all a favour and ban the likes of S&G and Marc Edge from your blog. Their boring and biased views will turn many people away from your excellent reporting and your balanced views. We all know that 2014 will be a year of unparalleled significance for Fiji, a year where our leaders need all the support they can get. Nay sayers such as S&G just do not seem to understand that 99 % of the population craves a strong leader like Frank and will happily vote for him.
S&G, please stop justifying Mere bring food to the hostage takers in 2000 by saying that Bainimarama also feed them throughout the coup. Bainimarama was in charge of the negotiations to resolve the situation. Part of the negotiation tactics in any hostage situation is the supply of food. It also must be supplied for the hostages benifit as well. However, the only person that should be authorising food is the person in charge, Bainimarama. For Mere to do this completely undermines the negotiations and can only be seen as providing support for the terrorists.
Jon,
I agree Mere should not have been feeding anyone. I also agree that food is a negotiating tactic and if taken by itself Bainimarama supplying food would not be an issue.
However, he failed to take control over the situation. At no point was he able to cordon off parliament and stop people coming and going freely. If he had a proper cordon Mere would not have been able to supply food. If he had a proper cordon he would only have been dealing with the hostage takers and the hostages. Instead he had the added problem of thousands of civilians.
But not only that Jon, the Hostage takers were still on full pay. Can you think of any other example where there has been a coup by part of the military, they have removed the legitimate government and yet they still receive full pay.
To make it even stranger the Military took in leave request forms for the hostage takers. Thus making sure the hostage takers were not absent without leave.
If you read the Board of Inquiry report, every hostage taker in parliament believed they had the support of the military because they were being fed, they were being paid and they were not absent without leave. That is not good hostage negotiations; that is either support for the coup by the military hierarchy or just plain bad decision making.
Either way Bainimarama is not the hero of the hour as Frank’s’s chief propagandist would have us believe.
S&G, you are tedium personified. Who ended the siege of the Parliament? Who arrested George Speight? Who saved the country from God knows what under these goons? Answer: Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama.
Even Mahendra Chaudhry gives him credit for this and described him at the time as “a brave man”. But you do not because you oppose the current government. That is your right. But please don’t ask the rest of us to dwell on the periphery of the events of 2000 when it’s the big picture that counts.
You go on at me about propaganda. What a hypocrite! You fancy yourself as an accomplished propagandist yourself. Or at least you were. S&G. Shazzer and Grubby. Once mildly amusing, now as tedious and predictable as your postings here. The most recent cartoon parody that arrived in my inbox this morning is pathetic. No humour, no bite. Just the last mutterings of a spent political force.
So quit being a hypocrite and a bore, come out of your closet, throw off your mask and mix it with the big people. The dictatorship is coming to and end and the democracy is beginning. Get involved or remain anonymous, impotent, and bitter. And worst of all for a wannabe satirist – dismally unfunny.
Graham,
Your double standards know no bounds. You keep accusing Charlie of “I repeat: you have created a sideshow with Ratu Inoke to deflect attention away from your mother-in-law”
But you created a sideshow with Mere Samisoni to divert attention from the original debate on Media freedom.
The debate was about media freedom but as you do when you are losing the debate you divert attention and attack something else. (Lesson 1 of Propaganda for Dummies)
So off you went “If your Wikipedia entry is anything to go by, you also seem to be rather proud of your notorious mother-in-law, who’s currently facing charges of conspiring to overthrow the Bainimarama Government. She makes it into the third sentence of your bio, the dear old thing. I see that she still intends to contest the 2014 election. Can we expect your marketing skills to be employed on her campaign? It’s going to be an interesting year, that’s for sure.”
As ever on this column and in the Fiji media, it is one set of laws for the regime and their cronies and another set of laws for anyone who dares question them.
S&G, refer to above. Boring. Again. You keep banging on about the same thing, ad infinitum, as if by repeating it, it will somehow come to pass. Yet as with your modest “cartoon corner”, you are merely preaching to the converted on your side of the political fence. They doubtless find your argument (and your cartoons) compelling because there is so little else for them to cling to. But do feel free to bang on, if it helps to ease the pain of irrelevance. While you lock yourself away, flailing around in your anonymity and impotence, Fiji powers on.
