The 26th anniversary of the first 1987 Coup has revived some traumatic memories for many of us who lived through it – the shock, the air of menace, the violence, the feeling that Fiji would never be the same again. Tens of thousands of our best and smartest people simply decided there and then that there was no future for themselves and their families and packed up and left.
The exodus was so dramatic that it soon altered the entire racial balance in Fiji. The Indo-Fijians – or Indians as they were then called – were once in the majority. But so many of them fled to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US that the “Fijians” – as the i’Taukei were then known – gained the ascendancy and remain the dominant racial grouping.
You really have to be in your mid thirties, at least, to recall the events of that life-changing day, which means that to the overwhelming majority of contemporary Fijians, May 14th 1987, is a date in the history books, not something they experienced. Yet more than ever, it’s important for every Fijian to appreciate the magnitude of the schism that ripped apart the social and political fabric of the nation.
Racial supremacy in favour of the i’Taukei was imposed at the point of a gun even though they had no cause whatsoever – as the dominant landowners – to feel in the least bit threatened by the other communities. It produced a crude form of minority rule in Fiji in which the members of other races became second-class citizens. And worse, it led to hideous excesses, as far too many i’Taukei turned on their fellow citizens, snubbing them, beating them and robbing them in a disgraceful display of greed and stupidity.
That sense of arrogant superiority – of surly self-entitlement – lingered on and was again a feature of the second coup in 1987, triggered the events of 2000 – the disastrous Speight coup – and persisted through the Qarase years until 2006, when one indigenous leader in the form of Voreqe Bainimarama declared that enough was enough.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the events of May 14th 1987 triggered the most disastrous era in Fijian history – three decades of instability that deprived the country of three decades of progress. Grubsheet, for one, is continually bemused by the way in which the man ostensibly responsible – Sitiveni Rabuka – is lionised simply because he was eventually able to gain a degree of respectability by morphing into an elected leader.
Rabuka is continually being invited to international conferences – most recently in Australia and before that New Zealand – as a kind of eminence grise or eminent person to comment on political events in Fiji. Indeed, he’s again taking centre stage on Wednesday night at a panel discussion at the University of the South Pacific on the processes leading up to next year’s election.
Now, Rabuka is a pleasant enough character to meet, still retains a semblance of the good looks and bearing that made him a 1980s heart-throb and carries a definite aura of celebrity as a living, breathing relic of one of the most tumultuous periods of our history. Yet is Grubsheet alone in being astonished that those who scream the most loudly for an immediate return to democracy nowadays seem to be the first to scramble to share a platform with him? Surely this is the man who started it all, who triggered the earthquake, who carries more blame than anyone else for Fiji’s lost decades? Yes, he’s begun to say a tentative “sorry”, to tell the world that it was a mistake. Yet there’s a decided absence of overt shame on Rabuka’s part that so many lives were destroyed, so many families uprooted, so many opportunities lost.
There was a particular element of cruelty in the choice of the date of the coup – the anniversary of the arrival of the Girmit, the first Indian indentured labourers brought to Fiji by the British. For many Indo-Fijians, the events of May 14th have left an indelible scar.
Grubsheet met Sitiveni Rabuka for the first time during the events of 1987 when we covered the coup for Australia’s Nine Network. He was the picture of civility yet it all belied the menace he’d displayed to get his own way. Fiji’s current ambassador to the United Nations, Peter Thomson, was then Permanent Secretary for Information. He tells of how Rabuka came into his office wielding a pistol and forced Thomson to write the public announcement of the coup. In those days, there was no television, only Radio Fiji. And the words that Rabuka uttered in his radio broadcast are etched in Grubsheet’s memory to this day: “At 10 o’clock this morning, troops of the Royal Fiji Military Forces took over the Government of Fiji and neutralised parliament…” He’d also taken the Bavadra Government hostage and, in doing so, changed the course of Fijian history forever.
In my own mind’s eye, there are so many memories of the following days, all of them extremely confronting for someone who’d grown up in Fiji believing in the multiracial ideal. I was at Channel Nine in Sydney working when the coup was announced and immediately went on Ray Martin’s talk show to provide some of the background before racing to the airport via my flat to pack a small suitcase and pick up my Fiji passport. The plan was for me to go into Suva without a film crew and avoid the hotels just in case the overseas media couldn’t get in or happened to be thrown out. I stayed with a friend – a prominent lawyer – who remains a friend to this day, not least because he came to my aid when I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was and got arrested anyway when I was stupid enough to be caught in a taxi with a couple of other journalists.
I was taken by armed troops to the Central Police Station, where my Fiji passport became an immediate problem. “Who are you? What are you doing with this? Where are you staying?” It occurred to me that my interrogators thought I was a foreign spy. But what really agitated them were some stamps in my passport in Arabic. It was at the time of the big 1980s Libyan scare in the Pacific that arose from Colonel Gaddafi’s flirtation with Vanuatu. “You been in Libya? Are you working for Libya?” “No I was born in Fiji and I work for Channel Nine”. To his eternal credit, my Indo-Fijian lawyer host suddenly arrived at Police HQ and eventually secured my release. So my own detention of several hours was far less traumatic than those of others, who in some cases were held for days and severely beaten.
Never before or since has been tagged as a Methodist luve ni talatala (child of a clergyman) come in quite so handy in Fiji. Yet never before had I been so ashamed of the actions of the Methodist Church. The coup was not only supported by some of the Church hierarchy, it was accompanied by Sunday bans – instigated at the urging of certain Methodist talatalas – that saw Christians and those of other faiths harassed at road blocks and even driven from beaches at gunpoint for “breaching the Sabbath”.
All around Suva were stories of the less fortunate – those either targeted because of their political activities, especially in the case of Bavadra Government staffers, or merely because of the colour of their skin. To me, this was the most heartbreaking aspect of all; when “The Way the World Should be” – as the visiting Pope John Paul had described Fiji just months before – became a racist hellhole.
I can still feel the anger to this day – the utter disgust of watching helplessly while well-dressed Indo-Fijian passersby were beaten by a rampaging i’Taukei mob in the car park of the Holiday Inn, then the Suva Travelodge. Those pictures are still the most obscene ever recorded in Fiji. But they were only the most visible manifestation of the widespread violence that was visited on Indo-Fijians in a series of sporadic attacks – some organised, some random and opportunistic.
