A free and vibrant media is as much a pre-requisite for a healthy democracy in Fiji as upholding the principles of multiculturalism and a multi-faith society that I canvassed in my last article. And two years out from the next election – which will be critical for the maintenance and strengthening of that democracy – it’s worth examining the current state of the Fijian media and whether it is performing its ultimate duty to represent the interests of the people and act as a watchdog against the excesses of those in power.
It is a sad fact that generally the watchdog in Fiji is a pretty mangy animal and on any fair appraisal isn’t performing to anything like the standard it should be. For a small nation with a relatively limited number of happenings each day, the coverage the news receives and the analysis of it is neither comprehensive nor reliable, let alone thoughtful or impartial. And some stories of national significance don’t get covered at all.
Where, for instance, is any detailed examination of the Chinese presence in Fiji and the developments being made by Chinese companies? There are some very serious questions to be asked, and answered, about the safety of the 28-story W.G Friendship Tower in Suva that now towers over the capital. This is quite apart from whether the public interest was served by the lack of consultation and normal official supervision of the project in the first place. There are persistent reports that the Friendship Tower was railroaded through at a high level in spite of warnings from structural engineers that the steel being used on the building would not withstand an inferno. The Chinese developers dispute this but surely the Fijian people deserve to know more from their media. Instead coverage has been virtually non-existent.
It also took foreign media organisations from New Zealand and Australia to uncover the environmental destruction wrought by the Chinese company, Freesoul, on Malolo island in the Mamanucas. And it took the Al Jazeera television network from Qatar to highlight the violent behaviour of members of the Korean Grace Road cult and the extent of the cult’s influence in Fiji. Where was the Fijian media in relation to these important stories? Were local journalists ignorant of what was happening in their own country or did they know but were either intimidated into not reporting them or afraid of retribution? These are legitimate questions for every Fijian to ask and that the media has a duty to answer as part of its overriding responsibility to represent the public interest and hold officialdom to account.
Adrift in a world gripped by pandemic and economic upheaval, never before has it been so critical for the Fijian people to ensure that they are thoroughly informed of events around them. Even before the economic disintegration that has already plunged many Fijian families into crisis, the FijiFirst government’s near loss in the 2018 election had raised fresh doubts about the country’s stability and outlook. The Bainimarama government will have been in power for 16 years when the next election comes around in 2022. And it is now carrying the additional burden of the economic impact of Covid-19 on top of the existing burdens of incumbency and disaffection, with clear signs that the electorate has tired of FijiFirst and is looking for an alternative.
As I reported last month and the government has conspicuously failed to deny, it is already facing pressure from significant elements in the military and from within its own ranks to reinvent itself to make itself more competitive by removing the Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. As the pressure mounts over the coming months, those sections of the media controlled by the AG will be manipulated more than ever as he fights for his political survival. And the quality and accuracy of the information flowing to the public about what is actually happening beneath the veneer of spin is bound to become less certain.
The government and its spokespeople have taken to preaching the message that Fijians should only trust news from official sources like the government Facebook page. It is a truly Orwellian notion because the lesson of history is that governments are among the least reliable sources of information, especially in times of uncertainty and upheaval. And for evidence of that in Fiji, you don’t have to go much past some of the government’s messaging for the Covid-19 crisis, in which, for instance, allowing you to withdraw your own money from the FNPF is portrayed as “assistance”.
Let’s be clear about this. Government propaganda urging you to only believe what it says on its own information outlets has no place in a democracy, where an independent media – the celebrated Fourth Estate – exists to act as a filter and hold the government to account. Yet as we’ll see, that notion has been steadily eroded by the FijiFirst government and especially Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, wearing his hat as Minister for Communications, which includes anything disseminated through the Department of Information.
The AG has total control of the government’s information effort, as well as effective control over the Fiji Sun and the Fijian Broadcasting Corporation. Three individuals take directions from him at the heart of this effort – the Qorvis consultant in Suva, Christian Theuer, and two members of the AG’s election campaign team, Arnold Chanel and Damian Whippy, whose company, Vatis, is said to have several government contracts that also weren’t put out to tender. Together they control the government’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to the extent of placing words in the Prime Minister’s mouth in his daily Tweets and Facebook postings. The Department of Information – that used to report to the PM until the 2014 election – does what it’s told. And the PM has no media personnel of his own to give him an independent voice, such as an official press secretary, that would be standard practice anywhere else. As with most things in government, Frank Bainimarama has surrendered control to the AG.
For the Fijian people – assailed by an unprecedented level of spin – scepticism and a wary eye have never been more important. Fortunately, many of them already have well-honed bullshit detectors. This is typified by the following message to me during the week from a friend in the West, where the Covid-19 job losses have created unprecedented hardship and resentment is growing about people from the capital, including civil servants, who have government-protected jobs.
“98% of the occupation of hotels/resorts on the weekends are folks from Suva….the gap just widens…..and if I hear another “be strong”, “one door closes, another one opens” and the favourite “we are resilient” from folks on the secure platform of employment and status, I may not be responsible for my actions”.
So anger over the government’s messaging is clearly mounting. Yet as Fijians look to their media for guidance – to cut through the spin and uncover the truth of their situation – they have never been so poorly served. Leaving aside those stories that simply aren’t covered, few countries have a media that is so polarised in its treatment of the events that shape our daily lives. Pick up copies of the Fiji Times and the Fiji Sun on most days and it can seem that they are reporting events on different planets rather than the same country.
It has long been the case that you have to read both papers to have any idea what is actually going on in Fiji and even then, you have to use your own powers of analysis, such is the parallel universe both publications inhabit. This is all very well for an intelligentsia capable of reading between the lines but where does it leave ordinary Fijians? Well, obviously inhabiting parallel universes themselves, depending on which paper they choose to buy.
The two main newspapers have relentlessly driven themselves to opposite ends of the political spectrum. The Fiji Times is the nation’s oldest paper and ought to be able to use its longevity, profitability and prestige to be a genuine newspaper of record. Yet while alone of the two papers, it gives space to the opposition to put an alternative viewpoint, those comments are invariably in the form of quotes. It steers away from direct criticism itself. And in terms of its own reporting, the Fiji Times has become noticeably timid in the wake of the legal blowtorch applied to it over the years. Instead of being bold, let alone crusading, it seems to continually err on the side of caution.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Fiji Sun is no longer a credible public watchdog at all. It is, in fact, a travesty of a newspaper in the conventional sense. It salivates like a dribbling lapdog over its master, the FijiFirst Government, constantly wagging its tail at the command of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who long ago made it part of the government’s propaganda machine by buying its loyalty with exclusive government advertising. More on that later.
In the broadcast media, the same applies to the Fijian Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) under the AG’s brother – its CEO, Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. I have already cited the scandalous conflict of interest of the head of the national broadcaster also being a key member of the FijiFirst Party’s election campaign team. This would be unacceptable in any country with even a passing acquaintance with normal standards of probity. The FBC is truly one of the wonders of the modern media world – another propaganda arm of government, funded by Fijian taxpayers of all political persuasions in an arrangement that also goes unchallenged.
Somewhere in the middle are the radio stations of Communications Fiji Limited and its Fiji Village global website, that do their best to pursue a middle course. I happen to think that Vijay Narayan, the CFL News Director, is one of the best and boldest journalists in the country and leads his team to parts of the news agenda that others don’t even try to reach. Fiji TV also strives to strike a middle path despite its current weakened financial state and inability to rely on the same government guaranteed loans that the AG can give his brother at FBC.
Some individual journalists like Lice Movono also have a reputation for asking the hard questions that need to be asked and answered. Yet aside from these honourable exceptions, the rest of the Fijian media generally doesn’t so much speak truth to power but either kowtows to power – in the case of the Fiji Sun and FBC – or like the Fiji Times, cowers in the corner with the occasional defiant yap, its fear of the official boot too often reducing it to a whimper when it ought to be emitting a loud bark.
The Fiji Times feels constantly obliged to defend itself against the charge of being anti-government simply because it is the sole paper that gives the opposition any platform at all. Its customary defence is along the lines of “they said it, we didn’t, and we’re just doing our job”. The paper is no longer the strong voice it has been at other times in its 151-year history. Its editorials have become masterful exercises in avoiding offence and it sometimes bends over backwards to an absurd extent to avoid any suggestion of bias. Last weekend, the Fiji Times even distanced itself from a 50th independence anniversary article by Ratu Epeli Nailatikau with its customary “the views expressed are the author’s and does not reflect the views of this newspaper”. Dangerous subversive, that Ratu Epeli. Could get you into a lot of trouble.
