Did Sitiveni Rabuka sack Aseri Radrodro for disobedience and insubordination to try to create a diversion and protect Lynda Tabuya from the sex and drug scandal that has engulfed the two? That’s the astonishing claim being made by some political players amid reports that Aseri Radrodro is right and Sitiveni Rabuka is wrong in their respective claims about what has happened with council appointments at the Fiji National University – the ostensible reason Radrodro was dismissed.
This whole saga has suddenly become a lot more murky as the Prime Minster struggles to assert his authority in the face of a rebellion from Radrodro and his backers in SODELPA including the General Secretary of the Party, Viliame Takayawa, plus a whole lot of SODELPA members, particularly from Naitasiri, who are determined that the Minister for Education is going nowhere.
In any other democracy, the spectre of a rebellion on the scale we are seeing with SODELPA against the head of government would have already created a full-blown political crisis. But in Fiji, instability and drama seem to be par for the course as the three members of the Coalition keep saying “nothing to see here” while their shaky arrangement bursts at the seams.
Grubsheet has established that Aseri Radrodro was only sacked after the Prime Minister got the SODELPA parliamentary leader, Viliame “Blinky Bill” Gavoka, to agree to it – both to Radrodro’s dismissal and an agreement that Gavoka would take over his Education portfolio. We haven’t heard from Blinky because he has been wandering around India presumably doing tourism promotion. But it is pretty extraordinary in itself that the SODELPA leader is gadding around the subcontinent while all hell breaks loose in his own party.
Surely even if Gavoka wasn’t aware of the looming crisis of Radrodro’s dismissal – and whatever has happened at FNU has evidently been going on for months – you’d think he would have rushed back immediately to be in Fiji to deal with the fallout. Did the SODELPA leader tell Aseri Radrodro and his backers in the Party that his execution was coming? Evidently not. Which accounts for the shock and anger in SODELPA ranks when right out of the blue, the axe fell.
It is clear that Blinky Bill doesn’t have authority over the other small, furry animals in the SODELPA forest. He is said to have the backing of Ifereimi Vasu – the iTaukei minister and other member of the SODELPA trio in the parliament – in lining up behind the Prime Minister and agreeing that Aseri Radrodro should go. But the rebellion in the rest of the Party is in full public view, with a series of astonishing statements that demonstrate just how shaky this government really is.
Just look at the headlines. Not private murmurings that SODELPA might do a deal with FijiFirst to bring down the government but blazing public comments to that effect. Not a grudging acceptance that keeping Radrodro in the Education Ministry is a lost cause but equally blazing public statements that he remains the Minister, at least until SODELPA meets again on Friday.
The more these lines are drawn in the sand in such glaring public fashion, the less likely that all this can be worked out sensibly behind the scenes without unacceptable loss of face. Where is it all going to end? Who knows? Because the Prime Minister is adamant that his decision stands and Aseri Radrodro and his backers are equally adamant that he is going nowhere. And if by some chance, Sitiveni Rabuka can prise him out of Education, Radrodro and his backers may well be going into the arms of FijiFirst (assuming FijiFirst would have them).
Hanging over this entire standoff is something that has been lost in the Punch and Judy media coverage of recent days. Before the sex scandal involving Aseri and Lynda Tabuya broke like the thunderclap of a tropical storm, it was generally assumed that Radrodro would succeed Bill Gavoka as SODELPA leader when he steps down in March. At least that WAS the plan. Not any more.
But Radrodro is having none of it. This is a man who doesn’t think that engaging in “brutal” sex with the Minister for Women in a Melbourne hotel just along the corridor from his sleeping wife is any more of an electoral liability that almost killing his former wife – the Prime Minister’s daughter. He got away with that and wound up Minister for Education. So what’s a sex scandal and some trifling disobedience and insubordination? As far as he’s concerned, the ultimate prize of leadership should still be his.