To their eternal shame, the RFMF and Police often turned a blind eye even to events that unfolded virtually in front of them. Marauding youths threatened to cook coup dissenters like Richard Naidu – the lawyer and then Press Secretary to the deposed Prime Minister – in a lovo they’d dug in front of Ratu Sukuna’s statue at Government Buildings. It was a time of terror and of hatred. Even if you escaped a beating or a home invasion, you could still be elbowed off the footpath into the street, as an i’Taukei thug did to me. And it was repeated all over again later in the year in Coup 2 – as it became known – and on an even bigger and more sinister scale in the Speight coup of 2000.
Only now – more than a quarter of a century later – has the cycle been broken. And, ironically, it’s thanks to a revolution – also at the point of a gun – in which racial equality and genuine democracy is being imposed and a new order created. The Bainimarama Revolution is easily the most important point in Fiji’s history since 1987, with its promise of finally breaking the nation’s coup culture by dissolving race as the defining factor in national life.
Yes, many people still think Voreqe Bainimarama is on a quixotic mission that cannot possibly succeed. One of his principal political opponents, Ro Teimumu Kepa, has said that race is a fact of life in Fiji and warned last year of the prospect of “racial calamity”. Yet by even attempting to forge a common national identity by declaring everyone “Fijian”, Commodore Bainimarama has established himself – in Grubsheet’s view – as the boldest and bravest of our leaders since independence.
If he fails, the overwhelming odds are that Fiji will regress and the notion of forging a successful multiracial nation will be lost. But if he succeeds, nothing can stop Fiji from cementing its place as the pre-eminent Pacific nation and reaching greater heights.
How did we come to this view of Bainimarama as social revolutionary rather than self-interested coup maker, a depiction that invariably has Bainimarama’s critics seething? Because someone had to break the never-ending destructive cycle of racial politics in Fiji and he alone has had the foresight and fortitude to do so.
Bainimarama may not be the first Fijian leader to try to break through the communal barrier. Timoci Bavadra tried to do so in 1987 but lasted only a month. But there’s no doubt that every other political leader – from Ratu Mara through to Laisenia Qarase – owed their fortunes and allegiances to one racial grouping, however successful they might have been at forging occasional multiracial coalitions. What singles Bainimarama out from the pack is that he will go to the nation next year asking every Fijian to support his quest for a new Fiji, a non-racial Fiji in which all Fijians – irrespective of race and religion – will be invited to share his vision.
I sat around a couple of days ago over coffee reminiscing about the bad old days with a couple of friends, including the lawyer who rescued me from military/police custody 26 years ago this week. We don’t agree on everything but there’s one thing we did agree on; that life in the new Fiji is so much better for everyone than the old. The fear and trepidation has gone, replaced by optimism and hope.
Readers, I am still having trouble with WordPress. Well over a hundred articles with no problems and now this. Very frustrating. Again, my apologies.
I thoroughly enjoyed your article reflecting on the 1987 coups, it was a pleasure to see some of the totally unjustified gloss stripped away from those events, their motives, and their impacts. I had Australian friends there at the time who suffered badly, but the Australian Government did little to assist. When I look at the official Australian non-responses to events elsewhere (Thailand as one major example?) it is not difficult to see the role that political/economic expediency plays in determining Australia’s foreign policy in the region. As an Australian it was incredibly shameful to see the Australian reaction to Commodore Bainimarama’s “coup” : how many other “coups” around the world have been publicly advertised weeks in advance? Having savaged Fiji’s vital tourist trade with ludicrous “travel advisory warnings” (how many soldiers did anyone see patrolling the Coral Coast? – which was so demonstrably remote from the effects of the “coup” that Australia immediately relocated many of their diplomatic staff there!) Foreign Minister Downer subsequently claimed that the resulting downturn in the Fiji economy was a sign that the coup had failed. ??
It is a regrettable pleasure to see Australia (and to a lesser extent NZ) squirming now as China increasingly fills the diplomatic vacuum caused by the reaction of Pacific leaders to the blatant double standards of those governments’ foreign policy: if you are a major trading partner, we turn a blind eye as expediency requires; if not, we will play the role of arrogant headmaster. Not only is the USA now justifiably alarmed by the resulting impact on defence relations in the region, but Australia and NZ are going to find it harder to secure regional support for their initiatives in international forums, votes that they had previously assumed were theirs for the asking.
I had a very enjoyable moment many years ago in Manila: I was at Friday afternoon drinks at the Australian embassy where Senator Tait – the then Minister for Justice – was holding court. He was waxing lyrical about the benefits of hosting military attachments from other countries so that they could see and absorb the Australian system and values. I was standing on the fringe but leaned in and asked “Oh, like having Rambuka at Duntroon then?” It was not well received. Oh dear, how sad.
Thank you / merci / vinaka vakalevu for an excellent piece of Pacific reporting.
It was indeed a very sad day for Fiji. Having said that, Rambo has asked for forgiveness, and is forgiven, I believe. Not only that, he is also given immunity in the new constitution, which is the right thing to do. He did what he did then, but it was so disturbing to see Dr Ahmed Ali and Peter Stinson of the Alliance Party always by his side at every press conference. I remember Jana Vendt of Ch 9 interviewing Rambo where she asked:
Jana: Mr Rabuka, do you consider yourself a saviour(for the indeginous people) or a dictator?
Rabuka: I am a saviour because I saved my own people from extinction
Jana: Well, Mr Rabuka, here is the definition of a dictator from the oxford dictionary:”A person who deposes a democratically elected govt and assumes supreme authority”. What do you have to say to that?
Rabuka: Errrr, Ummmmm, silence, well you see, the governor general(Ratu Penaia) is in control of the country now.
Well, all of that is history now, but we do know that the then commander of RFMF, now president, Ratu Epeli was in Australia and the second in line Col. Jim Sandy was summoned to appear before the then gov general Ratu Penaia Ganilau at govt house at 10:00 am on that dreadful day of 14th May 1987 to discuss national security issues. I am also aware that Penaia was in conversation with Col. Sandy, with Radio Fiji in the background when the annoucement was made that the govt has been taken over by Rabuka.
Make no mistake about Rambo. Knowing him, he is a gentleman, who unfortunately got caught in “The Powerplay”.
