Guess what, Fiji? India’s Amrut whisky has arrived in the country. And it is “national news” in the nation’s newspaper of record since 1869, which has been so corrupted by its current owners that they routinely and shamelessly use it to promote their commercial interests and political proclivities.
In any other country, the Motibhai Patels of Ba would be hauled before the media watchdogs and eviscerated. But not in Fiji, where the Patels can do as they please while the Coalition government remains in power.
Take it all in below and wonder how the Patels think they can get away with it. Answer: Because they are untouchable as long as they don’t do what the CJ Patels of Sydney have done over at the Fiji Sun – make themselves targets for a renewed threat to sue by Biman Prasad, the Deputy Prime Minister and NFP leader, who has emerged as one of Fiji’s grubbiest politicians and would already be gone in any other democracy.
It isn’t just the Amrut whisky promotion that is a stark editorial travesty in today’s Fiji Times. The paper trumpets Biman Prasad’s People’s Alliance counterpart, the “disgraceful wannabe prime minister”* – Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica – as having said there are 195 investment projects in the pipeline in Fiji worth 5.5-billion dollars.
Yes, folks. $5.5-billion – half the national debt. But what are they? The Fiji Times doesn’t say, which suggests that Manoa Kamikamica didn’t say either or that the Fiji Times is using the headline to prop up the ailing “Mr Sweet” and the equally ailing Coalition government and never mind the detail.
The manipulation of the news by the Fiji Times and its owners is a national scandal. And while the Amrut whisky party is in full swing as the election countdown approaches, a future government may not be quite so indulgent.
You’d think that having suffered for years at the hands of FijiFirst that the Motibhai Patels would have learned the lesson that longevity in the media business in Fiji depends on keeping their noses clean with all sides of politics by just being editorially responsible.
They better hope that the current government is still in power after the election or an almighty hangover awaits.
Plus another journalistic howler…
But what are they? Manoa doesn’t say. The Fiji Times doesn’t say. Sweet, eh?
5.5 billion reasons for a change of government at the next election and for the Motibhai Patels of Ba to be stripped of their ownership of the Fiji Times.
———
* “Disgraceful wannabe prime minister”. Justice David Ashton-Lewis’s sour description of Mr Sweet.
————
UPDATE MONDAY PM:
—————-
So why isn’t Manoa Kamikamica acting prime minister this week? Easy. Because he’s a “disgraceful wannabe prime minister”, that’s why. And if the COI recommendations are adopted, his political career is in tatters.
The manipulation of the news by the Fiji Times and its owners is indeed a national scandal.
A bigger national scandal is the pathetic state of the national media. As a close follower of news in Fiji for decades, I would say that the standard is the lowest it has ever been.
The Fiji Times editorials are so weak and ineffectual that they are not even worth a cursory read. The paper has really gone to the dogs under Fred Wesley and we see evidence of it on a daily basis.
For example, as GrubSheet points out, what is the 5.5 billion in investment in? That not even one journalist at the launch thought to ask this basic question is indicative of the low level of intelligence of our local journalists and the pathetic state of the national media.
In your fragile state you really should have sought medical advice before opening the Fiji Times. I have some spare smelling salts if needed.
Journalist who worked for Packer and Stokes is shocked, shocked at a media proprietor doing what media proprietors have always done [including regime favourite CJ Patel] and advance their corporate interests.
Charlie, judging from your own mainstream media experience as detailed on your LinkedIn profile, it doesn’t seem to go much beyond ATV Hong Kong, though I recall you once purporting to have worked for the Fiji Times. Perhaps you have omitted reference to that out of shame.
Mine includes the BBC, ABC and SBS in public broadcasting, the Nine and Seven TV networks plus sundry radio stations, newspapers and magazines. I was also on a national panel that reviewed and updated the Australian Journalist’s Code of Ethics. So I do have some knowledge of these things.
I can scarcely believe that your knee-jerk defence of the state of the Fiji Times is to do a “what about Packer and Stokes?” to try to score some kind of obscure point against me. If that is your best shot, why on earth bother?
It’s the same as your attempt to derail the COI to protect your mates in the law in Fiji. Substandard, overly defensive and unprincipled. Though perhaps once again. someone else has put you up to it.
Good ‘ol Charlie. A matanivanua for rent when words fail lesser beings.
GD, ban the dud from these columns. He’s a menace.
Oh, do I have to? But then what will I do for sport.
Graham, I was an employee of the Fiji Times, FBC [apprentice only], FM96, Islands Business and Pacific Woman, covered two overseas rugby tours for the Daily Post, and was one of three launch presenters of the permanent TV service that became Fiji One, with the late great Walter Thomas and Bernadette Rounds-Ganilau.
I am not offering a knee-jerk defence of the Fiji Times. I am just reminding you that you have served media proprietors who have done just the same thing – pay to play.
In all of my many, many complaints about the Fiji Sun, I never once complained about them using the newspaper’s editorial pages to advance CJ Patel product or commercial interests. This happened very often and rarely with much subtlety.
It’s what proprietors do with this supposed influence that all the balance sheet red ink buys them. One might question the ethics of it, and there are obvious rules, but there would be no Media Watch without it.
You are making assumptions that aren’t based in fact and are doing so quite gratuitously. I worked for Kerry Packer on and off for 23 years and never once was I instructed to promote his commercial interests nor did it happen on any program or project on which I worked.