Some reports have it that Aseri Radrodro has been told, even by some of his supporters, that given what happened in Room 233 of the Windsor Hotel, that is no longer possible. But for his backers – who are said to include some very “heavy hitters” from Naitasiri – he is still their man and as far as they are concerned, he is going nowhere. So Friday’s SODELPA meeting looks like being a doozy, with the very real prospect of a decision that cuts the legs from under the Prime Minister and cuts the legs from under the Coalition.
Gavoka is now telling people that given the scandal that has engulfed Radrodro, it would be better for him not to go in March and hang on until at least June to see off any prospect of a fresh election that becomes possible under the Constitution at the 18 month mark. The reasoning seems to be that if the country is forced to the polls again, Gavoka would have a better chance of getting SODELPA over the 5 per cent threshold than the scandal-plagued Radrodro.
Will Sitiveni Rabuka be forced to back down just as he was forced to back down last October when Aseri Radrodro led the SODELPA rebellion against his abortive cabinet reshuffle? For two long weeks back then, the Prime Minister suffered the humiliation of a standoff over his proposed ministerial changes, including removing Radrodro out of Education, before an even more humiliating capitulation. Is he going to be humiliated again? Incredibly, despite the PM’s insistence that the 2013 Constitution is on his side in giving him the right to pick and choose his ministers, some people think it is about to happen all over again.
If it is true that in relation to what happened at FNU, Aseri Radrodro is on the side of the angels and Sitiveni Rabuka is not, the Prime Minister could be in very big trouble. His authority will have been demolished, perhaps irreparably, which raises the prospect of a tap on the shoulder, or a glint of steel, that could see Rabuka being “persuaded” to stand down.
Certainly, a lot of questions are being asked within the PAP about his judgment, not only in relation to FNU and his handling of Aseri Radrodro’s dismissal, but why he has shown every inclination to dispense with Radrodro while showing every sign of protecting Radrodro’s love interest, Lynda Tabuya. Grubsheet recently floated rumours that the PM’s failure to bring the couple of account for lying to him about their affair might be rooted in his own sexual history with the Great Temptress of politics. And incredibly, that’s still the suspicion among a sizeable number of PAP supporters, who are appalled that the PM has done nothing to staunch a gaping political wound that is bound to keep bleeding all the way to the next election.
Who would replace Sitiveni Rabuka if he is eventually forced to walk the plank? Well it certainly won’t be Lynda Tabuya, who has cruelled any chance of making it to the top because of her scandalous lack of judgment. She simply wouldn’t survive an election campaign that focussed on her hypocrisy in being an anti porn crusader and transmitting pornographic images or campaigning against drug use by young people while smoking “weed”. Fijian voters are a forgiving bunch but not that forgiving, and especially with the added burden of the Minister for Women treating another woman in the shabby way Lynda treated Sainiana Radrodro. Women used to be among Lynda’s biggest supporters. Now a sizeable number are waiting for her with the war clubs from their living room walls.
Which leaves us with Manoa Kamikamica, who is now the undisputed frontrunner to replace Rabuka if it comes to that. Kamikamica is doing everything right. Publicly, at least, he is still declaring his allegiance and loyalty to the Prime Minister even though it is common knowledge that he was advocating even before the election that he, not Rabuka, should be PAP leader. And he has resisted the temptation to say anything at all about the sex and drug scandal that has upended any chance of Lynda Tabuya being Kamikamica’s rival for the top job.
Manoa smiles almost as much as Siromi Turaga at any time but providence has now delivered him every reason to be grinning from ear to ear, with his main rival mired in scandal and the captain whose job he covets stumbling from crisis to crisis and with an increasingly unsteady hold on the tiller of state. Manoa is definitely the man of the moment and suddenly a lot closer to achieving his ambition to do what his late father, the distinguished Josevata Kamikamica, failed to do and make it to the very top. Jo Kamikamica is still regarded by people who remember him as the best prime minister Fiji never had. Will the son get the prize that eluded the father? That prospect has suddenly got a lot closer.