Awesome article GD. I certainly agree that Rabuka and his cohorts (Chiefs and Methodist Ministers who were the architect of 1987 coup) have a lot to answer for with Fiji’s political turmoil. In one of your other strand, whilst replying to Charlie Charter’s post, I argued that Fiji’s issue went further than the 2006 coup. Infact, I stated that rather than just pointing a finger at the RFMF as a whole, Fiji’s continuous turmoil began as a result of certain chiefs and methodist ministers influencing Rabuka in 1987 (and thus muddying the proud history of a world reknown institution the RFMF). Some may argue that Rabuka had the final say in whether he would conduct the very first military coup or not, but the reality is he wouldn’t have had the courage to do it had certain elements of high chiefs and Methodist Ministers not thrown their weight behind him. This in my mind is the most significant factor and moment in altering Fiji’s political history when Rabuka (up against the then Comd RFMF and Chief of Staff) knew he had the full backing of some high chiefs and elements of methodist church hierachy. The rest is history. Your article succintly puts all these in perspective. Good job.
He was a stool pigeon for the BAD Talatala’s
Thanks Graham for the wonderful cri de coeur about that dark day in May 26 years ago and especially for calling out the absurdity of how swooning local NGOs and other international conventions are seeking Rabuka’s advice and perspectives, as if he was the absolute authority on it, in Fiji.
I would like to bring up an essential point about the coup in 1987 and superimpose it against the geopolitical backdrop of numerous other CIA backed coups from Iran to Chile between 1950s and the 1980s.
There is also anecdotal evidence that is seldom covered by the media, leaving unanswered questions, if the CIA was also really the puppet master behind the 1987 Fiji coup, due to the fear of a left leaning Labour government led by Timoci Bavadra was becoming a ‘fallen domino’ in the South Pacific and by the stance by the then Labour Government to refuse entry to nuclear powered ships .
Couple the numerous accolades given to SLR by these NGO, overseas conventions and the media, with Rabuka’s annual Pilgrimage every February to the US national Prayer breakfast and there is without a doubt, a hallmark of a person who is been bought and paid for by a hidden hand.
Mr Davis, I was very happy when I read this in the Fiji Sun this morning. A very good article that helps people understand what really happened and what Mr Rabuka started.
The most accurate account of the blackest day in Fiji’s history (14 May 1987) is provided by David Robie in his book “Blood on their Banner”. He actually names the main players who supported Rabuka’s racist agenda – Ilaisa Kacisolomone, Isireli Dugu, Pio Wong, Ioane Naivalurua (now Police Commissioner), Lesi Korovavala (the ADC to Ratu Penaia who was loyal like a dog to Rabuka), George Konrote (the Rotuman cowboy who was walking around Suva with an AK47 strapped on his back) etc etc
What a shameful bunch these men are. How they can now walk around Suva without the slightest conscience or sense of regret, is testament to their true characters.
If only they had listened to their Commanding Officer at the time (Colonel Jim Sanday) for the military to stay out of politics and remain professional, Fiji’s history would have been different. Sanday was the true professional who remained loyal to his Oath. These guys were broke their professional Oath of Allegiance and will one day answer before God.
Bula Kathy. I wish someone named the Methodist Church Ministers and High Chiefs who were behind the move to hatch the plan for the first coup.
Tomasi Kanailagi & Manasa Lasaro were two Methodist ministers who were prominent backers of Rambo in 1987. They were the ones who radicalised the Methodist Church.
Fiji is very fortunate to have the Bainimarama government ending the coup culture. There are now so many checks and balances in place that a coup can never happen again. According to our new constitution, the PM is now automatically the Commander in Chief of the military, just like in the USA. As we all know, the USA does not have coups and with Bainimarama being the PM and the Commander we can all sleep peacefully now.
“supported by some of the Church hierarchy”
Graham,it is not some but all.Tell me which one did not.
You have failed to mention the support that Rabuka received from the Great Council of Chiefs. Just as shameful as the people “supporting” Rubuka now.
To those of us who lived through the tragic period between 1987 and 2006, the current government and its achievement is welcome.
To those who welcomed and profited from the tragic events for the same period, the current government and its achievement is tragic.
Paul, how fortunate is Fiji to have Bainimarama who is behind the events of 2000 and a coward who does not want to be investigated of his corrupt activities. A coup is a coup…
Oh boy, here we go another low life
Graham, an excellent article but I hope your rhetorical question could be extended to some of the key players from Rabuka’s days now in Bainimarama’s government. I just finished reading Victor Lal’s book on the 1987 coups – had read it years ago – but re-read it as the anniversary – 14 May – was approaching. Two key players were Ratu Inoke Kubuabola and Filipe Bole, now with Frank! Also, one of the ten masked men who stormed Parliament with Rabuka that fateful day was Iowane Nailaravula, the present Police Commissioner. So what do you say about them. For, in your excellent piece, you asked the following: “Yet is Grubsheet alone in being astonished that those who scream the most loudly for an immediate return to democracy nowadays seem to be the first to scramble to share a platform with him? Surely this is the man who started it all, who triggered the earthquake, who carries more blame than anyone else for Fiji’s lost decades? Yes, he’s begun to say a tentative “sorry”, to tell the world that it was a mistake. Yet there’s a decided absence of overt shame on Rabuka’s part that so many lives were destroyed, so many families uprooted, so many opportunities lost.”
What baffles me is why the likes of Victor Lal, who not only chronicled the events, exposed the shadowy figures with Rabuka in the 1987 coups, can’t come on board with Frank, and as you say, banish race from the landscape of Fiji. Victor Lal had defiantly stated, and went on to plead for a solution: “But the chiefs determined to imprison themselves in the racist garb of supremacy and tradition, and their antagonists, the Fijian Indians,threatening violence and vengeance, both sides must be urged to re-examine the findings of the Royal Commission that investigated Fiji’s electoral system in 1975. This Commission had strongly advocated extending national seats in order to defeat the politics of communalism. The chiefs, prejudiced by lack of vision, must, on the other hand, in the months and years to come, realize that “tradition is a guide, not a jailer” in order to save their country from the calamity that confronts them; the Fijian Indians with a history of rebellion on the sugar plantations and burning political ambitions in their hearts are repeating the lines of Richard Lovelace: Stone walls do not a prison make – Nor iron bars a cage.’
Returning to the rhetorical question re- Kubuabola etc, again Victor Lal in C4/5:
As I disclosed in another previous instalment on ‘Who was who in the 1987 coups’, it was Kubuabola, a cousin of the late Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, who first termed the extreme Fijian violent nationalist organization as the Taukei Movement, and he was the direct link with Rabuka.
