Don’t be conned by the protestations of loyalty to the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, by Goldfinger – his recently-acquitted deputy, Manoa Kamikiamica, who is again behaving like prime minister in waiting, including at his latest appearance at the Australia Fiji Business Council.
Because behind the scenes, Mr Sweet is part of a white-anting campaign against the PM over his decision to proceed with his bid to get the Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling by the High Court judge, Justice Dane Tuiqereqere, to quash the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry into the Malimali affair.
That decision is a catastrophe for Kamikamica and anyone else who received adverse mentions in the CoI Report, including the likes of the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, and the President of the Fiji Law Society, “Boo hoo crybaby” Wylie Clarke.
Why? Because they have been portraying Tuiqereqere’s ruling as a victory – vindication, acquittal – and now the Court of Appeal is going to examine that ruling with a fine-tooth comb. And there are enough holes in Dane Tuiqereqere‘s judgment for more senior judges to drive a truck through it and even reinstate the CoI.
What’s the biggest hole? That Tuiqereqere – a novice judge with less than three years experience and with a background as a lawyer litigating personal accident compensation claims – threw out the entire Ashton-Lewis Report. Not individual sections that he might have found were evidence of apparent bias or a denial of natural justice but the whole lot.
That it itself is an absurdity which simply cannot stand and especially when Tuiqereqere accused the Prime Minister and the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, of denying the applicants natural justice. As soon as the judgment was given, it was inevitable that the head of government and head of state would appeal because to not do so would be disastrous for their own positions.
The Prime Minister, especially, cannot go into the coming election with a finding by a High Court judge that the Supreme Court Commission of Inquiry he instituted was an act of folly. He was always going to appeal and has indicated that if the Court of Appeal decides in Dane Tuiqereqere’s favour, he will take it to the Supreme Court – Fiji’s highest.
That’s how it was always going to be or Rabuka’s reputation – which has taken a severe battering over his decision to institute the CoI in the first place – would be shredded altogether. And so would that of his chief, the President, who took the PM’s advice to set up the Commission and appointed Justice David Ashton-Lewis to conduct it.
But of course, those fingered by Ashton-Lewis are apoplectic. They are so gormless that they seem to have genuinely believed that this ordeal was behind them when the fact is that it may well be only just beginning.
It is why Grubsheet is still shaking our head over Wylie Clarke’s interview last week with Vijay Narayan in which the possibility of an appeal wasn’t even canvassed in almost an hour of “woe is me”, plus a direct attack on the Prime Minister for his own conduct. That would have just made Rabuka even more determined to prevail.
It will have also made him even more determined not to change the electoral system before the next election. We are going to the polls under the provisions of the 2013 Constitution whether we like it or not – the d’Hondt system of “big man” politics and the five per cent threshold for a party to gain any seats in the parliament at all. Why? Because as Grubsheet has long observed, it suits the Prime Minister as the only “big man” still standing.
Manoa Kamikamica can posture all his likes in the delusion that the leadership can be his. But Goldfinger is a small man carrying the burden of criminal allegations that may well be revisited. And the Prime Minister is going to present the People’s Alliance with a stark choice: Back me as the man most likely to win or lose the certainty of victory by backing someone who has no chance of coming through the pack.
It is pure political logic and a reflection of the raw power Sitiveni Rabuka wields over the entire political system and has done since d’Hondt’s other Mr Big, Frank Bainmarama, was excluded from parliament altogether by his prison sentence.
I repeat: Goldfinger can posture all he likes – his perpetual grin concealing the white-anting campaign he and his wife, Ann, are conducting against the PM – but he is wasting his time. Not only is he not going to make it to the leadership in the short term but Rabuka will be doing his darnedest to ensure Kamikamica is plunged back into the mire of court cases, expensive lawyers and questions in the public mind about his integrity.
Will all this spill out into the public arena? The conventional wisdom in politics is that disunity is death so probably not if Kamikamica and those around him want to avoid a head-on-confrontation with the PM that damages their own election chances. Which is why the white-anting campaign against Rabuka has just gone up a notch as panic sets in about the CoI appeal and what it might mean for those who might have thought they were off the hook but are now fish still very much caught on the line.