And what of yesterday’s meeting of the Executive Council of the PAP to discuss what to do about Lynda Tabuya? We’re told that Lynda herself was specifically told to stay away while the sex and drug scandal that has engulfed her was discussed at length. The Council later confirmed that it had received a written compliant on the alleged conduct of an unnamed “Senior Honourable Member” and it was referring that complaint to the PAP’s Legal and National Disciplinary Sub-Committee ( see CFL-Fiji Village report below).
Some members of the Council evidently believe Lynda Tabuya should be disciplined by being sent to the backbench or even expelled from the party. Yet in the end, high-minded principle appears almost certain to give way to realpolitik . Without the Prime Minister moving against her, Lynda Tabuya may just be too big to remove as the PAP’s second biggest vote-getter after Rabuka.
There are still enough people with decency at the top of the PAP for the Council to make a point of deciding to check on the welfare of Sainiana Radrodro, even though she is married to a SODELPA “love rat” and surely they should be looking after her. Yet the woman who has caused Sainiana so much pain appears to be no closer to being brought to account by her Party, which says a great deal about the woeful lack of standards and accountability in public life.
As Grubsheet has observed ruefully before, you can be a wife beater, a serial philanderer, a drug taker, be in business with convicted criminals, make porn while posing as an anti-porn crusader and it is still no impediment to making it in politics in Fiji. Our politicians ride around in their shiny government cars, are routinely garlanded and fawned over and turn out for church in their Sunday best, their eyes squinted in fervent prayer. They make empty speeches urging others to meet standards they have never met , throw titbits to a gormless local media and sail serenely on. While ordinary men and women of honour wring their hands about collapsing standards of public conduct – along with the crime, the drugs, the violence, the racism, the greed, the poverty, the crumbling infrastructure, the “vaka malua” torpor and the hypocrisy now rampant in a nation that has increasingly lost its way.
Every society takes its tone from the top. And what is coming from the top in Fiji in the debacle that passes for proper governance is enough to make good people weep. Then take stock of their own lives and head for the door.
Grubsheet has been told that the reported exodus of 50,000 Fijians over the past two years has been grossly under-reported. According to a senior source in the government, the actual figure is closer to 80,000. So as they look at the mayhem around them, many people aren’t waiting around for another election. They are already voting with their feet.
Anonymous says
FNU seems to be at the centre of all that is happening in government at this moment.
There have been some very very questionable appointments and dismissals at the university of late. Care to shed some light on FNU please?
Graham Davis says
I’m afraid my knowledge of the details of what has happened at FNU could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Though it is clear to even a simpleton that the place has been stacked with Coalition cronies.
Victor Lal at Fijileaks knows a lot more and so do people like the former diplomat Robin Nair, who is on the Council, and must be wondering why the hell he agreed to take the gig.
FNU is one of the glaring instances in which the more things change, the more they stay the same. FijiFirst used it as a political plaything and now the Coalition is doing the same. And as usual, the interests of the students and their families come way down on the list of its priorities.
Postscript: Actually I notice Victor Lal has posted something on FNU today. Here’s the link:
https://www.fijileaks.com/home/fnugate-from-ffp-to-coalition-government-a-whistleblower-writes-to-biman-prasad-leaked-to-fijileaks-calling-on-the-nfp-leader-to-launch-investigation-into-racial-subjugation-improper-appointments-at-fnu
Ernest says
Many in business and the private sector are now saying things were better before this government came in. Things are really bad now. No tax for billionaires and more tax for the poor tells us everything. Fiji is in the toilet.
Exhausted says
The penalty for not participating in politics is that you get governed by those inferior to you….Plato
How true is this statement today. In every nation all over the world. But in
Fiji not only are our politicians idiots but we also have wife beaters, coup makers and home wreckers. This place is tiring.