I can feel the hackles of Fiji Times defenders rising and fingers pointed in my own direction. Who am I to criticise? Because my own image with much of the Fijian media is that of a government propagandist – the principal communications consultant to the leadership through my employment between 2012 and 2018 with the Washington-based PR company, Qorvis Communications. That has made me loathed in many circles and understandably so. Because in that role, my principal duty was to convey the FijiFirst government’s program through the many speeches and statements I wrote and to carry out its instructions in relation to dealings with the media.
As I have explained before, I had no compunction in taking the job because I fundamentally supported Frank Bainimarama’s agenda to level the playing field in Fiji and give every Fijian the equal opportunity that had been denied to a large section of the population all my life. Yet the journalist in me admittedly felt uncomfortable on occasions straddling the dual obligations of protecting my client’s position and feeling empathy with day-to-day practitioners of the craft.
My critics say I should be ashamed of having become a mouthpiece, first for the “regime” and then after 2014, for the elected government. Yet my influence behind the scenes was not as pernicious as the critics suppose. I believe I was able to exercise a degree of influence for the good, and certainly to an extent way beyond what a grudging Prime Minister indicated in his recent public statement on my reporting of the Military Council’s call for the removal of the AG, written for him by Qorvis and the AG himself.
Indeed, I played a significant role behind the scenes shepherding the transition from dictatorship to democracy. In March 2013 – 18 months before the scheduled return to parliamentary rule in September 2014 – Frank Bainimarama told me: “Graham, I’m thinking of not having the election. I’m thinking of having a referendum on whether to have an election”. My response to this startling proposition was to argue the toss. “PM, you have promised that you will have an election and you cannot go back on that promise. You can win the election fair and square”. And to Frank Bainimarama’s credit, that’s what happened, though whether it was fair when the Fiji Sun and FBC were so partisan in his favour became an issue that was hotly debated away from the public gaze.
The international observers who monitored the election refused to use the term “fair” in their final report because of media bias, merely noting that the vote had been free and a genuine expression of the will of the Fijian people. Yet for all that, the election went ahead against the Prime Minister’s instincts at the time and it wasn’t the only occasion that I had a positive input at a high level. I certainly think that on any fair appraisal, my contribution was a lot better than the self-serving, money-grabbing opportunism of which I was accused by my critics.
I also happen to know a thing or two about media ethics. In 1998, I was a member of a national panel in Australia that reviewed and revised the Australian Journalists Code of Ethics. I was the prime instigator for a new clause to be inserted into that Code requiring journalists to declare if they have paid for a story. At the time, huge amounts were being spent by television networks to secure exclusives that inevitably raised concerns about whether facts were being exaggerated or distorted to make stories more sellable in a highly competitive market. So a key provision of the code of ethics governing the work of Australian journalists was actually a creation of the dreaded propagandist of later years who allegedly abandoned all ethics to work slavishly for the Fijian dictatorship.
I say all of this not to “big note” or be overly defensive but because many Fijian journalists are bound to say in response to this article: Who is Graham Davis to lecture us about our performance and our ethics? Well my answer is that I stopped being the government “propagandist” nearly two and a half years ago and now write as a private citizen. I also have a modicum of knowledge about the craft, having practiced it for four decades, and know something about the ethical practice of journalism in advanced democracies in which I have worked such as Australia and the UK.
Having also worked closely with the Fijian leadership in recent years – reporting directly to Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum – I also have more than usual insight into their attitudes to the media and how they try to manage and control it. And it is all about control. A great deal of effort has been expended to make Fiji’s media “watchdogs” docile and obedient and reduce their ability to hold the leadership and the rest of the government to account. And it goes far beyond the day-to-day manipulation of the news by the government spinmeisters at Qorvis and Vatis. The media laws in Fiji designed by the Attorney General are among the most draconian in the world. How? Because they not only hold media companies to account for lapses in fact, process or legal or ethical compliance, they target individual journalists.
While a company that commits an offence can be liable for a fine of up to $100,000, the Media Industry Development Act 2010 actually mandates jail terms for journalists whose work is deemed to be against the “public interest” or “public order”. Offences are punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to two years. And in the absence of a precise definition in the legislation of what constitutes the public interest, the government has a very big stick at its disposal to beat errant journalists at will.
Imagine yourself as the average practitioner of journalism in Fiji. Having entered the newsroom at around $18,000 a year, you have reached senior status at around $25,000 a year. Yet hanging over your head if you transgress the Media Authority Development Act is a fine amounting to well over a third of your annual salary plus a jail term. This – coupled with the penalties for media companies – is hardly an incentive to be bold in telling the stories the government or other powerful interests don’t want told. It muzzles the watchdog and has produced a media in Fiji that is chronically supine and can be easily intimidated into turning a blind eye to issues that the public has a right to know.
In the interests of genuine transparency and accountability, it is high time for the penalty clauses in the Media Industry Development Act to be abolished. And it is to be hoped that the opposition embraces this as a cause in the lead-up to the election in 2022, that in the absence of any reform in FijiFirst and based on the latest polling, it now seems almost certain to win.
I’ve already mentioned FBC, CFL and Fiji TV in the context of this story and in the interests of brevity, am confining a detailed examination of the performance of the media to the two main papers – the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times. In a country in which the print versions of the newspapers dominate and are still read while the rest of the world has gone online, the Sun and the Times remain the most important outlets. So here goes.
THE FIJI SUN
The Fiji Sun trumpets a slogan on its editorial page written by the American playwright, Arthur Miller: “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself:”. Regrettably, the Sun is not so much a venue for genuine debate between the Fijian people but a mouthpiece for the views of one man – Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum – who controls the paper’s editorial coverage to the extent of dictating what stories it should run and what to ignore. The AG’s agenda is the paper’s agenda and it is easy to discern this from both its news coverage and more particularly through the so-called “analysis” articles written by his personal journalistic handmaiden, Jyoti Pratibha, and to a slightly lesser extent, his journalistic manservant, Nemani Delaibatiki.
None of it is subtle. Jyoti Pratibha’s recent pieces have almost exclusively concentrated on the dispute at USP and the merits of the AG’s attempts to remove the current Vice Chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, partly through the efforts of the AG’s uncle, Mahmood Khan, who he installed on the USP Council. If you read Pratibha’s articles, they never reflect an alternative view. It is all about the correctness of the Fijian government position, just as she routinely acts as the AG’s attack dog against opposition MPs in a manner that doesn’t even attempt to hide her bias.
In recent times, Nemani Delaibatiki has written a number of articles on the split in SODELPA and the battle for the leadership of the main opposition party that will be decided next month. In recent days, he was pushing the notion of a Coalition between SODELPA and the NFP when he knows (sorry, the AG knows) that this would trigger rebellion in the ranks of both parties. When did Nemani Delaibatiki last write an article about the governance of FijiFirst and its failure to hold any meetings at all? When did he write about the issue of FijiFirst party donations, that are currently the subject of a raft of disclosures by Victor Lal’s Fijileaks? The answer is never. Because he and Jyoti Pratibah aren’t independent journalists at all. They are government lackeys writing government propaganda for a newspaper that has surrendered its editorial pages to the AG in exchange for an exclusive arrangement in which the Fiji Sun receives government advertising to the exclusion of the Fiji Times.
In 2013, when the Fiji Sun used my Grubsheet articles in its editorial pages and heavily promoted me as a columnist, I was invited to speak to the journalists on the paper at a “Chatham House rules” session at the Holiday Inn. They seemed mildly surprised when I asked them to keep their news stories free of government bias. I said that the paper could, of course, act as advocate for the government in its daily editorials and in the choice of opinion pieces. But it was critical to keep the news columns impartial so that Fiji Sun readers came to depend on the paper for the integrity of its coverage. “You are no good to the government if you lose that integrity and the confidence of your readers”, I said. I was whistling into the wind.