So what do you do when you can’t say anything yourself? You go to your trusty matanivanua and the man who long ago established himself as the chief attack dog against the CoI to the extent of actually filing a police report against Justice David Ashton-Lewis that failed. Ta da! Yes good old Homer – the “citizen journalist” and fashion plate, Charlie Charters, who is smarting from his own encounter with the criminal justice system when he expected to be treated like a hero.
Charlie is now going for the Prime Minister’s jugular in an astonishing piece on Facebook directly questioning Rabuka’s judgment and character across a broad front. He actually accuses the PM of “f**king up”. And rest assured that Homer wouldn’t be saying any of it publicly without the imprimatur of his mates burnt by the CoI.
It tells us a couple of things – the level of panic about the prospect of an appeal that might overturn the Tuiqereqere judgment. But also that the crocodiles of the Coalition are beginning to devour themselves in the election lead-up – not yet in public but using Homer in a Muumuu to attack Rolex Rambo – the Prime Minister – in the deluded belief that he will stand aside for Goldfinger – Manoa Kamikamica.
It isn’t going to happen but Homer’s Facebook posting tells us that things are already messy in terms of government unity and are about to get much worse.
“SHOULDN’T … be saying this but here goes. Character is destiny.
Under the Constitution, the Office of the Prime Minister, Republic of Fiji has discretion to appoint whoever he or she wants into a wide variety of positions.
These are a whole spread of big jobs and little jobs, all in the gift of the Fiji Government – from who makes up Cabinet, to Ambassadorships, to statutory bodies like FBC News and Govt-owned companies like Fiji Airways, to the chair of the board of visitors at the CWM Hospital.
The Prime Minister might make good choices or bad choices but everyone accepts they’re his or her choices to make. So far, so good.
There are two jobs that we know Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka got involved with where he crossed a big red line. One of those dropped yet another big mess yesterday.
Rabuka should not have done this for constitutional and separation-of-powers issues. Inevitably what he done has ended up completely messing up both organisations. And because if Bainimarama had done what Rabuka has done, we know Leader of the Opposition Rabuka would have hit the roof.
Whether you are a supporter of the The People’s Alliance or not, we are the poorer for his having played havoc where he should not.
These are the two key jobs where he has directly and unforgivably f*@ked things up.
– The appointment of interim national team coach Senirusi Seruvakula.
On July 13, Rabuka denied to the media telling Fiji Rugby to appoint a local coach before Seruvakula was selected.
[This is not what multiple sources close to former coach Mick Byrne have been claiming.]
But Rabuka could not help himself, talking to the media, from saying clearly the FRU knew his strong preference was for a local coach and that he was happy with the appointment. And Rabuka was keen to restate this even after Fiji’s pitiful performances against Wales and England last month.
In fact he doubled-down on his support for Seruvakula and said after the two-match humiliation that the interim coach should be given even more time.
‘Let’s see whether the argument that a local coach better understands the players, and the players better understand the coach, proves correct,’ Rabuka was quoted by RugbyPass before the Scotland Test, making clear he wanted the FRU to look at Seruvakula through the longest lens possible.
Fiji ended up being just as unconvincing in their third and final match as in the first two, against what was a second-string Scotland side.
So in this first example:
a) Rabuka busied himself in FRU coaching and selection policy directly or indirectly
b) as a result we have a national team that is now 0-3 under this interim but local coach with a negative point differential of 96 or minus 32 points a match,
c) remembering that Fiji was 13-7 under Mick Byrne with positive point difference of 80 after 20 Test or plus 4 points per Test [588 > 508].
d) to achieve Seruvakula [who was appointed the same day Byrne was sacked], the FRU had to pay out much of the balance of Byrne’s contract through to December 2027 and,
e) the FRU decided this week – very late in the RWC cycle – to try to find someone interested in leading the Fiji team who might still be available.
The starting date is October 5 through to the end of next year – a 15-month contract.
I have no inside knowledge of where Rugby House’s thinking is, but my gut feeling is that Seruvakula will not be confirmed as national team coach.
If that’s the case the shoe-horning of a local coach into the Test team – Rabuka’s stated wish – has been a total failure.
And then this …
-the appointment of the acting Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption – FICAC Commissioner Lavi Rokoika
Justice Tuiqereqere ruled on February 2 that the PM’s decision to recommend to the President the removal of the FICAC Commissioner Barbara Malimali on May 29 last year was unlawful.