While contradicting Rabuka’s assertion that ‘there was no complicity beyond the essential military personnel who were involved in the pre-coup organisation’, Kubuabola told Islands Business (May 1988), that for more than six hours on April 19 he and Rabuka, later joined by Jone Veisamasama, ‘talked about different options’.
It was one April 19th that the groundwork for the coup was laid and according to Kubuabola, May 11 was the day his co-conspirators decided to proceed with its execution. He also claims that when it was learnt that Parliament would not sit on Friday they had to bring forward the coup to Thursday.’
According to Kubuabola: ‘By four [p.m.19 April] we spent some time in prayer and option and we asked Rabuka to prepare his side of things, you know, the military option. And all the things we were doing were the lead up. We asked Rabuka to prepare that side and when the time, when we reach a stage when he must step in, he must be ready to step in. We changed it [the coup] to Thursday on Wednesday night in my office at the Bible Society with Rabuka.’
Since the 1987 coups, Kubuabola has been a part of future coup regimes; he was appointed Minster for Information and Communications in the interim regime that Bainimarama, as army commander, had asked Qarase to form. The military strongman had refused to re-install Mahendra Chaudhry as Prime Minister after the George Speight coup.
In an affidavit presented to the Fiji Court of Appeal in 2001, Bainimarama, as a witness in support of the Interim Qarase government, had claimed that he had abrogated the 1997 Constitution because he was satisfied that people engaged in the events of May 19 [Speight coup] were of the perception that the Constitution had watered down the interests of taukei Fijians.
Whether or not those perceptions accorded with reality was not his principal consideration, he told the Appeals Court. He said the Constitution had rendered ineffective, previous provisions requiring positive discrimination in favour of native Fijians. The deposed Chaudhry government was seen as a threat to those policies.
In 2000, when I questioned certain aspects of the affirmative action programmes in one of my regular opinion piece, and called for the re-instatement of Chaudhry as Prime Minister (unaware that he himself was hiding $2million in a secret bank account in Australia that he had got from India for the poor Indo-Fijians), it was none other than Kubuabola, as Minister for Information and Communications, who took out a full page advertisement against me in the then State owned newspaper, the Daily Post.
In it, he condemned me, and accused me of being a racist and against the economic progress of the poor taukei Fijians. “Victor Lal’s articles all have a simple, indeed, simplistic stance: restore Chaudhry and impose democracy as defined by Lal and his friends, he said. Kubuabola religiously defended the affirmative action policy for ‘poor Fijians’.
Responding, I wrote as follows: ‘It is sickening to see and hear the Minister for Information (Misinformation), Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, projecting himself as the saviour of all the races in Fiji when, in fact, it was he who, along with Rabuka and the late Rev Tomasi Raikivi, had planned the 1987 coups in the Fiji Bible Society building in Suva. He went on to lead the violent Taukei Movement, one of the darkest days in Fiji’s 20th century history as regards the rule of law and human rights (until Speight and his group out did them recently).
When Kubuabola became the Leader of the Opposition for the STV, a party which was totally rejected at the polls by the ethnic Fijian people, he immediately began the process of destabilising the Chaudhry government, instead of preaching peace and reconciliation in Fiji. As Minister for Information, he should inform us through the news media of his role in the 1987 coups, and fearlessly face the brunt of the law for his treasonable actions, and then only the world and the peoples of Fiji can trust him.’
During the height of the parliamentary siege of May 2000, Jone Dakuvula, then with the CCF, had written about Kubuabola’s role leading up to Speight’s seizure of Parliament in a commentary titled ‘What should happen if Speight Gives Up: ‘I write here with some inside knowledge because I was once one of Ratu Inoke Kubuabola’s close advisers on the Opposition sides between June and September 1999. I was aware then that a shadowy Committee was formed in June last year to initiate a campaign of destabilization aimed at toppling the Government in the shortest time possible. Thereafter, we kept hearing rumours of postponement of dates. It all began when Ratu Inoke said to the SVT Management Board Meeting on May 27th 1999 (in which I was present) that they must be prepared to fight and to shed blood if need be to return political power to the indigenous Fijians.’
Dakuvula continued: ‘In June 1999, Apisai Tora joined this committee and later, some members of the rebel F.A.P. faction. I learnt in June last year that there was an understanding with the late Sakiusa Butadroka, that the members of the Fijian Nationalist Party would do the dirty work while the S.V.T. supports from behind and fronts the public campaigns in Parliament and outside.
Most of the members of the destabilization committee I think were not members of Parliament but their activities last year were undertaken with the knowledge of Ratu Inoke Kubuabola. At the time, I was in the Opposition Office; he was receiving regular reports of these campaign activities. I do not know whether Ratu Inoke and his S.V.T. colleagues know of George Speight’s illegal Cabinet and their other actions in which they have shown their public support of the coup. That is why I believe MPs who supported the coup should leave Parliament.’
In October 2000, the Fiji Labour Party carried on its website excerpts from Dakuvula’s article in the Daily Post. The FLP noted: ‘The SVT was behind the destabilisation campaign to overthrow the People’s Coalition Government, and the terrorist activity on and after 19 May. This is revealed in an article written by SVT member Jone Dakuvula in today’s Daily Post. Dakuvula writes: “Speight’s coup is indeed a stepchild of the SVT.
I maintain the ideas gestated from the time when Ratu Inoke [Kubuabola] took over the leadership and began meeting Apisai Tora, Reverend Lasaro’s affected group in the VLV and the FAP members. There was a discussion group and network when I was still in the SVT Office. I heard accounts of what were being discussed. Ratu Inoke himself admitted to me that he was ‘frightened’ by the ideas that were being proposed then from the Nationalist Party supporters”.’
The FLP stated that ‘Dakuvula argues that the destabilisation was aimed at a violent overthrow of the elected government. On the 19th of May, Ratu Inoke went up into the Government Members office in the Parliament Complex and told the Labour Party Leader, Mrs Jokapeci Koroi, to clear out as they were taking over the Government. [SVT Senator Berenado Vuinibobo and Rotuma Island Council nominated Senator, Col. Paul Manueli were also with Inoke Kubuabola.]
Dakuvula also wrote that on 19 May, Ratu Inoke told Speight and his supporters that they “should consider themselves under his ‘protection’.’