KN says
It is interesting to note that for all the talk and show on Christianity, Zion, love, marriage and family, this Coalition Government is the most contaminated with sex and extra-marital affairs in the history of our country. And it’s my party, the Party my family and I have supported. Many of us turned a blind eye to the history of some politicians we voted into power in 2023, including Tabuya with her doctored personal brand which has conveniently subtracted her past sexual trysts and drug use, omissions which successfully made her attractive to young voters. In some ways, Tabuya has given us what we as a nation of voters deserve, a taste of the reality we compromised on when we voted for her, not once but twice. That season is over. Her arrogance and flippant attitude to her own bad behaviour has managed that quite neatly.
An item Tabuya herself has overlooked to her own detriment is the fact that she could have survived a long political career based on her doctored personal brand had she exercised some humility and kept a lower profile. The very smell of the sex scandal has led many to now focus on what it is exactly that she brings to the political table and the answer is obvious. She brings nothing except the wealth she has married into which she has used as license to run her own show. She could have at least brought ethics from her past post as Assistant Lecturer in law but she obviously didn’t even learn from the very content she was teaching.
There is just ministry normal work outputs and nothing by way of innovation, hard work, cooperation, ability to work with others, giving space, and most importantly, ability to even talk policy if not spearhead policy review and reform, an item sorely needed not only in her portfolio but across multiple ministries in government. A year and two months in power and there is no space nor interest nor ability to demonstrate political work as a lead focus because everything about Tabuya is nothing but Tabuya and sometimes even that space is not enough. Her thirst for attention is at the level of a one-year-old still being potty-trained hence the regular messes we are expected to turn a blind eye to or applaud as progress or fine achievement.
We hope the PAP Management Board realises that the voter numbers Tabuya brings is based on personal rebranding and selectively curated social media campaigns to suit her core target groups of the young and poor although others come in as supporters too. The focus on youthfulness, beauty, sex appeal, education (somewhat), risen from the poor through marriage into wealth and all as equal in value and worth attaining, the ethereal dreamlike possibilities touted in social media is a drug to get the majority poor in the capital’s Nasinu corridor one of the most voluminous political grounds in Fiji. It is a cheap and smart personal marketing ploy to secure numbers and it worked. But PAP Management Board must realise this approach is not sustainable because the brand image and the real person are starkly different. While good for getting votes, it is tricky to maintain a political term on because the real person keeps bursting to get out and causes public stumbling revealing the true nature of the person.
In short, Tabuya’s political career is not based on solid past achievement. Should another party or candidate do the same next, they will also rise to the top. Semaan/Tabuya resources have been used to fund volleyball games, short-lived and selective token youth programs, high school support, and constituency focus in one of the most densely populated areas in Fiji which automatically give you the votes she has managed. It’s not rocket science.
This should give them the impetus to make the necessary moves unless PAP is solely or predominantly funded by Semaan/Tabuya and has bought obligatory allegiance through money. Which will explain her haughtiness and disregard for consequences because she knows from the outset that there won’t be any. Even if it takes the party to its demise. Tragic for PAP and the Coalition. Even more tragic for voters in Fiji who are forced to watch this F-grade show and having to pay for the entire production at the same time.
Melbourne should be the last straw. If it’s not fixed now, there will much more deep cleaning in the months ahead and like me, many PAP voters will not be around to watch that.
Alfred says says
FNU saga is concerning. Is it true the previous Council was also sacked when the new govt came in power? The government and media reports said that Council was among the best every chosen and what a disappointment if they have actually been sacked for wrong reasons. I do not believe this sacking would be possible legally as the current ‘saga of 4’ controversy. The FNU Act needs to be interpreted correctly and the decisions set right to avoid any potential legal difficulties in the future. FNU is our national university and needs to be rightly supported to grow to international reputation for our people and their future. It is imperative that their governance is legally conducted and protected to guide the evolution. My 2c worth!