Rabuka did not have the constitutional power to do what he did.
Also, we now know that the basis on which he did this [and sacked his Attorney-General Graham Leung] was the confection of nonsense, liumuri and aage piche known as the COI Report.
The COI Report was authored by Rabuka’s close friend David Ashton-Lewis with another close friend Janet Mason as counsel assisting.
The COI Report was so totally flawed as well as having run out of time and not been gazetted correctly that Tuiqereqere has correctly consigned it to the toilet bowl of history.
Rabuka says he is appealing both decisions in a personal capacity; we know the lawyers in the Office of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General told him not to appeal the February decision.
To replace Malimali, Rabuka only had to look around his Natewa Bay hothouse of talent.
He selected kinswoman Lavi Rokoika as acting FICAC Commissioner.
The acting Attorney-General reported to Parliament of the Republic of Fiji yesterday that Rokoika’s FICAC had secured 18 convictions against the 508 investigation files the elite law enforcement agency handled from July 1 last year to June 30 this year.
This is the reporting period that maps Rokoika’s first 12 months in charge.
FICAC’s budget by the way for the same 12 months … $8.45m.
If you believe in these kinds of metrics, that’s $470,000 a conviction.
There were specific cases that we know Rokoika initiated directly and in many cases against the advice of her senior legal teams leading to an exodus of talent and experience.
Rabuka had a vision for the theory of why we should have a locally coached Fiji team.
But that theory, just like FICAC’s big political prosecutions, fell apart in practice once the Fiji team and the FICAC lawyers had to run onto the pitch and play ball.
Thanks to Rabuka’s meddling, both are big talk, no walk paper tigers. As we can now see more clearly when we look at Rokoika’s key charging decisions in the past year:
1. Sanjay Kaba – charged with obtaining a financial advantage. Magistrate rules that after FICAC had presented their prosecution case, they had not even shown that a crime had taken place, let alone that Kaba was guilty. No case to answer – June 19 2026.
2. Christopher Pryde – abuse of office. Nolle prosequi after almost a year of allegedly failing to serve papers on Pryde – July 22.
3. Me/Charlie Charters – two counts of aiding and abetting a breach of the FICAC Act. The case against me allegedly rested on two documents: one that showed what a hapless Keystone Cops routine Rokoika was following as FICAC tried unsuccessfully to serve papers on Pryde; the other that she had hired the daughter of Gilbert Vakalabure to work at FICAC just days after clearing Vakalalabure of abuse of office allegations that would ultimately cost him his job. Vakalalabure, by the way, had given her and husband’s law firm prime office rental at no cost. Permanent stay granted by Justice Bulamainaivalu – July 24.
4. Manoa Kamikamica – perjury. The case collapses mid-trial and in the end the magistrate rules, as with Kaba, that FICAC cannot even show a crime has taken place let alone that Kamikamica is guilty. No case to answer – August 3.
5. Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and Vimlesh Sagar. Abuse of office/general dishonesty. Case collapses after FICAC say they have discovered just before the start of the trial that two key witnesses had migrated. Which was a surprise to everyone in the court as, on July 7, FICAC had told the court they were ready for trial, with no issues over migrating witnesses. Nolle prosequi – August 26.
In my two nights in FICAC jail, I heard Rokoika screeching at her employees. She’d call one of them and ask to be put on speaker, and then unload.
So she runs FICAC; she’s across all of the failures of the five cases I listed and every single one is a loss in her column.
You may say I am drawing together the Fiji rugby and FICAC situations because both directly impact me. True. They are causes close to my heart. But also these are two organisations that have an outsized impact on the mental health and well-being of our country.
The world-beating performances we want to see from our national teams and the life-sapping scourge that is corruption, nepotism and abuse of public funds are two sides of the same coin. How we feel about ourselves and the strength of our country.
However well meaning Rabuka may have convinced himself he was being, we deserve so much better from the decisions made by the PM and his legal advisors. Because the country has been diminished by the PM’s actions and with nothing to show for it.
Character is destiny. Always has been, always will be.“
____________________________
Homer tries to depict the national interest as the motive for this extraordinary attack. It is bollocks, as they say where he comes from in the Old Dart.
Charlie Charters is the frontman for the gaggle of those fingered in the CoI Report who are in blind panic at the prospect of senior judges overturning Dane Tuiqereqere’s judgment.