So it just isn’t true that I “served media proprietors who have done the same thing” and if I did, I would have called them out. I have criticised the Fiji Times and that criticism is warranted. It isn’t an exercise in comparative unethical conduct and I still don’t understand why you would personalise this issue in the way you have except to have a cheap shot at me. Now bugger off.
Manoa still hasn’t told the nation how Google’s data centre at Natadola will be powered, given that it will need almost double the capacity of Fiji’s current demand.
Julia-Biogas. Manoa will be the primary supplier of power from the copious amount crap he produces as a high performer.
The rest of the coalition has plenty more BS to provide additional crap in the unlikely event that more power is needed.
Is that Nisha Oatek lady pregnant, while promoting the Motibhai whiskey, shameful, use of ads promoting pregnant women being associated with alcohol – whether consumed or not- is being banned in many developed countries due to harm to unborn babies- the fatal alcohol syndrome, But for the corrupt Motibhais- well you could bet your last dollar that they will use any means, anybody, whatever it takes- to promote their overpriced products which in other countries you would find in a small corner of a shopping store !
Fiji Times enables a regime full of untruths and diversions by further distorting facts and publishing falsehoods that mislead the public.
The pie in the sky $5.5 billion projects pipeline is as long and empty as the the pauses between words when Manoa searches through his head on what to say to construct a sentence. Ahh, ehhh, o, yeh….Manoa’s English is as bad as his proclamation that he is an over achiever.
Fiji times in another effort to divert attention from itself, COI, Wailei Clarke and Richie, in its Friday edition, put Kishti Sen’s picture and commentary on the front page. This self proclaimed smart economist with high school year 10 level ideas predicts government friendly 23.2% economic growth to be realised on the horizon…..meaning never, never. The junior economist once a student of Baiman at USP childishly predicted tourism boost in Fiji given Australian RBA was dropping interest rates. Australian tourists were going to flood Fiji with their extra money in the pocket as their first move in response to RBA monetary policy measures. Fiji is still waiting for a rush of Aussies. He predicted that Fiji should be exporting cannabis and start mining copper nickel and silver to add to the gold mine. Not much has changed since that ideation. One thing that has changed is this Baiman coached economist is looking rounder and puffier with every photo Fiji times publishes of him, indicating that junglee murgi, goat Palau and black label he is consuming on the Fiji trips is working wonders.
Fiji govt have these people as their ambassadors and Fiji times has zero stories of relevance to the suffering readers.
Will the next election bring some kind of change to the severely damaged Fiji economy, journalism and its citizens?
AMRUT kind of sounds like pess in my language probably that’s what the manufacturers drink
Looks like Manoa is pulling numbers out of his a$$.
If anything, Fijians who have migrated will soon be pulling out hundreds of millions from their FNPF and taking it abroad. They will be selling property and taking that money as well.
These fools have no idea what is coming ahead. The light they see is not the end of the tunnel but a train coming towards Fiji’s economy.
Ro Filipe’s appointment as Acting Prime Minister is a clear example of PM Rabuka’s strategic ambiguity—a tactic that has become his default mode in managing crises. Instead of following the usual protocol of appointing a deputy PM, Rabuka bypasses normal practice, raising questions about transparency and consistency. This approach mirrors how Rabuka has handled a string of Cabinet Ministers behaving badly, including the recent Commission of Inquiry (COI) fallout, where key ministers were implicated but responses remain cautious and selective. The COI is just the latest in a series of scandals under Rabuka’s watch, from controversial reshuffles to misconduct allegations, yet his leadership style seems to lean on vague, non-committal moves rather than decisive action. This pattern of strategic ambiguity undermines public confidence and suggests a government struggling to enforce accountability within its own ranks.
A very perceptive observation, Cherie. Vinaka.
So there is a written agreement between the 3 party unholy communion that in the absence of baku, one of the 3 dpm’s will be acting PM. Maybe on a rotational basis or maybe not, depending on baku’s mood.
But in a signal to say that he is pissed off with all of the 3 stooges (manoa, biman and bill) the snake has now completely disregarded the written and signed agreement and has chosen one of the most stupidest and bat shit crazy racist to act as PM.
Tuisawau is a bona fide idiot who can’t string two sentences together coherently. He sees everything through racial lenses whilst trying to unsuccessfully grow a few strands of wiry vuji like hair for the last few decades. He is an idiot and a dangerous one who is now proudly telling anyone who will bother to listen about all the portfolios he is “responsible” for in the absence of baku.
I had the unfortunate opportunity to have a conversation with this doce a couple of times. He is an complex enigma who is stupid, crazy, sly and racist at the same time. All these traits together in one person is very difficult to achieve but there are some extraordinary people who can do it and these are the same people that rabuka ultimately likes to be surrounded by. Because you see rabuka is all these things and more.
I wonder what’s going on the minds of the 3 dpms…hmm…have they all finally realized how liumuri baku can be?
From the many random social media posts I come across, it seems the Fiji media are busy gorging themselves at endless training workshops, getting grog-doped, or attending cocktail parties by foreign missions.
We don’t see much result from all this training in their actual work. All we see are fat, overweight journalists — just like our fat, overweight politicians.
Journalists, like our politicians, are pigs pigging out at the trough without delivering much of anything to the country.