The likes of S&G are the real problem of Fiji: Half educated losers who do not respect the rule of government. They are faceless and try to backstab our great leaders from the shadows. They claim that the government is after them and use the cloak of anonymity. They deny that never in Fiji’s history people had so much freedom, so much participation, so much consultation. They even smear the highest law of the land, our visionary constitution and claim that it provides a blanket immunity for treason and human rights abuses. We all know that this is ridiculous, but make no mistake, the constant bellow from the sidelines has impacts on donors and private investors. In other words those misfits need to be silenced before we confirm our leaders in this years election.
GANG BANGING DEMOCRACY AND MEDIA FREEDOM IN FIJI
Even if 2006 coup was unwarranted, it happened. Seven years ago. Qarase Government was partly to blame. It was a tyranny under he guise of democracy. How quickly its excesses have been forgotten. It was a different form of tyranny from the present one, but a tyranny nonetheless. A tyranny more insidious, cunning and cynical than the present one since Qarase mob used the rationale of democracy to legitimise it and ‘Fijian interests’ to justify it. All the while, Qarase continued to condemn democracy in various speeches.
Just as the law can be an ass, so can democracy. Ask the Iraqis. Or the Egyptians. Are they happier, safer, more peaceful, more prosperous than they were under Saddam, or Mubarak? Is the world safer with the demise of Saddam and Mubarak? This is not to totally debunk democracy, but to question it.
Qarase did see the light. The power sharing arrangement was commendable. It could have set Fiji on a new path. Tragically, the military felt it was too little, too late. If we jumped from frying pan into fire, Qarase mob is partly responsible, just as Chaudhry was in 2000.
Media freedom too needs to viewed from a wider framework instead of through the usual tired, beat up, cliched frame. Who can put hand on chest and honestly say media in Fiji have always supported/upheld/fortified democracy? Was aiding and abetting 2000 coup upholding public interest or democracy? Or was it settling scores and showing who is boss? A contest between two elephants in which the grass got trampled? The disregarded, forgotten, injured grass can be a metaphor for the public. Where was the concern for the public in this titanic battle? Under a democracy, who is more powerful? Media, government or the people? Where is people power of people can be trampled like grass?
Fiji’s Media’s stance on democracy has been just as chameleonic and self-serving as the politicians. Looked at another way, media freedom also represents the power of egoistic and power drunk editors/owners. In Fiji this power has been used to settle petty political scores and shape the destiny of the nation according to editors’ worldview, while pretending to represent our interests. If this sounds far-fetched, think about the Murdoch media. Media owners’ and editors’ power is not to be trifled with – especially in a democracy.
In Fiji we have seen the prostituting of democracy and freedom of speech. Politicians and media champion these ‘virtues’ when it suits them, and, to put it crudely, crap on them when it doesn’t. Regrettably, media is censored and democracy has been raped, but everyone took part in the gang bang at one time or another.
Annoyance, you have given us some excellent insights, are a welcome presence in these columns and are not annoying in the least. Vinaka.
I have come to know that the best way to throw the annoyance shit back on the face of callers from the call centre is to simply hang up on answer. Another way is to tell them that you are interested in their products, and put them on hold and go have a beer. Repeat.Repeat. Repeat and they will finally leave you alone.
To those of us who want to move forward with the new Fiji, leave the aggrieved ones behind to play with their willies.
I remember after a fight that Floyd Mayweather won, on a question if he would like to fight some guy he previously beat on a controversial decision, he said ” I don’t look back man”.
The point of difference is significant but quite straight forward.
You believe in Frank’s vision – that the name-changing and other elements of his constitution are the best chance for Fiji to move forward, to finally fulfil its abundant potential after almost 30 years of being towed backwards by what Frank diagnoses as a diseased political elite. But you have to acknowledge that this is a problem that exists in two dimensions. There are plenty of countries in the world, starting with the USA, with a diseased political elite that haven’t endured the carnage that Fiji has gone through.