Yet aside from fulminating, they don’t hold any cards whatsoever. Goldfinger is just dreaming. This is all about raw power. And the power rests with d’Hondt’s Mr Big and his chief.
NOTE TO READERS:
The notion that the Prime Minister will fund his own appeal/s is nonsense. He took the decisions he took on the CoI as the nation’s elected leader. And he is entitled to use both state resources and have the taxpayer pick up the tab for any external lawyers he needs.
I thought Rabuka was a fighter but he hasn’t been acting like one lately. Must be his age . There was no need for him to say that he would resign if the case didn’t go his way. That’s playing right into the hands of his enemies and making their day.
His enemies include crocodiles like Mānoa “ pay me more and I’ll work harder” Kamikamica and the dogla from Dreketi, the disgraced Baiman Prasad. These two men became close friends after charges were filed against them. They feel that Rabuka was behind it and they are out for revenge. Their mission is to destroy and pulverize Rabuka and end his political career.
Baiman, in his typically greedy and self serving style, is playing both sides. He is a cunning fellow and his false smile is just as devious as Manoa’s. Rabuka should never trust Baiman or Manoa. As for Charlie Charters, he’s taking revenge for his anti-Rabuka mother-in-law.
Let’s see if all these forces can topple Rambo or will he topple them? Right now Rabuka comes across as old, weak, and ineffective. But we could be wrong. Let’s wait and see.
Oops Wylie, you jumped the gun with your outpouring of the suffering you endured in that fateful interview. Could be a whole world of suffering coming your way when the Judges with knowledge and experience dissect the ruling that plainly was never going to fly no matter how many pages were written by a guy with less than three years in the job, of interpreting the case put before him by his corrupt boss, Temo the Terrible.
Should have resigned from the Law Society position and headed for the hills, WHY LIE!
Rabuka sure has lived up to his reputation as a snake.
Look how he’s managed to put people in positions of power to deliver his corrupt agenda’s. He’s then stood back to watch it all implode, act like a hero trying to fix the huge mess he created with the COI (and every other decision he’s made), waiting for his next term of government to rinse and repeat.
It’s just what these personalities do and all we can do is watch and wait as the cycles repeat, in hope that enough of the general public pick up on the pattern and vote him out.
The concern is that villager thinking (not past their nose) isn’t trained to observe patterns of behaviour over time. The culture of responding to the moment and forgiving each indiscretion doesn’t enable this growth in mindset to observe and remember behavioural patterns over months, years and decades. But wake up Fiji, once a snake always a snake!
Indian saying – “a donkey will always remain a donkey, you cannot change it into a horse”.
There are countless Indians in Fiji who thought the donkey had changed but alas.
There are many in this forum who thought the same but, here we all are.
But you are right, the people of Fiji want donkeys to be their leaders, they know no better.
Cannot blame them because there just aren’t any better. Just look at the people in parliament, those in the GCC, those in the public service and most importantly those in the judiciary and in the legal fratenity. Fiji is full of donkeys. They are proud to be donkeys because they just do not know any better and they are simply unaware.
This isn’t confined to one demographic….Let’s not forget Baiman the girgit. The further up the ladder we go the more likely we are to find slithery creatures of any descript’ that will change any of their qualities to suit the backdrop ! Don’t for a moment think a different lot of slithery creatures would do any better come next election. That’s the very trap offered by way of the “vote” ..sorry to say it.
It’s your opinion , yes, but don’t forget there are other animals in the jungle too!
You forgot “there are countless Indians in Fiji who are donkeys for voting in Baimaan and Rabuka.”
I thought I had already said that. Baimaan is the biggest Indian donkey, so was Jai Ram Reddy and all the current mob. Did I mention there are many in this forum who are donkeys as well. They do realise it in hindsight, but the evidence was always there in plain sight which they all chose to ignore because if their hate for Bai and Kai. Lesson- hate makes you go blind.
Charlie Charters should concentrate on his throat cancer treatment.
From which we all wish him a full and speedy recovery.
Is it time for Charlie to turn his forensic journalism onto the tax holiday?
Surely there is no greater example of nepotism, back door dealing and a failure of governance and leadership than that for more than 30 years or perhaps since colonization itself when resources were taken in exchange for beads?
This time there aren’t even any beads for the Fiji taxpayer to play with!