The then Permanent Secretary for Information, Sharon Smith-Johns, and I both agreed with this approach. Even though she had been the Chief Censor in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 takeover, we were keen to see the papers report the news accurately and impartially as the return to democracy approached. And Sharon-Smith Johns repeatedly made representations to the Prime Minister as her line minister at the time asking him to improve relations with the Fiji Times by giving it equal opportunity in terms of access to government and also a share of government advertising.
In the anti-government blogs, “Grubby and Shazza” were the subject of great deal of derision and mirth, the humour of which we could also appreciate. Yes, we were instructed by the leadership to lodge complaints with media outlets over their perceived coverage and some of these complaints may have been ones that we would have preferred not to make. Yet we both regarded the government’s action in making an enemy of the Fiji TImes as a disaster and believed that cutting off access to the paper was also “cutting off our noses to spite our faces”. Government messaging and advertising was clearly not reaching Fiji Times readers, who were known to be rusted on to the country’s oldest paper and who the government needed to engage.
We could see that the polarisation of the media into extreme camps – the lickspittles at the Fiji Sun and the sullen dissenters at the Fiji Times – was not only undesirable as a matter of public policy but counterproductive to the government’s own interests. But it was a view that was never embraced by the AG, who has always managed to get the PM to agree to enforce his own rigid prejudices, even to the detriment of the government’s own position.
The Fiji Sun was so partisan in favour of the AG personally that it often gave him prominence on the front page and in the rest of the paper even when the PM was performing duties of national significance and should have clearly taken preference. I remember an especially angry telephone call that I made to the Fiji Sun publisher, Peter Lomas, protesting about one such incident. The PM was on a provincial tour, which the Sun covered. Yet it still had Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum on the front page and no less than 13 other photos of the AG in the same edition. And all this at a time when personal relations between the AG and the PM were extremely strained over the infamous “InstaCharge” affair.
Last month, I broke the news of the Military Council document calling for the reform of the government, including the removal of the AG. In the words of the document: “the Fiji Sun is fast becoming an unpopular paper. The perception is that it is fully government controlled”. It specifically referenced the Fiji Sun concentrating on “pictures of the AG and one or two ministers” and reflecting the “government’s webpage and printed material”.
Predictably, the Fiji Sun put the Prime Minister’s subsequent criticism of me for allegedly peddling gossip on its front page yet made no mention of the contents of the Military Council document, including its call for the removal of the AG, even though Frank Bainimarama had conspicuously failed to deny its contents. But of course, the paper reported what the AG wanted it to report and needless to say, the story also said nothing about the military’s criticism of the Fiji Sun.
The Sun’s attitude to the AG can only be described as slavish. He feeds the watchdog with public money in the form of exclusive advertising and routinely whistles it to do his bidding and protect his political position. It is a relationship that is highly improper in that Fiji Sun readers are not party to arguably the country’s dirtiest political secret.
And there’s more. The Fiji Sun has a business arrangement with the Chinese government in which it publishes stories from Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. These are often little more than Chinese Communist Party puff pieces and propaganda. But the Sun also sends some of its journalists to train in China. What they are learning is of deep concern for the future practice of journalism in Fiji and its impact on the nation’s direction. But then propaganda – not journalism – is the customary stock in trade of both the Fiji Sun and its Chinese patrons.
THE FIJI TIMES
All my life, I have held the Fiji Times on something of a pedestal because it was my introduction to journalism as a small boy in Lautoka, and with the BBC World Service, largely inspired me to become a journalist myself. Since 1869, it has been “the first newspaper published in the world every day” and has a history that would be the envy of papers the world over. It also has a distinguished alumni that includes Phillip Knightley, who worked on the paper in the 1950s and went on to become one of the world’s most celebrated investigative journalists.
I was a personal friend of Evan Hannah – the Fiji Times CEO who fell foul of Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and was expelled from Fiji in 2011 – and met him at Sydney Airport when he was deported via South Korea. While Evan and I later became estranged because of my overall support for the Bainimarama government, I have always supported the Fiji Times whenever it spoke truth to power, while having reservations about some of the causes it has espoused. I could never understand its support for the Qarase government’s indigenous nationalist agenda, which I believed constituted a tyranny of the majority in that it disempowered a significant section of the population and was a threat to national unity that I strongly opposed. Later, in government, I would also have dealings with the Fiji Times at an official level. And in the interests of transparency and because it was the subject of court proceedings, I feel obliged to make a disclosure at the same time as I give a critique of the paper’s operations.
During the course of my duties for Qorvis in Fiji, I was prevailed upon by the AG to be part of an interview panel hearing representations from both the Fiji Times and the Fiji Sun in answer to a tender for the placement of government advertising. At that interview, I raised the government’s objections to the Fiji Times routinely ignoring the Prime Minister’s activities, some of which – including major international speeches – was glaringly absent from its coverage. I also questioned the then FT publisher, Hank Arts, about deadline times for the placement of ads with the paper. The slow processes of government, and especially the AG’s habit of leaving everything to the last minute, required some flexibility in terms of placement. Whereas Hank Arts could offer no flexibility, stating that government ads needed to be placed by 8.00 pm at the latest, Peter Lomas from the Fiji Sun undertook to keep the paper open to the moment of printing, as late as 11.30 pm. And that was what was reported to the AG, who eventually awarded the contract to the Fiji Sun.
I had no say in this decision and indeed, as an external consultant, it would have been improper for me to have done so. As I’ve already indicated, my personal preference was for the government to advertise in both papers to gain maximum reach and I conveyed that to the AG on multiple occasions. I was certainly unaware of any arrangement beyond this in which the AG was given control of the Fiji Sun’s editorial columns as some kind of consideration for giving the paper exclusive advertising. Whether this is explicit or implicit, I cannot say. But it is an indisputable fact that it happens and I have witnessed it on multiple occasions.
There is a long history of alleged punitive behaviour against the Fiji Times that its defenders use to cast the paper as a brave defender of journalistic freedom in the face of official persecution. Yet only part of this heroic depiction is true. In 2013, the paper was fined $300,000 for contempt of court for publishing an article that called into question the independence of the judiciary, something that arguably would have occurred in many jurisdictions.
More controversial was the decision in 2016 by the Director of Public Prosecution to charge the Fiji Times with sedition over an article by one Josaia Waqabaca published in its iTaukei language newspaper, Nai Lalakai. The Fiji Times and its lawyers have always cast the offending piece as a “letter” yet it had every appearance of an article and contained the following paragraph:
“Muslims are not the indigenous of this country. These are people that have invaded other nations, for example, Bangladesh in India, where they killed, raped and abused their women and children. Today they have gone to the extent of having a part in the running of the country”.
The Fiji Times had been warned previously by the police about comments that might incite communal antagonism but the DPP, Christopher Pryde, declined to prosecute on the basis that those comments didn’t meet the necessary evidentiary standard. But this time, he decided that, in law, the Fiji Times group had gone too far. On the customary test of whether the public interest was served and whether he had a reasonable chance of securing a conviction, the DPP proceeded to lay charges against Jo Waqabaca, the Nai Lalakai editor, Anare Ravula, the Fiji Times editor, Fred Wesley and the aforementioned publisher, Hank Arts.
Right from the start, the controversy surrounding the case was exacerbated by the charge of sedition, which is generally held to be “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch”. In this instance, the offence might clearly be classified as a hate crime against Muslims. But the question in many minds – including the representatives of foreign governments in Fiji – was whether it was sedition in the dictionary meaning of the word in inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.
What wasn’t widely understood was that in Fijian law, inciting racial hatred is covered by the laws of sedition and has been since colonial times. No separate legislation to cover hate crimes had ever been introduced in Fiji – as it has been in Australia and New Zealand – so sedition was the basis on which the prosecution of the Fiji Times proceeded.
It took two years of controversy for the High Court Judge, Justice Thushara Rajasinghe, to rule that while the four accused had a case to answer – which validated the decision to prosecute in the first place – the prosecution had failed to prove that the article was seditious and the defendants were acquitted. The Fiji Times trumpeted the ruling as a victory for press freedom but it left many people, Muslims included, convinced of the need for specific legislation to cover such comments, which would have almost certainly led to convictions in other jurisdictions.
If it was a victory for media freedom, it was a pyrrhic one in that that the verdict is currently being appealed. And having been tied up in the courts for almost two years – on top of the contempt case – and having expended a great deal of money and effort defending the charges, the Fiji Times owners -the Motibhai Group of Companies, which purchased the papers from Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp in 2010 – lost their appetite for pushing the boundaries.