That’s because of the subject nobody on your side of table wants to talk about: Fiji’s future cannot be mapped out without the issue of the past conduct, and future integrity, purpose and leadership values of the armed forces being resolved. It’s a must. And to ignore this issue is, for me, to make the whole process meaningless. Because the diseased political elite that Frank and you so rail against have only ever been able to turn each elected government on its head by suborning all or part of the armed forces into their power-grab schemes. Hence Yash Ghai and his commissioners’ focus on this very subject.
Now, without wanting to rehash the Ghai controversy, what was always going to be the most meaningful test of the sincerity of Frank’s commissioning of Ghai was the extent to which the armed forces role would be a servant of New Fiji, or vice versa. Crosbie Walsh identified this as ‘the most critical and arguable issues’ in an article you endorsed on your site, and warned ominously that the role of the military (including the issue of amnesty) would ultimately determine Ghai’s success or failure: ‘If the Commission and Assembly do not come up with something that is acceptable to the Bainimarama government, the military and civil society, it is unlikely there will be a satisfactory conclusion to the Commission’s work.’ We know there was not a satisfactory conclusion and the current constitution is almost completely blank on the issues that Ghai’s document raised.
The plain fact is that the army have been the enabling actors in each of the country’s four coups (see Ratu Inoke Kubuabola’s 1988 admission but also the super-swift conversion of M Chaudhry and his cheerleaders in December 2006 to the merits of being returned to power by coup).
With each coup, both the officer class and ranks have moved further and further from their constitutionally mandated roles, serving the state and its citizenry, into an organisation that seeks to control the state and gainsay its every decision, and dominate each function and capability whether within or far outside its field of competence (and often in the name of ‘national security’). MOST IMPORTANTLY – this leaves the state and its citizens (including employers and investors) ALWAYS and ENTIRELY at the mercy of each and every quarrel, opportunistic schism and factional squabble within its structure (to wit, the origins of Coup 1, Coup 2, Coup 3, November 2000 mutiny, Coup 4, Driti trial etc.)
If you look at the reported testimony from the Driti trial it is self-evident to what extent the diseased political elite has comingled with and corrupted the army’s elite so often and over so many years that the two elites are now almost one and the same. The trial made clear at the heart of the army is a leadership that is dysfunctional, self-serving and vainglorious (or as Madigan said of Driti: ‘evasive, divertive, petulant and ungracious’.)
It flows logically from that, that such a leadership infects each successive rank below it. The examples of this are endless and across the whole forces’ spectrum: from the Vunakece Road beatings at gunpoint in July last year, to Teleni’s ‘lamu lamu, lamu sona’ threat to sack police officers of a certain ethnicity who refused to back his bonkers Christian outreach programme, to the current crazy stand off over the immigration status of Franck Boivert who helped Police win the Sukuna Bowl with a thumping victory and now fears that anti-Police forces within the army have stripped him of his right to work in Fiji rugby despite his valid and twice-confirmed FTIB investor status.
[Again, not to throw oil onto the fire, but that’s why I search in earnest for any evidence of Ratu Inoke’s formal renouncement of all past evil deeds, because he (and others) and Rabuka began this sorry descent in 1987 – 30 years of chaos and loss flows from Ratu Inoke’s eager fanning of the flames about loss of native title when that was manifestly impossible under the constitutional lock in place.]
If I have caused upset by the tone of my comments, I genuinely apologise. I know that Frank commands great loyalty (I once wrote speeches for him when he was president of the FRU) and he has many believers. And I am very aware that many of your contributors feel safe and secure in the knowledge that the army has kicked arse metaphorically and in real life over the past almost 30 years.
But isn’t it about time that we have a constitution that reflects where this fear and instability is coming from: Yes, the diseased political elite is the problem, but it’s only half of the problem. The other half is the armed forces who have been active and willing participants in each and every one of the schemes that that elite has concocted. Taken together this is the real reason Fiji and its people (however you chose to identify them) have been cheated of 30 years of progress.