After the 2006 Bainimarama coup, Dakuvula resigned from the CCF as its director of programmes to join the National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) in the preparation of the People’s Charter for Change, Peace and Progress.
Maybe those fighting for the restoration of democracy, free press, election, good governance and accountability in Fiji should point out to the International Monetary Fund that Bainimarama’s Foreign Minister and former SVT leader iss on the National Bank of Fiji’s Debtors List; in 1996 he was cited as owing $193,951 to the bank.
Graham, I sincerely pray that the likes of Victor Lal will join forces with Frank and others to move Fiji forward, especially Victor who is arguably one of Fiji’s finest investigative journalist and most perceptive commentator of our country’s tumultuous history. Once, again, Graham, thanks for the excellent reflective piece, to remind us of 14 May 1987.
Graham … there is so much that you have written that I am in complete agreement with … I was a young news reader and want-to-be journalist with FM96 and reported both the April election and all the events through to the end of September (btw, how can you say there was only Radio Fiji at the time – when it was Sam Thompson, FM96’s news editor, who broke the news to the country and the world, live from Parliament??!). It was the most heart-breaking time of my life yet also, as you would appreciate in the news game, incredibly exciting and vivid as well.
… but there is so much similarity between 1987 and 2006 that I can’t believe you don’t see: this whole circular motion, of the country being forced at gunpoint, by all or part of its armed forces, round and round in ever diminishing circles. Just take three excerpts from your column in no particular order. Substitute Bainimarama for Rabuka, and you may be able to see my point:
1. It produced a crude form of minority rule in Fiji in which the members of other races became second-class citizens
2. That sense of arrogant superiority – of surly self-entitlement – lingered on
3. The man ostensibly responsible is lionised simply because he was eventually able to gain a degree of respectability by morphing into an elected leader
Every aspect of what Rabuka created is mirrored in what we see today in Fiji: there may be no communal roll any more but this new constitution and the self-supporting decrees that will buttress it (legal indemnity for pretty much any wheeze under the sun so long as you do it from the privileged pulpit of the government, media decree and licensing etc.) is every bit as sharp a practice as the post-1987 constitution that saw Rabuka elected.
I am just staggered that you can’t see the very obvious parallels. Yes, many of the talatalas and Alliance leaders played a vile and reprehensible role in creating the circumstances that led to May 1987 and then profited thereafter …. But the exact same thing happened (albeit a different set of community leaders and politicians) in the lead in to December 2006 and the months and years thereafter – see the first Minister of Finance, and the defeated MPs and various union leaders who could not scramble fast enough to get into government sinecures.
The staggering truth of the situation is that from May 1987 onwards – and a big tip of the hat to Colonel Sanday who as ‘Kathy’ acknowledged wanted his men to ‘stay out of politics and stay professional’ – we have an army elite who have only ever known power and control over government, either directly or by threat and intimidation.
And like those trains that criss-cross Australia, the army mentality now has an inbuilt dead man’s grip … they cannot and will not let go. For that we have Rabuka to thank. True enough. But my belief is this PM is not charting a new course … he’s driving the country down the same rutted circular path that it has been condemned to travel since those first dark and desparate days in May 1987. ‘Stay out of politics and stay professional’. Please.
Charlie, I find it equally astonishing that you fail to recognise the difference – that the events of 1987 and 2000 were to entrench indigenous rights and that 2006 was to begin creating a level playing field for all citizens. That 1987 and 2000 were also crude, self serving lunges for power by an indigenous elite who used the “Indians” as disposable scapegoats whereas the events of 2006 brought them back to centre stage in national life, along with every other citizen.
Let’s put it another way. You and I – as non indigenous people – had no substantive future in Fiji in the minds of those responsible for for 1987 and 2000 whereas Bainimarama’s revolution actually empowers us by elevating us to the same legal status. With the proviso, of course, that we cannot have the same land rights as indigenous people, which we accept in the interests of national stability so long as native leases are renewed and there is enough freehold land to purchase.
You seem obsessed with the alleged parallels of process in Bainimarama securing power rather than acknowledge these substantive and fundamental principles. Plus the fact that someone – anyone – had to bust the prevailing paradigm of indigenous supremacy to establish a common and equal citizenry and finally begin the process of building one nation.
Apologies that I forgot that Radio Fiji’s competitor was up and running in 87.
Former minister Militoni Leweniqila said that Rabuka will stand in next years election and he will win.
I fully support Charlie Charters and also agree with Noor Dean Junior – another Noor Dean was removed by Rabuka as Deputy Speaker at the point of the gun by Rabuka and his men. I came to learn of the coup through Sam Thompson while driving to drive into Suva from Navua. I had already become suspicious as I drove past the old Fiji Sun in Lami when I saw military trucks surrounding the Fiji Sun building. Sadly, Graham, while finally embellishing his “brief guest stay” in the police station has written the article to get his pay check from Qorvis and to get a position in any future Bainimarama-Khaiyum government. I was then a primary school Indo-Fijian teacher. As for Victor Lal we miss his perceptive commentaries in the Fiji Sun which is now grazed by one Graham Davis! Having said that, I still think Graham Davis makes some valid points regarding the 1987 coups. I am sad that Bainimarama is going the same road as Rabuka did shortly after the coup – accept the racist 1990 Constitution or else – under which FLP-NFP and other parties had to fight elections until the new 1997 Constitution. As for Indo-Fijians, its too late – many of them are praying everyday for an Australian or Kiwi passport given the state of the economy, climate of fear, bias media etc. Yes, Graham is correct to a point – Rabuka’s ghost is still hovering over the people of Fiji! God bless Fiji!
I hope you taught your students better manners than you display here. I have “embellished” nothing and you have learned nothing. If you can’t see that any Indo-Fijian still in Fiji is better off now than post coup 1987, then I can’t help you.
In what way is the new constitution “racist”? It seems to promote equality. This is the biggest difference between 87 and 06. 2006 promoted equality. 1987 destroyed any chance of it,
Graham You are obsessed with Race. Perhaps it is your Australian background but in my whole life lived here in Fiji I have never heard anyone talk about race as you do. The world and Fiji has changed a lot in the last 26 years and race is much less important in Fiji now than it was in 1987 or 2000. That has very little to do with Bainimarama and much more to do with institutions such as USP, urbanization and fraternization in the workplace.
Coups are always about elites and they may dress that elitism up in different guises but they are always about an individual making a grab for power. This time the elite is not on racial lines but this time it is on Alphabetical Lines.