According to insiders, few substantial articles go in the Fiji Times nowadays without being cleared by its lawyers at Munro Leys, Richard Naidu and Jon Apted. Caution is said to be the prevailing culture at the paper and Fred Wesley’s future as editor evidently hinges on whether he keeps the Motibhais out of trouble. It is an instinct that will only be exacerbated by the current Covid-inspired economic downturn in Fiji.
The relative timidity of the paper can be illustrated even when Fiji Times opinion pieces carrying the aforementioned disclaimer about it being the views of the author, not the Fiji Times. In a recent instance, the identity of the subject of a story I had originally reported was erased entirely from one Times article, presumably on legal advice. On September 26, the Fiji Times columnist, Wadan Narsey, wrote a lengthy piece recording that “Graham Davis has been waging a frenetic campaign on his blog to encourage Prime Minister Bainimarama ( who he still supports passionately) to eject a specific Government minister from his Cabinet ( let’s call him “Minister X”). All through the rest of the article, Wadan Narsey maintained the reference to “Minister X” as if naming this minister would incur the wrath of either the law or the Almighty.
The person in question was, of course, Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum. Yet Fiji Times readers were deprived of his name – or at least those who couldn’t guess it – and I still wonder on what grounds this decision was made. Nothing I said was defamatory of the AG. It was the story of the Military Council demanding changes to the government, including his removal, which isn’t defamatory at all. So why suppress the AG’s name? I sent Wadan Narsey an email asking him but didn’t get a response. I can only suppose that it would have obliged him to acknowledge the timidity of the Fiji Times and its lawyers and given his long-standing presence in its columns and support for the paper, I’d imagine that is not a story he would want to share.
It also seemed odd to me that on the same day, the Fiji Times would lead – on its front page – with a large photo of Inia Seruiratu and the headlines “Graham Davis’(sic) claim on PM’s successor”, “Will he be next”. (without the question mark, which may have been a nod to the possibility of me being correct). The body of the story said that the Fiji Times had approached the Prime Minister and Attorney General on the previous Tuesday asking for comment yet still hadn’t received a response four days later. Surely this added weight to the veracity of my account. Neither the PM or AG could say anything because the story is true. Yet rather than seeking other avenues to “stand up the story”, the Fiji Times simply let it lapse. It was classic case of a question being asked on behalf of the public but not answered. Which I guess is at least better than the Fiji Sun not reporting it at all.
And so we come full circle to my original premise that the Fijian media – as the celebrated fourth estate in our democracy – owes its ultimate duty not to the PM or AG but the people. And that the people deserve better than they are currently getting. There’s another disclosure I want to leave you with, Dear Reader, and it’s one of the most startling of all. Because, believe it or not, a few years back the Fiji Times was saved from closure by Qorvis. Yes, the paper actually owes its life to the propagandists of popular scorn.
Before I came onto the Qorvis account in 2012, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had wanted to shut the paper down altogether. But history deserves to know that he was talked out of it by an unlikely hero named Sol Levine – a former journalist for CNN who has since left Qorvis and whose identity can now be revealed.
The Jimmy Cagney-like Levine told the AG that forcibly closing a newspaper that had informed the nation for nearly a century and a half would not only cause a monumental political backlash at home but would turn the defence of the Fiji Times into an international cause célèbre. Faced with the prospect of global outrage, the AG grudgingly acquiesced. Yet it’s a sign of his frustration that even years later when the paper’s alleged misdeeds came up in conversation with me, he would rail: “it’s your guy’s fault. Qorvis talked me out of shutting down the Fiji Times!”
In the annals in journalism and PR, there are few ironies so exquisite – the spinmeisters coming to aid of the disclosers they are usually portrayed as trying to thwart. The dreaded Qorvis – the Darth Vader of the journalistic universe – rescuing Fiji’s oldest newspaper from the rampaging Emperor Palpatine on Level 7 of Suvavou House. The terminally self-righteous Fiji Times glee club may not want to acknowledge it but that, Dear Reader, is one story you can genuinely believe. Because it’s the God honest truth.
A multi-racial and multi-ethnic society for Fiji is a concept that has never been accepted by the indigenous Fijian population. One only had to.look at Fiji’s political history so far to.prove my point.
Indigenous Fijian ethno-nationlism has always been about Fijians controlling Fiji.
“Fiji for the Fijians” has been a rallying cry for Fijian ethno-nationaliam.
Nothing wrong with that !!
I agree, Ajax, Fiji for the Fijians. All of us now that we have a common identity.
No-one can win the next election on any other basis.
Graham
With all due respect, you were part of Qorvis used by Govt to spin things
( and you know that) funded fully by the Fijian tax payers.
Are you saying that during your time at Qorvis you were putting out factual info for public consumption when in this same article you are also saying “It is a truly Orwellian notion because the lesson of history is that governments are among the least reliable sources of information”
Rather contradictory won’t you say??
I feel as if this entire article is a defense of your previous work at Qorvis and now you have left Fiji , things have changed for the worse, perhaps as you are no longer there.
Fijj since independence never really had good investigative journalist so why are you surprised now?
Remember the 1982 elections it took ABC Australia to break the Carroll report and the subsequent Royal Commission enquiry into this”
You also have not mentioned that Fiji today operates under fear and the authoritative MIDA. The Fiji Times court case few years ago is testament to this and perhaps why the Fiji Times under legal advise and rightfully so always states “ he said it”. You have made no mention of the tough environment the media operates
( except for Fiji Sun and FBC) who are immune from this.
You say you supported Frank in support of his efforts to level the playing field. You know very well and all your previous articles on grub sheet has clearly stated that Fiji today operates only for those who are in bed with the Govt and those who speak truth to power are roughed up by either FIRCA, FICAC etc. you know very well that Fiji today is run by only one man and that man is ASK, all senior Govt departments, all public enterprise run by his man. COVID has exposed the huge gap between the haves and have nots, so is this a level playing field? If it is not are you then still supporting Frank?
It’s one thing to go around the country and speak of one Fiji when in reality it is not the case; this is where Frank has failed in leadership saying one thing and not preventing reality on the ground from self centered decision constantly made by his AG purely to further the AG”s own political interest. Frank is a failed leader in this regard.
Yes the opposition has constantly highlighted in Parliament and Biman has wonderfully narrated this in Parliament that the FNPF COVID withdrawals are in fact not assistance but rather your own money.
Although your defense of Qorvis and how Qorvis saved the Fiji Times maybe a compelling one and I have no reasons to believe otherwise , it’s rather late for this declaration abd begs the question why did you continue to work for the AG and Govt when you knew how toxic they were in their approach about power and rule by fear. Where was your conscious at that time? Did you not ask yourself about your own moral compass and did you not ask yourself about working for someone whose ethics are questionable?
I am sorry but this article seems to be in defense of Graham and Qorvis.
There might be plenty wrong with that Ajax if the people these ethno-nationlists lead believe that life without the vulagi would remain the same . Who will pay for the roads, electricity, schools, health, the military, and so on? China would be happy to step in I suppose – some victory that will be. Fiji is unique in the South Pacific in having a viable and complex economy – built by the very people these ethno-nationlists would seek to subjugate. This creates jobs, etc. It is no cooincidence that the other successful economy in the while of the Pacific is Hawaii – also built by the vulagi, eh. So if these ethno-nationlists can replace the vulagi, then give it a go – if they can. The evidence so far suggests they cannot.
Dear Entitled your “built by the vulagi” stand is baseless and too much of a generalisation.
Any measure of (what you claim to constitute) “an economy built” cant possibly be attributed to (your glorification) of the “vulagi” accomplishment.
You may want to note that iTaukei’s have underlying values which are not always squarely placed nor do they always necessarily fit in the ideals of (what ultimately is) a GDP driven economy.
There is emphasis on communal vs the “vulagi’s” individual pursuit for wealth generation and accumulation (of a few to the exclusion of others).
A huge chunk of the vulagi have reaped great reward for themselves through the trust, goodwill and sacrifice of the iTaukei. Where else would you find landowners voluntarily assuming such a receptiveness? you can add preferential treatment (for e.g.. sugar industry) both in country and the negotiated preferential prices enjoyed internationally in the time after independence which helped buff up that industry. The vulagi have enjoyed a relatively attractive table set for them to sit and dine to their hearts content. It has enjoyed an enabling environment so enough of the “Fiji was built by vulagi” delusion.