Charlie, I acknowledge many of the points that you raise here about the politicisation of the military and the blurring of its traditional roles. But the milk is spilt and has been since 1987. Sending it “back to barracks” in a fundamental sense could take a decade or more and the prerequisite for that is surely a lengthy period of successful civilian rule. This has certainly been the case in a number of Asian and African nations where the military has seized power, some of which are now counted as successful democracies such as Indonesia and Thailand.
The important thing is that the raison d’etre of the Fijian military has changed. Where once it was the bastion of indigenous supremacy and provided the muscle to enforce that supremacy, it now regards itself – at leadership level – as the guardian of the nation’s welfare generally. We all know that the fundamental difference between 1987 and 2006 is that the 87 coups were to assert indigenous supremacy whereas the 2006 takeover was to assert the principle of racial equality. The 2000 Speight rebellion I’ve come to class as something quite different – a craven lunge for power by an unscrupulous clutch of gangsters under the guise of indigenous supremacy.
Now you can pooh pooh that analysis as much as you like but the 2013 Constitution is the tangible culmination of the 2006 revolution: every Fijian of whatever ethnic background and religion is declared equal, has the same opportunity, a range of socio-economic rights, the entitlement to be called a “Fijian” and, crucially, votes of equal status. None of this existed before.
Indeed, this document would have been inconceivable until the Bainimarama revolution. But he and the military have delivered it – with a large degree of civilian support – when any number of politicians and tenuous alliances in previous years could not. Whatever their flaws, Bainimarama and those around him have broken the cycle of three decades of arrested development.
Yes, it happened at the point of the gun, again like many such instances around the world. But I remain convinced that only the most radical of interventions could have put Fiji on the path towards genuine democracy. The historical record is indisputable. The Qarase Government – on the back of an indigenous majority and spearheaded by indigenous supremacists – was rapidly creating a tyranny of the majority. 40 per cent of the country was being overtly marginalised. Years of political horse-trading had failed to fundamentally alter the situation. So in a very real sense, the military has been the guarantor of a better future for every Fijian, whatever its shortcomings.
I just don’t buy the narrative that all this would have happened naturally through power sharing and compromise under the previous order. For the ethnic minorities in Fiji, the game was getting away. Bainimarama had the vision and courage to realise that Fiji could only fulfil its promise through equality and inclusiveness and he acted.
That revolution is still being played out and there are many hurdles ahead. But I don’t see the military as inherently a problem so long as it continues with its agenda to guarantee national stability in the interests of all Fijians and to return Fiji to civilian rule. Like any institution, it is not perfect. It needs to keep a check on excessive use of force, deal with human rights abuses in its ranks and better reflect Fiji’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious make-up. But I don’t regard it as inherently insidious or evil in the way that you and others appear to do. On the contrary, I believe the RFMF deserves huge credit for having kept the country safe for all Fijians and for having protected the national economy and the jobs of everyone. This is in addition to its sterling work in building up rural and maritime infrastructure and in helping to deal with successive natural disasters.
The Bainimarama revolution has indeed ended the grip of a diseased political elite on Fiji’s society and economy. Without this revolution we would still have corruption and racism. Now with our new leaders being fully supported by our proud military force, the likes of Chaudhry, Patel, Singh and Mothibai are no longer able to cream off our hard earned money. Confirming Bainimarama in the upcoming election as a truthful, selfless and visionary leader is our most important national duty. It will also be important that he can remain the head of the RFMF as this is the only way to ensure the sustainability of his revolution. As far as the dirty politicians go, they should all be rounded up and put in jail before the elections. We do not need their endless bickering and sniping from the sidelines. We want stability, jobs, affordable electricity and cheap food. Only a strong and determined leader can deliver this in Fiji!
Graham,
I have missed our little online chats.
Boring is such a second rate insult. You used to be so much better, let me remind you of some other insults you have sent my way were a bit more imaginative: coward, liar, limuri, racist, impotent, undergraduate (Not sure why that is an insult but in the context you meant it as one), not that clever, dreary as all shit (That’s probably the best) etc. etc.