This time we have the triple M Elite. Military, Muslim and Marist.
Coups always trample on human rights. I am sorry you were treated so abysmally in 1987. But you were lucky you were taken to a police station and you were allowed to see a lawyer. In the current coup journalists get taken to QEB, they are not allowed lawyers and they suffer physical abuse. I would say you got off quite lightly by comparison.
By the way your savior and friend in 1987, is also part of the current Marist Elite and is having a good coup financially. Whereas his ex-wife who has always stood up against coups is having the exact opposite and is forced to live in exile in your Visionary’s world. And to put it on racial lines you can understand she is an Indian.
A coup is a coup is a coup. They may be conducted for the right reason. But power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is still true. Your visionary has become nothing more or less than a corrupt Military dictator.
And before you start talking about the democracy of 2014. Know this Dictatorships last on average only 6.7 years. Dictatorships with political parties last 16.6 years. 2014 is all about keeping Bainimarama in power for as long as possible.
If you want proof of the above timings ask the AG to show you this paper “Why Parties and Elections in Authoritarian Regimes? By Barbara Geddes” He has a copy on his desk.
Some good points raised.
But you play down the obsession with race in Fiji.
It’s entrenched in every sphere of life, and it’s legislated to boot.
Perhaps you, like many others, have become used to it.
So much so that you no longer notice.
Bainimarama styled his coup along that of Musharraf, it is said.
Like Musharraf, Bainimarama moved against a corrupt, and in the eyes of many, a dysfunctional, if democratically-elected government – even Peter Foster appeared on the scene at one time!
Like Musharraf, Bainimarama was cheered on by many disillusioned people. Whether the Bainimarama-Musharraf trend will continue remains to be seen. Bainimarama is more in control than Musharraf when come elections.
Fiji Indians name has been invoked, but politically they are a spent force, and the elections, is largely a fight between Fijian elites, as were the coups; ordinary people just the meat in the sandwich. For the victors the spoil is an opportunity to get jiggy with the business elite of all shades and colours. Indonesia under Suharto has gone down this path before; similarities are quite uncanny.
I am obsessed with race? Gimme a break. What the hell do you think the coups of 1987 and 2000 were about? How bizarre. It may no longer be a factor in the rarified academic and social circles in which you operate. But the whole body politic in Fiji lives and breathes race. The entire electoral edifice was built around it, as was the 1997 Constitution and all that came before it. Yes, the process of breaking that down has begun. But to cast it as no longer a factor is quite the most absurd thing I have read in these columns for some time.
@ Race Relations
Which planet are you on?
You jump on a plane for your first visit to Fiji and the Fiji Arrival card you have to fill in requires you to identify your race!
You then arrive in Fiji and find that schools and even churches within the same denomination are separated by race!
You then spend a bit more time and find that the political economy in Fiji is based on race!
You then go to vote as my husband and I did in 2006 Election, and find that although we are a couple and both born and raised in Fiji, we cannot vote for the same candidate on the same electoral rolls because of race!
I do think that your biases and prejudices against Frank and his government, has distorted your perspective about the reality of race – or to use a better phrase, the reality of the “politics of ethnicity” in Fiji. To deny that, like you have done, is to deny everything that has been written about the nature of Fiji politics by much more assiduous academics than you and I put together.
Your comment above is the dumbest I have ever read anywhere!
Best comment I have ever read about two sides of the same coin, as pointed by my bro, Chand:
“To those of us who lived through the tragic period between 1987 and 2006, the current government and its achievement is welcome.
To those who welcomed and profited from the tragic events for the same period, the current government and its achievement is tragic.”
Vinaka bro. I have actually copied it into my diary as the best quote of the year. A very erudite observation.
@ Race Relations
If we use your descriptor or formula of the “Triple M” elite that your use to describe the current regime as being ; “Military, Muslim & Marist”
then…we could describe the 1987 coup as being: Military, Methodist & QVS
and likewise the 2000 coup as being : Military, Methodist & Suva Grammar (Speight was educated there)
I am guessing from reading between the lines and of your prejudice against the Military and Muslims etc, that you are neither a soldier or ever have ever served (for which you feel demeaned); that you are a Methodist (because of your objection to Islam); and that you never went to Marist of to any of the other two top secondary schools – QVS and Suva Grammar.
You sound like an aggrieved soul. Which brings me back to my bro Chand’s quote above:
“To those who welcomed and profited from the tragic events for the same period, the current government and its achievement is tragic.”
Rabuka refuses to reveal name of his co-conspirators:
It’s up to you-Rabuka
Publish date/time: 16/05/2013 [17:09]
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1987 coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka said that it is up to the people of the country to forgive him for his acts.
A young woman named Kajol who was part of a panel discussion at the University of the South Pacific last night, told Rabuka that her family was victimized in the 1987 coup and she cannot forgive him for what he did until and unless he reveals the names of people who encouraged him to lead the coup.
There is an audio file attached to this story. Please login to listen.
Rabuka said that he can only ask for forgiveness but does not expect people to forgive him.
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In the panel discussion at USP many people asked Rabuka to reveal the names of the people but he said we should forget about the past and think of the future.
Rabuka said that only he is to blame for what happened in 1987.
Rabuka included the immunity provision for his acts in 1987 and onwards in the 1990 and 1997 constitutions. This has also been included in the new draft constitution.
Rabuka’s public apology…which he announces every year…like HM the Queens’s New Years address to her subjects that we used to listen to when we were young on FBC…is getting to be a pain in the arse, quite frankly.
He is a self serving, unapologetic individual with a very large ego who thrives on all the public fawning over his introduction into Fiji of the coup epidemic…like the flu epidemic in the late 1800’s.
We have to learn from the lessons of history…not forget it completely as Rabuka suggests. In refusing to share, this guy is clearly a fraud and his public apologies are worthless. His public apologies can only be best described as ‘masturbatory’.
I agree with Graham. I cannot understand why people continue to engage with him if he continues to remain intransigent and refuses to share knowledge and come clean.
What a wanker this poor soul now is!
Bula Komai-bang on target. The best from Rabuka was when George Speight had his coup his famous line” I believe in the cause but not the method”! Pity you didn’t say that when you had your COUP! Now he runs around asking for forgiveness-sa dina! E cava wanting to be remembered as a good Christian before you ci, o is it a case of pampering up to Frank so his pension paisi keeps coming thru before ‘D’ day comes around! If he is sincere than start singing so we can all know the truth as the good book says” the truth will set you free” but bro Rabuka is so far all words no real action!