In a nutshell the iTaukei on whose land the vulagi rely on for their glory, have been more than honourable and continue to do so while holding on to and preserving their communal way of life which among other things is premised on the notion of “Veirairaici” which is to make sure that “one looks out for another”.
So it’s not that iTaukei’s cannot prosper themselves by your standards. Far from it. The iTaukei values and principles require that its people don’t measure themselves by the accomplishments seen in profit figures, GDP numbers or debt levels. Nor do they clamour for a bigger piece of anything. They know their place and their history. There’s nothing really to prove. But, in your view, one must when seeking credit, also keep their awareness real. The vulagi cannot continue to feel entitled to the point where it begins to think that the iTaukei are not relevant just because you feel you ought to impose your sense of achievement and forgetting that any achievement was possible in an environment that the itaukei helped create.
It may surprise you WL that I do not disagree with many elements of what you write. I was simply responding to the Fiji for Fijians (read iTaukei) comment by Ajax.
I am all for the preservation of the unique identity of about 400,000 people because once they are gone, the world will be denied a cultural identity for ever – that will be a sad day indeed. Whilst I don’t think there is much danger of that at present, I reject the singular pursuit of “best in class” if that means the destruction of the indigenous of Fiji. It would also be politically unrealistic anyway.
Having said that, it is the standards of the vulagi (which your socialist-tinged commentary suggests you reject) that create succesful modern economies upon which successful modern societies and governments are built. I urge you to compare Fiji with Tonga and Samoa and even PNG (which should do better with all the resources they have) and ask yourself if the iTaukei are ready to live like that.
I’m all for the iTaukei taking over and leading business and professional life. I look forward to that day. I cannot agree with you that their way of life (as it is now) should act as a barrier to that day. I hope you will be wrong there.
Your assertion that the wealth of the vulagi was built on itaukei generoristy with their land is also a myth. The canefarmers collectively made a lot for the nation when reputedly up to $500k was injected into the economy in a year. The farmers themselves made very little and eked out a very humble existence on tiny farms . The fatcats who ran FSC did/do well.
That generosity evaporated when the lands were taken back after 1987. So the land now lies fallow. Fiji’s economy is now hostage to the fickleness of tourism.
Progress is the destiny of humanity and I reject any suggestion that the iTaukei should be denied becuase of thier “cultural” practices. Culture is an evolving thing. I wish them success with it.
Rajiv, I don’t feel the need to defend myself or my record in Fiji and neither, I’d imagine, does Qorvis. We gave our advice to the government and it was either accepted or rejected. We didn’t run the country, they did. All we could do is provide them with a service to the best of our ability and generally we did.
This is a piece about the media which I wrote through the prism of my own experience, not only as a journalist but as someone who worked at the heart of government on the comms side. It is not a mea culpa at any level. I certainly don’t feel defensive. I gave fearless advice at the time and tried to provide the government with an inclusive and positive narrative. I never once said – as the government is saying now – don’t believe anything you read except what I give you. That’s the Orwellian bit. Because it is an attempt to bypass the media altogether.
You ask about my conscience. It is totally untroubled. I did my job in good faith and by general consensus did it well. What happened after I left in mid 2018 isn’t my responsibility, by which time, as I’ve already reported, the AG had stopped listening altogether and told me he had tired of my negativity. So unwilling to be unrelentingly positive when I could see the show going off the rails, I left.
The practice of journalism, along with the practice of PR is an imprecise affair. It is not brain surgery. People have good days and bad. Journalists nail some stories and bungle others. PR people can have good days in which the advice they proffer produces good outcomes. Or they can make misjudgements themselves or, more frequently, watch their clients make a hash of a particular issue. I had good days and bad days in Fiji but they were mostly good in that I think a great deal was achieved by the Bainimarama government in the lead-up to 2014 and in the first years of its second term, however jaundiced your own view.
As I have repeatedly stated – and I know you don’t agree with this – I am trying to achieve reform of the government to alter its direction and make it more competitive in a situation in which I don’t think the opposition has yet got its act together. But as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t think FijiFirst can win again with the AG in the dominant position he occupies. Incidentally, I only went public on this because time is running out. And I am far from alone in the views I hold, which are shared by many people in the cabinet, the military, the civil service and the wider community. The difference between them and me is that I am in the unique position of being able to put the argument without having to fear the long arm of the AG, which keeps others silent.
You say I haven’t sufficiently covered the repression of the media in Fiji. There is an entire section there on the MDA and its penalties, with a specific call for the opposition to take up the issue and scrap those penalties if it wins the next election. So I can’t see how I could have been tougher than that. My assault on the Fiji Sun and FBC is to highlight the fact that they essentially can’t be trusted to be independent and report without fear or favour because they are instruments of the AG. And the Fijian people deserve to be aware of that.
I grappled a great deal with writing this piece and have to say it was the hardest that I have written for a long time. I don’t like sitting in judgment of fellow journalists because I have been where they are, though without the element of official repression. A lot of journalists in Fiji also happen to be very nice people. They too do their jobs in good faith but have as little control of what goes on at the office as I had as a comms person in government. So none of it is personal except for the individuals I have named who have demonstrably become puppets of the AG.
It is the entire framework in which journalists operate that requires reform, starting with the end of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s war against the media and the cynical way in which he has degraded the practice of journalism in the country, either through repression or the blatant nepotism and favouritism he dispenses at almost every level. He has corrupted two media outlets – FBC and the Fiji Sun – by eroding their independence to nothing and has the others dancing on a hot tin roof.
It is not conducive to giving the Fijian people the media they deserve and this was my prime motive in writing this piece. I felt I needed to give it a layer of my own experience if any critique was to be taken seriously. I am not apologising for anything. I am saying what I think needs to be done. Which is for the Fijian people and their media to say enough is enough and we all deserve better.
Having said all this, I freely accept that I may have missed the mark. There is fresh information here that hasn’t been on the public record framed around a personal story with my own perspective and prejudices. But that’s what happens when you write opinion. Sometimes you nail the argument, sometimes you don’t. As I say, good days and bad days. An imprecise art.
Thanks for your explanation which is respected and acknowledged. My point was that Qorvis is to be equally blamed for being the spin masters and to some extent responsible for the misinformation from Govt in narrating a false ( for lack of better word) story to the people of Fiji for last number of years.
We will respectfully agree to disagree on certain aspects of your engagement with Qorvis and Fiji Govt but you have made your point and I have made mine so let’s move on and concentrate on the larger issue to delivery the knowledge to the people of Fiji about the working of the current FF Govt and their shortcomings and why a change in 2022 elections is desperately needed
Sorry Graham, but if you’re going to start your column with the statement – ‘It is a sad fact that generally the watchdog in Fiji is a pretty mangy animal and on any fair appraisal isn’t performing to anything like the standard it should be’ – then you are going to have take a much harder look at the regime you are defending.
A line that Bainimarama and his loyal security forces have crossed, and recrossed repeatedly, and the AG, Pryde and all of the other enablers have either allowed or looked away from, is the harassment of the journalists themselves.
This has many versions under Bainimarama: the old fashioned butaraki [RIP Sitiveni Moce] which, while being unconscionable to all, remains much beloved by the Nation Builder In Chief and his unprincipled and incompetent military leadership.
But it also is done through the ceaseless interventions of the police and DPP in the lives of those journalists trying to do their jobs, asking questions, following down leads, even, dare I say it, being inexact in what they write or making mistakes [because this is the first draft of history].
How many times have Samisoni Pareti and Felix Chaudhry been arrested and detained?
Any one would have thought, from a Google search, the two of them were the most notorious armed bandits in the country and not journalists – doing as you exhort them to do – trying to eke out something resembling the truth from a regime with, as you now admit, so much to be embarrassed about.
I put to you a reasonable question that I have often asked of myself and, I’m willing to admit, answered in the negative:
If the cost to you, Graham Davis, was as high as the regime demands be extracted from those journalists who show the independence of thought you demand of them [and, remember, the only person in your corner is Ashwin ‘Even Torturers Have Rights’ Raj], would you really be laying your life on the line as Sitiveni Moce did?