I remember a year or so ago you pompously wrote to me saying “I’m now dispatching you to the junk mailbox so I don’t have to be assailed by your impertinence any longer.”
Glad to see one year on I still arrive in your inbox, and equally glad you still resort to insults and diversion when you have lost the argument.
To answer your questions
Who ended the siege at Parliament?
The better questions would be who allowed the siege at parliament to
1. Get started
2. Go on so long and
3. Gave so much support to the hostage takers.
Who arrested George Speight?
It was not Bainimarama and it was not part of a Bainimarama Plan. Young Col Mara stopped Speight at a road block saw he had weapons and arrested him. Mara’s reward for such loyalty was a trumped up charge of sedition.
Who saved the country from God knows what under these goons?
Unfortunately for Bainimarama replaced one set of HIS goons with another set of HIS goons.
I have never fancied myself as a propagandist. I do this for fun and have been joined by others who do this for fun. It does not really matter if it is effective or not.
You on the other hand have to write propaganda, and to be honest you do it very well. It is just a shame for you, being a dictator’s word smith is not compatible with being a journalist or TV presenter. So that part time job for Qorvis has turned into the only job
To add insult to injury hey Graham, It must really get on your nerves, you an award winning journalist being told what to write by Sharon. After all no self respecting journalist would ever be told what to write by an advertising sales lady. But here we are in Fiji The ad sales girl is now your boss and gives you and your fellow Qorvis lackeys instructions and briefs.
S&G, as I say, if it makes you feel better. Your Shazza and Grubby postings have been so intermittent in recent times that my email filter has obviously let you back in. No matter. They are now so chronically unfunny – except in the eyes of your principal cheerleader, the Moose – that however hard I try, I can’t raise even a wry smile or a chuckle, as I once did. That’s the trouble with originality. So hard to sustain. You were all the things that I once called you. But, yes, now you are just boring.
As in dull, monotonous, repetitive, unrelieved, unvaried, uneventful, characterless, colorless, lifeless, insipid, uninteresting, unexciting, uninspiring, uninvolving, flat, bland, dry, stale, tired, lackluster, stodgy, dreary, mundane, monochrome; mind-numbing, soul-destroying, wearisome, tiring, tiresome, irksome, trying, frustrating, deadly, not up to much, humdrum, ho-hum, blah, dullsville, ‘same old, same old’ etc etc.
But other than that, you seem to be still enjoying yourself, which is the most important thing. Just I enjoy my work for Qorvis and assisting Fiji to become a genuine democracy rather than the pale imitation you preferred under the old order. Do carry on.
Dear Graham
Why do you waste your time with a bore like S&G? It is people like him and the likes of US Ambassador Larry Dinger who have brought Fiji’s economy down by constant bickering and lies. Foreign investors think our beloved country is not worth their attention, the latest figures from the Reserve Bank are dismal. Because of people like Edge, S&G and Dinger, Fiji is often perceived as a banana republic ruled by a bumbling psychopath and a corrupt and greedy AG. We have to be very careful this year not to allow the international community to be influenced by advocates of the old elites. We have to constantly make sure that the truth about the Banimarama revolution and his successes in eradicating poverty corruption and unfair reporting in the media is told to a wide audience. I trust that a professional organisation such as Qorvis can perform this daunting task and hope that your energies will be fully concentrated on this. Battling with S&G et al will not be productive.
It looks like this year is the year that Fiji decides if it wants to grow up and join the rest of the world as a modern and free country with equality human rights and a progressive democracy in the true sense of the word or fall back onto the same old same old and continue to be burdened by the cultural and traditional baggage of old. We are either going to fly or sink. I am one of those who will say that i do not agree with everything this government has done particularly when it comes to decisions about the economy. I also appreciate that a lot of mistakes have been made simply because government has not taken wider consultations on many issues however if i had to choose today who to vote for i will vote for Frank in a heart beat simply because the alternatives are far worse. Given time and democracy most of what i don’t agree with will be addressed i hope . The country simply cant afford to go to the old ways. We must modernize or risk becoming a failed state. While the rest of the world is experimenting with driver less cars, replacing human organs with artificial ones etc we in Fiji can’t seem to get past a common name for all folks who reside in Fiji and the removal of the GCC. We must grow up.