Here we go again!! See below
http://fijilive.com/news/2013/07/rabuka-regrets-87-coup-role/54330.Fijilive
This guy is not apologetic…he is using the issue of his apology in his politics of self promotion.
Frankly bro Komai, it is not an apology but a insult to us common folks.
Every time this fellow goes abroad to address some fu@#s, the hosts rub their hands with a glee.
And they say ” we will not allow you guys from Fiji onto our soil…..but we will let this grub walk and talk freely. After all he did what we always do…. divide and rule the population.”
Who better to insult the Fijians than one of their own.
Race is a fact of life. The problem is not race but the use and abuse of race. Unless we, Indo-Fijians and Fijians and other races refuse to succumb to racial demagogues from all parties and politics, we will continue to argue about the role of race in Fiji. Bainimarama might remove the official place of race in our society but as long as we are conditioned or fall for it race will be discussed until my grandmother’s cows come home. But, again, why do Indo-Fijians, many who are not even politicians or trade unions are so opposed to Bainimarama’s take on race. Graham, can you explain, please. That is baffling me!
There are two types of racists in Fijil , those who hate Indo Fijians and other races, and those who are ” pragmatists” who justify racist policies as ” race is a fact of life”. The second category is worse because they hide their racism under a veil of so called realism.
You missed one -those that hate themselves!
Mad Siiter – If we were so hated, Fiji would have been another Uganda or Rwanda – so stop talking rubbish. We have been living in that country now for nearly 150 years. We must accept Fijian feelings also! As an Indo-Fijian, I privately celebrated when Suba was torched to the ground in 2000 – it destroyed all the symbols of oppression – the Gujerati merchants who exploit all of us!
Mad Sitter – Here is another example. We will run to whoever wants to listen to us and complain about racism – and even embrace Frank’s coup but just look at the list below – not an Indo-Fijian soul in the list – don’t tell me its racism that is why no Indo-Fijian in the roll of honour:
Jasper Williams creates history, Marist retains title
Publish date/time: 17/05/2013 [17:11]
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The athletes and coaches of Jasper Williams High School have created history in the 2013 Coca-Cola Games today by winning the girls division title.
This is the first time ever for the Coke Games girls title to go to Lautoka after Jasper ended Adi Cakobau School’s impressive 12 year winning streak.
Jasper Coach, Antonio Raboiliku said they cannot describe the feeling but he is so thankful for what has happened today.
According to Raboiliku the girls have put in so much effort for the Coke Games although Jasper suffered the most amount of damage after Tropical Cyclone Evan in the western division.
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Jasper won the girls division with 9 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze.
Xavier College finished in second place with 6 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze.
Defending champion, ACS finished in third place with four gold, 6 silver and 6 bronze.
Saint Josephs Secondary got 4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Gospel High School finished in fifth place with 3 gold and 1 silver.
Natabua followed them with 2 gold and 2 silver.
In the boys division, Marist Brothers High School has successfully retained their title with 11 gold, 7 silver and 1 bronze.
Suva Grammar School finished in second place with 6 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze.
Queen Victoria School finished in third place with 6 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze while Xavier College finished in fourth place with 5 gold, 6 silver and 2 bronze.
Marist Brothers High School team manager, Navitalai Waiwalu said their strategies had worked well.
Waiwalu said defending the boys division title was not an easy task.
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But let’s look at the greatest and the most touching stories from this year’s games.
The sprint queen for this year’s Coca-Cola Games is definitely Saint Josephs Secondary School’s Sisilia Seavula who took the 200 metres Senior Girls final today.
Timaima Qica of Sila Central took silver while Adi Cakobau School’s Elenoa Sailosi took bronze.
Sisilia Seavula who won the Senior Girls 100 metres gold last night was emotional after winning her second gold medal for Saint Josephs Secondary School.
Seavula dedicated her win to her mother.
With thousands of people trying to congratulate Sisilia after her magnificent win today, Sisilia only wished she could celebrate her victory with her late father today.
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Sisilia’s dad, the late police officer Filipe Seavula was shot by rebels in the 2000 coup.
Savusavu’s Beniamino Maravu of Saint Bedes College is the sprint king of the 2013 Coca-Cola Games after he won the 200 Senior Boys final in style today.
Maravu took gold, Suva Grammar’s Kemueli Waqa took silver while Sailosi Niuvati of Natabua High took bronze.
Maravu also won the 100 metres Senior Boys final last night and is the first athlete from Saint Bedes College to win these major events.
Maravu who hails from Tawake, Cakaudrove said he overcame his hamstring injury despite many challenges.
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The form 7 student and head boarder of Saint Bedes College dedicated this win to his father who passed away last year and also to his mother who supports him all the way.
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In the Intermediate Boys 200 metres, Gospel High School’s Aaron Powell clinched his second gold medal this year after coming in first.
Jacob Waqanivalu of Suva Grammar took silver while bronze went to Apisai Dokonibonu of Nasinu Secondary.
Aaron Powell said he is excited as it is his first games to win more than one gold medal.
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Younis Bese also won gold for Gospel High in the 200 metres Intermediate Girls final.
Joe Vokiti of Tavua College has broken the 15 year old record in the Junior Boys High Jump.
Vokiti had a record jump of 1.85 metres and broke FM96 Breakfast Show host, Tony Rahiman’s record which stood at 1.84 metres.
Vokiti said he was motivated to do well after the devastation by Tropical Cyclone Evan which affected his family in Tavua.
He also said that he promised his grandmother who was the most affected that he will win gold for her in this year’s Coca-Cola Games.
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Silver was taken by Meli Nayacalevu of Tailevu North College while Ratu Kadavulevu School’s Vereti Naruku took the bronze.
Queen Victoria School’s Josua Serukilagi has won gold and set a new record in the Junior Boys Discus.
Serukilagi’s record throw was 48.92 metres compared to the old record that stood at 47.70 metres.
Ratu Kadavulevu School’s Atueta Savou won gold and set a new record with a throw of 49.31 metres in the Senior Boys Discus.
Mustafa Fall of Marist took silver while bronze went to Joji Balenacagi of Tilak High.
16 records were smashed in this year’s Coca-Cola Games.
Alice Peters of Saint Josephs Secondary School won gold in the Junior Girls Shot Put.