Or enduring what Samisoni Pareti, Felix Chaudhry and their families have had to week in, week out, for what is now coming up to the 15th year of this miserablist, petty thug rule?
You ask why the Fiji Times supported the Qarase government [it’s debatable the extent to which they actually did].
But I would say that any working journalist in Fiji would support any of the previous governments in Fiji over this one, with the possible exception of the first Rabuka administration which was as prone to locking up those it disagreed with, but at least didn’t cause the death of anyone.
If that first draft of our country’s history is not to your liking, always remember the arsenal of regime intimidation tools being deployed against the journalists themselves by two notoriously thin-skinned leaders as they battle for more sulu to cover up their incompetence, corruption and sheer lack of ideas.
Well said Charlie, my point earlier but I did not articulate the way you have and the reason why I said ( with due respect) to Graham that this article was more of a defence of himself while working for Govt through Qorvis.
Many of Graham’s arguments are flawed and has no moral compass working for a regime who he knew was espousing a e narrative through Qorvis while the true journalists were getting the “butaraki” and he a accuses them of not providing a critical analysis of Frank and ASK and FFP.
This article form Graham is deeply flawed in every sense.
Rajiv, you and Charlie Charters are fellow political travellers so, of course, he is a much more convivial companion. You also share the same knee-jerk reaction to anyone who doesn’t embrace your agenda. The same puckered lips and withering stare.
To you, anyone who supports the FijiFirst government is deeply flawed and has no moral compass. Which takes in 50.02 per cent of the electorate at last count.
I’m sure your preferred party will make it in 2022 if the government doesn’t clean up its act. But while having a monopoly on righteousness might give you a warm inner glow, we’ll see if life is any better.
One can never win an argument of this sort Graham. I can appreciate that you’re being absolutely honest with Grubsheet, but honesty is too often interpreted as weakness…. more so in recent times. This is probably why the dark side of human character has become more prevalent by choice. I despair often…
Graham , once again with due respect you got it wrong. I am not against the current Govt but calling out on all their hypocrisy and you know what they are as you have written about them.
I have given Frank credit where it’s due and I have stated that his greatest legacy will be promoting one fiji for all , he deserves full mark on this.
But going around the country and talking about one fiji while on the other hand as the leader Frank is ignoring all that is going around him and being carried out in broad daylight by Aiyaz,, how can this then be a resemblance of one fiji. From mismanaging of the economy for last 14 years to rule by fear and intimidation is what I am talking about.
With the Supervisor of elections now reporting Biman to FICAC for his donations to NFP fund for cyclone Winston, is this what you call a level playing field?
The field is stacked up against the opposition who are always pursued under false pretenses purely to neutralize them so that FF Governs with unchecked powers.
There’s more to democracy then simply holding elections
This Govt has greatly undermined and weakened all state institutions for their own selfish gains and those are the things that bothers me. I am not a FFP supporter nor SODELPA nor NFP but purely seeing it from the point of view of what the state of democracy is in Fiji and you know very well it’s not in a good state.
Rajiv, re your latest comment: Then we are in much more agreement than I realised. I agree with most of what you say here, including the corruption of the institutions of state. But the notion that it is all bad and that anyone who supported the government lacks a moral compass is something I just don’t accept.
There are some terrific ministers in the FijiFirst government – people of accomplishment and integrity who are not at all as you describe the leadership and can form the backbone of a new government now.
The problem is that their lights have been obscured by the AG’s bushel and the Prime Minister seems afraid of the prospect of change. I am hoping the reality of the collapse in the government’s support for the very reasons you outline will eventually produce that change.
I am far from alone in this. Any notion that mine is a one man crusade doesn’t begin to address the scale of the pressure for change. I am articulating the views of a great many people in the cabinet, the military, the government and even the Prime Minister’s own circle.
Why did he not deny the contents of the Military Council document? Because it is true. All he could do in the statement written by Qorvis and authorised by the AG is cast it as gossip, which is not the same as denying its veracity. And the same goes for the choice of his successor. This has a long way to run but the PM has two choices – make the changes that are needed or be defeated.
As the Harry Potter song goes: Get ready for a bumpy ride.
Charlie, you and I have always come from opposite ends of the political spectrum in Fiji and even in your opening sentence, you show your prejudice. Fiji has an elected government, not a regime. We had a regime before 2014 but continuing to call it a regime after two elections is patently ridiculous.
Would SODELPA be a regime if it won in 2022? Of course not. Charlie Charters would be aristocracy in a SODELPA government as part of one of the ruling elite’s richest and most influential families.
I am appalled by any attack on journalists and condemn utterly what happened to the individuals you mention. It cannot be justified on any level. And we are in agreement about the punitive nature of the media laws, which can’t be justified either. So to even attempt to put distance between us on this merely because I support Bainimarama’s overall program of levelling the national playing field is a pretty shabby debating point. Not everyone who supports the FijiFirst government supports violence against journalists or media repression.
I knew I was walking into a minefield with this piece but it is one building block in an overall campaign to reform the way the government currently operates. I am not interested in the other parties in the same way until they present themselves as viable alternatives. While it is your prerogative to do so, I am certainly not going to support SODELPA until it accepts the same multicultural, multi faith agenda and even Tupou Draunidalo – who used to sit in the parliament as a NFP member -has pronounced the same view as me on the NFP’s ineffectiveness.
Your knee-jerk response in every context is a blind assault on the “regime”, which isn’t very productive in relation to this debate, especially when you acknowledge that if Sitiveni Rabuka wins the next election, his own record in targeting journalists is just as woeful.
Come on Graham. You’re trying to deny Fiji is a ‘regime’ post 2013, yet two or three articles before, you’re leading us through the intricacies of the Military Council, the various slights they have endured in their taxpayer-funded sinecures [bless!], and how this accumulation of grievance has focused their mind on the [elected] Minister of the Economy.
You call me ‘blind’ and ‘knee jerk’ but all I can see is your reflexive defence of Bainimarama and your expectation that the military will bend him and Fiji to their way of thinking yet again.
Aiyaz may be all of the things you say he is, probably much more, but at least he’s been elected albeit under the woeful and dysfunctional 2013 constitution. [Even the former Chief Justice mumbled a criticism or two from his normally supine position before retiring.]
How does the Military Council’s intent and actions not meet the definition of a regime?
Firstly, that the Military Council even thought to weigh in shows what everyone in Fiji should be in no doubt about: there is no meaningful separation of power.
Secondly, instead of loyally serving the government of the day, an unelected, deeply corrupted and by and large incompetent officer corps issues demands to the PM, with the full expectation of these being acted on [ … or else] about who they want to lead the country, who the next PM will be [and who it will not be] etc.
Thirdly, in the country at large, thanks to an almost unbreakable link between the COMPOL position and the same bumbling military officer corps, Fiji’s police are giving the full Steve Biko to a Nadi man, complete with so many false and wildly improbable statements that even Eugene de Kock would be puce with embarrassment.
[Btw tip of the hat to the Fiji Times, who you criticised for their ‘relative timidity’, for leading the charge.]
This is what ‘regime’ looks like.
You champion Frank’s role in ‘levelling the national playing field’ but the security forces have a finger on that scale, more like a clenched fist, on the extent to which any levelling can take place.
They operate with a culture of impunity whether it is towards meddling in the business of the elected government of the day, attacking members of the media [no prosecutions possible in the case of Sitiveni Moce because, of course, the constitution you are happy to champion gave blanket immunity to the military], or the citizen-taxpayer.
Anybody who reads the transcripts of the 2013 trial of Land Force Commander Driti can see what a hornets’ nest of self-interest, back-stabbing and avarice the Military Council is, and how this ethos transmits effortlessly into the ranks. See the circumstances around Ben Groenewald’s resignation in 2015.
Would Rabuka 3.0 also harass the media with the same gusto as Frank seems to have learnt to do at the side of Rabuka 1.0 in the late 1980s? Who knows. Counterfactual arguments have limited value – but as I said earlier Rabuka’s forces were never blood-thirsty, they never actually caused the death of a journalist unlike Frank’s.
My first experience of court reporting was, with Bharat Jamnadas, watching Rabuka’s forces [generally in the form of the late Beni Naiveli on the stand] explaining to the court why habeus corpus didn’t apply to one case or another, with the defence often provided by John Cameron, in front of Chief Magistrate Morrison.