Some people would do anything to blame others for their downfall when they themselves can’t seem to take it on the chin and move on.
A real shame for sure.
Latest news is that USP journalism program is imploding. The head of the program, Ian Webber, has resigned and returned to Australia.
Ian Webber is a Marc Edge clone and crony. Together, these two clowns they have brought a once-fine journalism program to its knees.
USP students feel three people destroyed USP Journalism:
1. Marc Edge
2.Sudesh Mishra
3. Ian Webber
Whatever and wherever Sudesh is involved,things are ruined.Its not only journalism.The school is in shambles but he is VCs pet so all cases, even misbehaving, bullying, threatening, swearing all is ignored. Check cases against him with HR USP. As a reward for being VCs pet he is sent on sabbatical! God help the VC and USP under his dictatorship
Sudesh has only eyes for white people. Married to one, thinks he is one and worships all. All he has done since joining USP is hire whites and fire Pacific Islanders-check his record.thinks no one in the pacific-men and women are fit to teach. All his cronies are white. All his appointments are terrible,Ian included. But it’s ok since all are white. Wonder what would have happened if a Pacifica was involved with a student. vc and Sudesh would have fired him instantly,being white is ok with Sudesh so likes of Ian , Mark are the visions of Sudesh and then he falls flat on his face and all is still ok with vc. After all Sudesh sucks vc. Journalism will be dead and buried if Sudesh stays longer.
Is it true that Nash was over exploited and fired by Sudesh? Nash wasn’t white so didn’t get any privileges whites get under sudesh’s leadership like bottomless wines,dinners, conference leaves, low workload. God have mercy of Pacific island academics at USP.
The root of most problems at USP journalism is Marc Edge who suffered from a serious small-man syndrome. he used to scream and shout at students, belittle them in class, bully them. he was a racist who described fijians as ‘slow’. he fought with fellow staff. His teaching was shit. he left a train wreck behind.
I have been following the USP journalism horror story on facebook and fijileaks. Big questions: why was money for the broadcasting lecturer taken away from budget? Why was someone unqualified for teaching journalism appointed? Who is responsible? How did USP allow this? Dr Ian Weber is blaming Sudesh Mishra.
It seems Sudesh Mishra making mockery of journalism. Did Sudesh Mishra take money away and re-direct to his own pet project as alleged on FaceBook? what kind head of school expects staff to teach 5 courses? Is this good practice? Is this normal practice at USP? USP should answer.
What kind of head of school short-change his own journalism student in such a way? what kind of head of school deny students a lecturer in broadcasting? Is this what USP means by commitment to students and quality teaching? Is this example of how premier tertiary institute in the region treats students?
did sudesh give job to his friend who is not qualified in journalism? Is this example of nepotism at premier tertiary institute in the region? To us observers its clear from what we have read so far is that Sudesh Mishra is making mischeif.
It seems he working against interest of journalism students, journalism staff and journalism program. Is he using journalism funds for himself. USP has to come clear on where funds diverted to. whose interest is sudesh working in? His own interest and his friend’s interest?
It seems recent allegations against corruption and nepotism at USP are really true. There is something rotten and stinky at USP. Ian Weber, Marc Edge and Shailen Singh and students are victims. I do not blame Ian Weber for leaving.
Judging from the USP journalism diaster, it seems Sudesh Mishra lacks the experience, temperament, maturity and foresight to lead an academic program.
Looks like the dean Professor Akanisi Kedrayte has had to step in and clean up the mess created by Sudesh Mishra. They should just sack the guy. He is more trouble than its worth.
Sudesh Mishra is good at creating crisis, not good at solving them. USP journalism is a circus.
The joke among journalism students is that Sudesh Mishra has a big man-crush on Doctor Matthew Thompson, who was hired without any consultation with Ian Weber. AS Weber says, Mathew is a creative writer with no journalism degrees or media studies degrees.
Sudesh Miishra is giving jobs and Fiji holidays to his Australian buddies at the expense our education. Everyone know he is VC Rajesh Chandra’s pet boy so he can do as he pleases.
Um, maybe Dr T knows a thing or two about journalism?
http://www.matthewthompsonwriting.com/biography.html
Or better to have armchair experts?
Maybe Mr T Knows something about journalism.
But his mate Prof Mishra knows nothing.
If Prof Mishra wants to do everything, then everyone else should pack up and leave. Like Ian Weber.
The biggest armchair expert is professor Sudesh Mishra but he knows shit about media.
Big mess at USP journalism. We all knew Nash Sorariba was leaving well before he left in December 2013. The BIG question is, why wasn’t his position advertised? Why did Sudesh Mishra sit on this? Its very true what ian Weber said that Sudesh Mishra removing budget for position of broadcastinf lecturer in 2014. This has greatly inconvenienced is journalism students. It has delayed our graduation. We tpay schoo, fees, but we have been cheated by by incompetent head of school Sudesh Mishra. Dr Akanisi Kedrayate told us at studnt meeting “its water under the bridge”. where is the transparency Dr Kedrayate? Are you running a corrupt faculty? This is a cover up for Sudesh Mishra’s incompetence. Its very easy for Dr Kedrayate to say water under bridge. She is not affected. It her slackness and VC’s Rajesh Chandra’s inaction that students suffering at hands of Sudesh Mishra, and now they cover up.
We had people like Professor Sudesh Mishra at a regional institution I used to work at. We called such people colour blind. Such people can see the achievements of white expatriates but are blind to their faults. They can see the faults of local people, but are blind to their achievements. This condition is the outcome of a colonised mind.
Its a great thing for USP that Ian Weber has FINALLY left. He – if I don’t say so myself was the one person who brought the the entire programme to the ground. Reflecting no professionalism whatsoever and openly passing degrading comments about teaching assistant Irene Manueli (who by the way was the heart of Wansolwara) to students saying such things as “don’t ask her for anything she has no qualification” on top of that he put unnecessay stress on students causing the newspaper to FAIL. Think about it- the paper has been running successfully until HE came.
Reply
The latest is that Ian Weber the former head of USP journalism has joined the UNDP as some of kind of consulted after suddenly resigning and leaving students stranded in the first week of the semester. Ao much for blaming Mr Shailendra and and Professor Sudesh Mishra for his resignation!
We know Ian Weber has joined UNDP. Irene Manueli is back. After creating the mess Sudesh Mishra is on sabbatical. he should thank Irene Manueli or saving his arse because without Irene the program would have been even more shit than now. All students cursing Sudesh Mishra for his shitty handling of the journalism. Former students tell us it has never been in such poor shape, even with lesser staff. we have the worst head of school ever who is always interfering.
After Ian Webber resigned, I went to USP journalism students meeting with Professor Sudesh and Dr Akanisi to see if I should still enrol. Sudesh Mishra was a dick. Asked why not get experienced local journalists to teach, he said we can’t pick journalists from the street, we need academics. That’s when I realise why Ian Webber left because Sudesh Mishra is an arrogant know-it-all prick. Sudesh is a snob who doesn’t even know that journalism programme have mix of academics and experienced journalists. No wonder USP journalism face so many problems since he came.
We don’t care about academics writing papers if they keep leaving. Maybe it’s good for Sudesh profile but its useless for us. Is USP for students or only for Sudesh Mishra who make decision for his own personal benefit? Since Sudesh came focus move from students to overseas staff, that’s why students suffer under him. There is no continuity for three years because Sudesh and Dr Akanisi making poor appointments. But they were arrogant in the meeting, that’s why I am writing this.
Irene Manueli is not journalist from the street. She has 20 years experience and plays important role. Sudesh and Dr Akanisi don’t recognise Irene’s talents because they don’t know about journalism. Irene has more practical skills than Ian Webber. Without her USP journalism will be nothing. Dr Akanisi said they only hire from overseas because in the past they receive complaints about the quality of journalism. Journalism students don’t know why Akanisi only pick journalism when there is lot of complain about other courses like law. Everyone in USP knows this. Former journalism students are doing well in good jobs so what is Dr Akanisi talking about? She should think before she open her mouth.