I am not saying it was all cucumber sandwiches and tea, but it was civil. Those in the media that the military/police were bringing to court were not broken or injured men. That has been the exclusive preserve of Frank’s rule.
As much as I have enjoyed Rabuka at a personal level on occasions, he polarises, is therefore a flawed candidate and loses as many votes as he wins. Like Victor Lal, I am in the ‘a curse on both their houses’.
His leadership of Sodelpa allowed FijiFirst to frame the 2018 election in terms that completely avoided putting forward any policy positions or having to defend their own shambolic rule. A brilliant piece of misdirection.
Jeez, you trumpet this ‘elected government’ but FF didn’t launch their manifesto until three days before the election – talk about contempt for the citizen-voter-taxpayer. In September 2014 you pronounced that Frank ‘has a decisive mandate to implement the Manifesto he took to the election’ – what mandate can Frank possibly have for this four-year span when all the voters heard was about the NBF failure until Frank’s memorable ‘GDP na dinau’ lesson in economics?
I know it helps you to frame your debating points around the fact that, by marriage, I am connected to, supposedly, one of the ‘richest and most influential families’ in the country. You deduce from this that I would benefit from a Sodelpa win.
Anybody who knows the inner workings of my family would laugh their head off at your cryptological efforts on my wife’s family.
More importantly, that’s an argument that is beneath the standard you normally set. Play the ball.
I don’t believe that I ever criticised you for working for Qorvis, or suggested that your paid employment in anyway affected your belief in Frank’s stated mission [but I am happy to be corrected if I did.]
The only instance where my mother-in-law has had any impact on my political beliefs was to bring into sharp, personal focus how the military regime and its culture of impunity has so diminished the country’s police and DPP system.
That was the only conclusion to be drawn after watching almost-five years of what many have called ‘lawfare’ conducted against my mother in law, and Semisi Lasike and Apete Vereti. The former MP Mataiasi Ragigia was also charged based on the same police report but died – presumably his health not at all helped by the standover tactics of Pryde and his foot soldiers – before he and his family could have his name cleared.
[The ‘lawfare’ in my mother-in-law’s case included a separate dangerous driving charge – inevitably, of course, dismissed – but which required eight policemen and three police dogs to arrest her after a speeding FICAC car, tailing her, ran up onto the pavement on Waimanu Road. The court heard there was no damage to either car, that my mother-in-law was arrested unlawfully, and driven from police station to police station for three hours to frustrate her lawyer’s attempts to contact her.]
This was by no means the most egregious: in 2009 four of your father’s successors, the Revs Ame Tugaue, Tuikilakila Waqairatu, Tomasi Kanailagi and Manasa Lasaro were each charged under the Public Emergency Regulations. Waqairatu and Lasaro died during their wait for justice before the inevitable Nolle Prosequi was filed by the DPP in 2016 – seven years after being charged, and three years into the existence of the supposedly life-enhancing, ‘regime-ending’ 2013 constitution.
Like many others, I truly appreciate your lifting the hem on what is going on inside this government. But the most pernicious thing in Fiji is not Aiyaz. It’s the spectre of the military and the long shadow they cast over all of Fiji’s most precious institutions.
It was true in 1987, 2000 and in every year since 2006.
Aiyaz can’t defy political gravity – you make that point persuasively.
But the military have made it their mission to do just that, defy political gravity, thanks to their Trumpian dual role of being both Firestarter and Fireman in Chief.
You might say I have nothing productive to say. I guess that’s a fair point. But I would say lionising the Military Council as you have been, ginning them up as the country’s saviour from Aiyaz, does nothing but perpetuate the dead hand of their violent, unproductive, ruinously expensive, thug leadership.
And that way lies only further ruination.
Charlie, there’s only one problem with your argument about the Military Council and its alleged pre-eminence in making Fiji a “regime”. The Prime Minister has declined (so far) to implement its recommendations to change the government. Which indicates beyond doubt that it is not as powerful as you are suggesting.
Graham you were a big fish in a small pond which was incidentally also a flaming war zone with a draconian government and a much trammeled media. It’s a bit rich lecturing them to do better now after what many of them have been through. You should do some training, I’m sure they would appreciate it :).
But yes, you are essentially right. Your points about the stance of the FBC and the Fiji Sun are spot on, though you’re a tad unfair on the Fiji Times which has had to withstand disgraceful levels of harassment over many years. How can you expect them to be forthright when they still have the draconian provisions of the media decree—with key clauses open to interpretation—hanging over them?
Since independence, many politicians and public officials in Fiji have struggled with the idea of an independent media, bitterly complaining when their story is not covered to the extent they expected. Get over it, work with them.
Likewise, a lot of journalists have been slack in their reporting, opting for the ‘he said’, ‘she said’ approach and providing little background and context. Ironically though the regulations have sharpened media outlets ensuring right of reply, reducing the temptation to run a story without a reply to keep the story alive for the next day. Some have fallen prey to bias which hasn’t helped the industry at all.
But it is also totally unacceptable to intimidate journalists and media outlets with sanction in an effort to muzzle or skew the story one way or the other. It is their to job to speak truth to power without fear or favour and keep the politicians honest.
A vibrant media upholding the freedoms and rights of their readers is essential for the full development of the country. If there is no good quality, investigative journalism reporting in fair and balanced fashion—on say the state of key industries–why should a potential investor take Fiji seriously? How would anyone know what’s really going on, where the opportunities are and who needs to pull their socks up?
If a free and fair media is not truly valued and nurtured, Fijians and Fiji will miss out big time.
All fair points, RT, and some good suggestions. As you indicate, we are at a crossroads in which the Fijian media either identifies with the practice of journalism in the great democracies or is reduced to the way it is practiced in one party states like Singapore or, worse, in China and other totalitarian countries. And you are absolutely right to say that this will affect the way the rest of the civilised world looks at Fiji.
If journalists are to be trained overseas, the last place they should be sent to is China. I just cannot understand why the Fiji Sun would do this. Time was when Sun journalists were sent to India, where at least there is a tradition of independent journalism. In China there is none. And after their training, these people come back to Fiji with the notion that journalism is there to serve the ruling party.
The Fiji Sun is a disgrace and I actually think it may be time to encourage a boycott of the paper. And, yes, I may have been a bit hard on the Fiji Times but only because I want it to be better and regain its rightful place in national life. Perhaps the democracies who are Fiji’s friends can assist in the training of its journalists, as used to be the case in the past. God only knows it is necessary, though it is the owners of media outlets who ultimately have to decide whether they have a commitment to genuine journalism or are merely using their mastheads to make a buck.
BTW, I am not as a big a fish as I once was. Inspired by the lead of some of my Fijian friends, I am on a determined campaign to be a lot smaller, including giving up the dreaded drink. What will some of my critics do when I can no longer be cast as a shambling drunk? Doubtless they will find something else.
“I could never understand its support for the Qarase government’s indigenous nationalist agenda, which I believed constituted a tyranny of the majority in that it disempowered a significant section of the population and was a threat to national unity that I strongly opposed.”
except the tyranny we have now is nothing compared to how you (in my view) wrongly represent the Honourable (in every sense of the word) late Prime Minister Qarase. Guess you thought you knew what tyranny is but if that is “your” definition of tyranny. I wonder what your take is for the current “tyrant”?
The late Hon. PM was never a tyrant. Categorizing him wrongly fueled the disastrous road that led to the dire predicament the country now find itself in. Why is it when a leader stands for the indigenous people the talk around it becomes so clouded that people miss the viral historical fact that it’s the goodwill and sacrifice of the iTaukei that’s allowed hundreds of thousands of people to build their lives and prosper while generally the return to landowners for that sacrifice has been often less then the minimum wage. Affirmative action was one way of acknowledging the magnitude of the sacrifice. Even through that time, even with the affirmative action policies, the collective experience of nationhood will remain unmatched then the sorry wretched state of affairs that the country now find itself in not just for today but for the generations to come who will pick up the back breaking burden of debt that was never their doing!
Anonymous, you misunderstand the context . “Tyranny of the majority” is a figure of speech. It is a reference to a majority population using its power to reinforce its position in relation to other citizens.
In this context, I was making the point that the iTaukei – who became the majority after 1987 – used their power to strengthen their rights over those of other Fijians. And there is absolutely no doubt that the Qarase government pursued this in government with the Qoliqoli Bill and other measures.
Indigenous rights are already entrenched in Fiji. So while I know that many share your view that they are not, I submit that the evidence clearly indicates otherwise. For a start, you cannot dispossess a people who own more than 90 per cent of the land. And iTaukei culture is easily the most dominant culture in Fiji and is at the centre of our national life.
In my view, It would be much more productive to examine ways in which every Fijian – irrespective of background – can be better advantaged to enable us to move forward together than single out the majority who own most of the land for special treatment.
Thank you Graham so contextually speaking, the tyranny we have now is of what? a select few of the “now” elite who squander and rule through (for starters in the context of your article) misinformation and a weak media? and make the best out of the wrongly cloaked “racial divide”? I believe the misconception must be cleared.
Is it not that a legal right exists and arises in ownership of land? That ownership is, as purely a matter of fact arisen out the facf of the iTaukei – tye indigenous people of Viti. And should the fact of just the “majority” then immediately penalise them “just because” of that fact? Should not the legal right of ownership be rightly acknowledged first? i.e – all things remaining equal. Whats more, is that legal right is a communal one that embraces the cultures and traditions of the iTaukei which is THEIR identity. It is not an isolated truth as Fiji is part of a largely indigenous region of peoples of the sea who are proud of their land and culture.
Do legal owners exist as a mere paper formality without benefits in the real world? oh sorry what is the real world ? oh the free market. But alas the only exception there is if your name is in the VKB than you can’t extend the benefits of the market economy to you amd we cant make laws to recognise the simple workings of today’s economy because well you being the majority is a problem and you need to just be happy with the green VKB certificate you have and continue to just sit pretty in your villages and continue to make land available to those who want the benefits of the market economy (which does not only belong to you but to your future generations).
Therein is the context Graham.
No Fijian owns land, to claim so is a myth. All Native Land is owned by ITLTB, who holds title to Indigenous land, and that’s a fact.
As trustee yes! Who do not own but hold in trust. The iTaukei have largely morphed into owners on paper. A mere formality (just like how the institutions of govt have been reduced to in Fiji). To facilitate the leasing of land not for their benefit for the benefit of the system that it continues to prop up. That one liner in the Constititution purporting to protect indigenous ownership of land is a shame compared to the constitutional commitment given to leases!
That maybe the belief, but legal papers and the courts if Fiji have shown that Fijians don’t own any land. Read Shah’s paper below and you’ll see that Fijians have lost their rights to land.
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/2266/Boydell_%26_Shah_inquiry_into_land.pdf?sequence=1
That is a very detailed appraisal right there, Graham. It’s a pity that the standards of local media in Fiji have degenerated to what we see today.
The Fiji Times in particular has been through a systematic process of being sidelined as any observer would kn,ow. However, the slide of this once august organ has not been entirely driven by external forces, I daresay.
Under the leadership of the Len Ushers, the Vjendra Kumars and the Samisoni Kakaivalus, The Fiji Times had a good run. I started reading it from the age of 8, starting with the editorial and letters sections. The latter was from those who wrote for passion, and got the reader thinking. Many of the idioms, the figures of speech that I use to this day were picked through the letters sections.
A quick glance at the Letters today shows considerable space being given to writers. That’s great. However, what is the content? Mind-numbing drivel from the same mob who terrorize readers with their mundane, daily superficial ramblings about their soccer team, their rephrasing of what was already written the previous day, and when short of ideas, writing about themselves, their family and each other! Endless self-serving kudos about how important they are, why they should run the country etc etc.
All of these are being aided by a complicit, editorial framework with questionable standards I daresay.It’s put me off my subs for the newspaper for good. And, I had never missed an edition for 33 years! I shudder to read it now.
Oh, what has this powerful media entity come to?!?
Shane, thank you for your thoughtful input. Someone said something to me today that I hadn’t thought of before. And that is whether the families that own the two main papers, the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun – the Motibhais and CJ Patel – have a genuine commitment to journalism and public service rather than merely seeing these papers as vehicles to make money or have influence.
I agree with you about the letters columns of the Fiji Times. Sometimes the likes of Rajend Naidu and Simon Hazelman have multiple letters in the same edition of the paper. Last week, one of Rajend Naidu’s offerings was printed twice in the same edition. And believe me, in my own experience, his views don’t ever bear repeating.
They need to put a much more ruthless sub-editor in charge of “letters to the editor”. But no doubt that person will be a kai vata of Allen Lockington (everyone seems to be) and won’t be cutting back the contributions of the Sage of Kava Place. 🙂
Vinaka Graham. I couldn’t have put the editorial description any more succinctly. There is no “editor-in-waiting” to look forward to after FW either. Sigh.
Rule of the thumb, you want to get your letter published, wax lyrical about the FT, its staff or editor, and hey presto! You’re in! Their egos are sufficiently soft to be easily massaged.
I used to have a cynical outlook on Fiji’s journalists, that they’re probably waiting by each day for the 10 am presser to flow in via the fax/inbox. And, that you knew which the “presser stories” were, based on their minimalist grammatical errors and typos.
It’s a grim look onto the horizon for now.
Shane, interesting your observations on the 10.00am news conference. If only! When I worked to the AG, I was always trying to get him to hold his own news conferences early in the day so that journalists could have plenty of time to put their stories together and do them justice. But he always resisted this, holding news conferences as late as possible in the afternoon on the basis that reporters from television in particular wouldn’t have time to seek other comment and would run only what he told them in the 6 o’clock news.
The result was invariably that these stories weren’t as good as they could have been. Having been a television news reporter myself, I knew what it must have been like for these poor bastards. No wonder reporters don’t ask many questions at these events. They have to rush out the door and try to cobble something together with the clock ticking and their editors and line-up producers having kittens. And then the AG would complain about the quality of the stories.
But you make an important point about the drip-feeding of the media. Fill their days with photo calls and news conferences and they are so busy dealing with these that they don’t have time to go off and generate their own stories that will be a lot less flattering. A combination of manipulative politicians, parsimonious media proprietors and, as you say, reporters who’ve grown lazy on the drip.
That’s the AG alright, big ego with a small brain that he’s too stubborn and defiant towards constructive criticism or others who are smarter than him, even if its a logical solution that they proposed.
I dont blame the bandwagon critics for accusing you of “jumping ship,” but you’re an independent journalist now giving insightful analysis into the underbelly of the government.
Fiji Times is okay to an extent, unlike the Fiji Snub with its narcissistic “sponsor” on the front page of every issue. No wonder that paper is useful for suki with all the propaganda that’s glaringly obvious. It’s probably why I prefer news from elsewhere like Radio NZ exposing the Chinese exploitation of land and resources which government is too blind and oblivious to realize.
Fiji media obviously needs some much needed improvements, especially when there’s no law on “hate crime” separate from sedition laws courtesy of the colonial era.
Isnt it the height of hypocrisy that this SOE is today saying that Biman has politicised his referral to FICAC of the NFP. Isnt this the same guy who was seen visiting Suvavou house when the govt was holed up in level 9. The guy whos office is supposed to be independent and unbiased. Its just sickening like watching a train wreck repeating itself.
That’s definitely him, SOE acting more like an SOB most of the time.
Institutions in the gutters. The whole lot of them. Just too sad for words.
And this is why I always disagree with Graham when he says Frank has leveled the playing field.
Is this his version of a level playing field, all I see is a field with a big gapping hole for the opposition to be pushed into, a field with big Boulders for opposition to crash into
Frank and ASK have crafted a perfect playing field for themselves and only for themselves to play in.
This is not genuine democracy but a regime ( yes a regime and not a Govt as Govts take care of their people) .
Read the detailed analysis by Victor Lal on the FPP donor list and the anomalies noted. Will the SOE investigate this and run to FICAC to lodge a complaint against ASK?
Highly unlikely as the SOE will simply state that he found everything in order with the FFP donations.
What a big joke Fiji has become, donations to Cyclone funds are now seen as “corruption”
Mark my words the 2022 elections results will be compromised.
No self-respecting big or small fish, battered and deepfried, would want to be wrapped in either the Fiji Times or the Fiji Sun.