They quality of USP journalism was good but brought down by Sudesh Mishra. His poor style makes Ian Webber resign. The quality has been brought down by not advertising the post of Nash in timely manner. It shows how slow SLAM and FALE is. Quality is brought down because of Sudesh and Akanisi’s slackness. The quality brought down by closing wansolwara and not updating website even though they have so many staff now. One year Irene was given to teach JN201 by Mark Edge. That’s bringing down quality, Dr Akanisi. Why not you mention that? USP journalism degree that year should be cancelled because students taught by unqualified staff. It should be investigated. Journalism is going to the dogs under Sudesh and Akanisi and they arrogantly talk about standards. What a joke. The last three years have been the worst. We students believe Sudesh and Akanisi vey bad team. They bring down quality but trying to cover up.
I left my studies to work, I but I want to come back. I talk to some SLAM staff and they say that all Sudesh care about is writing his papers. Outside of his field he is not the brightest. The exact words of staff is they should lock Sudesh in a room to write poetry and throw the key away. Make somebody else who is less selfish and cares more for students the head of school. Sudesh can’t inspire staff or students. I am not coming back this year as I have seen enough, and we students think will be more problems in journalism. FNU is much better.
Last years all we hear about improving standards at USP journalism, but all see see in declining standards. All talk, not action.
What I meant to say was that last 3 years all we hear about is improving standards at USP journalism, but all see is declining standards. All talk, not action.
USP VC Rajesh Chandra boasts that USP degrees are equivalent to Australian ones. In reality, most USP graduates have a pretty low standards, and can’t string together a sentence. The ones from the law school are not fit to practice. The ones also comes from the school of education and the the school of accounting are equally bad. Ask any employer.
USP Journalism has gone behind by about 10 years.
Marc edge is back, warning Crobie Walsh to ‘leave media analysis to the experts.’
If he means ‘experts’ like him, God help us all.
This man’s bias and personal agenda is obvious.
He has criticised journalism standards in Fiji numerous times.
Now he is defending standards?
It seems Marc Edge changes his stance as and when it suites his agenda.
He lodged a complaint against a Fiji journalist with MIDA.
The very MIDA he denounces as authoritarian, he legitimises by lodging a complaint with it.
It seems this man has no principles. Just a mighty big axe to grind.
He changes his stance like people change their underwear.
Fortunately many people can see right through him.
This is one ‘expert’ you would want to give a wide berth.
The editors and doyens of Friends of Fiji Media face-book are hypocrites. Lately they disallowed anonymous memberships, citing ethics and and a preventative measure against personal attacks. Yet they allowed Marc Edge’s to post a link to an article that carried personal attacks on Ashwin Raj, including his sexuality, and humble background, which had nothing to with his media role. The latter, of course, deserves criticism, but why the bitchy, personal attacks? Why did Friends of Fiji Media allow it?
Marc Edge is too dim-witted to know that people from humble beginnings can rise to great heights – India’s Modi was a tea vendor. Self-styled doyens of Fiji media media, who behave and talk like they know it all, did not raise a word in objection to Marc Edge’s personal attacks. Dennis Rounds, never short of words, was silent. With his quietness he confirmed that his moralising is not worth shit. Samisoni Pareti was actually goading Marc Edge on. He seemed to revel in the nastiness. One can see why Samisoni Pareti and Marc Edge get on. They both seem to share a liking for bitchiness. Marc Edge passed a particularly nasty comment about Ashwin Raj’s sickness. No one uttered a word against it, except Netani Rika, so respect to him. As for Dennis Rounds and Samisoni Pareti, hypocrites full of hot air. Just all talk.
Friends of Fiji face-book administrators need to take a good, hard look at themselves. Giving Marc Edge a platform and a free reign to continue the abuse and bullying he was doing at USP is not doing them any good – just exposing their naivety, shallowness, callowness and nastiness.
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