Peters dedicated her win to her grandmother.
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Peters added that her grandmother was not able to watch her throw due to work commitments today.
The medal tally:
Jasper won the girls division with 9 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze.
Xavier College finishes in second place with 6 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze.
Defending champion, ACS finished in third place with four gold, 6 silver and 6 bronze.
Saint Josephs Secondary got 4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze. Gospel High School finished in fifth place with 3 gold and 1 silver. Natabua follows them with 2 gold and 2 silver.
In the boys division, Marist Brothers High School has successfully retained their title with 11 gold, 7 silver and 1 bronze.
Queen Victoria School finishes in second place with 6 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze.
Suva Grammar School is in third place with 5 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze while Xavier College is in fourth place with 5 gold, 6 silver and 2 bronze.
You can also catch all the action of the 2013 Coca-Cola Games with the full medal tally and photos on our facebook account, fijivillage.com.
Story by: Vijay Narayan
Ino-Fijian, what’s your point?
That there is racism within the Indo Fijian community? I agree, and towards other races too! That most sports personalities are itaukei? I agree, and wish more gold medallists at USP and FNU were itaukei. That has nothing to do with racism, only with preferences of some communities which feel that only education will lead to success. My point is that Fiji and Fijian politics are race driven, and the worse type of racists are the ones who believe that racism is so entrenched that we can never solve the problem and shouldn’t fight against it. Well, murder and rape are pretty common in Fiji, but we should all do our best to condemn them and we can’t throw up our hands and say don’t bother punishing people because crime is a fact of life, can we? If we do that, we are as bad, and even worse, than the murderers and rapists.
Thats my point.
Well said, Mat Sitter. Of course, those who say race is a fact of life are doing so to justify their preoccupation with race. The phrase is being used in Fiji as a dog whistle. The subtext is ” I recognise your concerns about the threat posed to our land and culture by Indo-Fijians and Bainimarama doesn’t. We are not equal because we are i’taukei and they are vulagi. So you should support me rather than him”.
You are absolutely right. Preoccupation with race, racial stereotyping and racism of any sort has to be fought against at every turn. The great hope for the future are our integrated schools. In Nadi a couple of days back, I saw female i’taukei students in the street from the local Muslim school wearing the pants that Muslims wear under their dresses. How can they not be more tolerant of their Indo-Fijian fellow students when they grow up together under the same roof at school?
The truth is that our schools should have been integrated right from the start. Had we done so even at Independence 43 years ago, perhaps we might have been spared some of the agony of the past 26 years. My own feeling is that there are already ample signs among our young people of infinitely better social cohesion compared to previous generations. And much of that is undoubtedly due to interracial mingling in our schools.
Why pick on the Gujeratis? Are they the only exploiters of Fijians? Or are all big businesses exploiters because that is the nature of a capitalist economy, which exploits workers and consumers alike? That’s why we need Premila at Consumer Council and Professor Reddy at Commerce Commission, which, by the way were toothless under previous governments. There are other exploiters of Fijians who have ripped us off and squandered our entitlements. The chiefs, who spend the lease money on beer and television sets, the governments which have bought class A shares for themselves and the government Ministers who corruptly took 10% of contracts given to the private sector. Exploitation has another relationship with racism. To stop people from complaining about corrupt leaders, you keep them in fear that they will be taken over by the exploiting and greedy Indians. Ino Fijian was probably one of them. Sorry we don’t buy the race card any more. Itvs nay used to cover up for corruption and exploitation.
What is disturbing in this entire discussion is that in Fiji the ‘race’ label has been and is continued to be used to describe what other countries would cover with the term ‘indigenous’ and the specific rights enshrined in the UN convention on indigenous people. While the various races in Fiji seem to living together in peace, it has always been power hungry military and politicians to justify their grab of power and privilege. And the current military government is no different. How serious can a regime be about a ‘race free’ society when the base of their power, the military is the playground for one race?
Oh gimme a break Paul. This is an old story, the Taukie domination of the RFMF. What we should focus on instead is the progress we have made since this moron Rabuka was instructed by the Almighty to remove an elected government. Did Rabuka successfully hold 17 ministerial portfolios and still have time to run the military, the sugar industry and the Commerce Commission? No he did not. And while both men share strong affiliations with France, Rabuka was never capable of picking up planes from there. And look at the difference in information policy. Rabuka just had the Methodists and the Almighty, Bainimarama has Qorvis, Smith Jones and Croz Walsh. We are making progress, aren’t we?
You are lying Peter. Our leader does not hold 17 portfolios, only 11 as you can count below. And imagine how much money is saved by our hard working PM. Imagine we, the taxpayers, had to pay 11 ministers. This would at least cost a million dollars a year!
COMMODORE JOSAIA VOREQE BAINIMARAMA, CF (Mil), OStJ, MSD, jssc, psc, Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Strategic Planning, National Development and Statistics, Public Service, Peoples Charter for Change and Progress, Information, i-Taukei Affairs, Sugar Industry, Lands and Mineral Resources
Graham, you say, “The truth is that our schools should have been integrated right from the start. Had we done so even at Independence 43 years ago, perhaps we might have been spared some of the agony of the past 26 years.” I agree, and I am surprised even you were shipped out to all white (maybe mostly) for education in Australia. What are you doing in Fiji. Are you writing speeches for the Government? Are you writing articles on behalf of Government in Grubsheet? Who is paying you? Qorvis? I have never understood in what capacity are you running around Fiji and are seen with Frank, Aiyaz and others. I asked the question since you mentioned about the native Fijian girls in Muslim attire in Nadi?
Marist Brothers was a multiracial school once. During that time it produced 5 KBEs and been the most successful school in Fiji. During Multiracial days there was lot of money for school repairs and equipment. School was the oval game champion 6 times, undisputed soccer champs and won Fiji finals 3 times more then other schools combined. Top 9 out of 10 students in Fiji were from Marist.
Since 1987 the school has taken the path of Rabuka and Qarese style of politics and no longer is multiracial school. In fact the Indo-Indians were bullied out of school and racism is so bad that they no longer play soccer at the school because it is considered an Indian sport.
Today the school is falling apart, no more Deans cup for last 36 years and not a single student who is in top 50 in the country.
I hope our PM in his wisdom can see the role Marist played in producing past leaders who were the custodians of multi racism.
Marist today is the most racist school in Fiji.
Oh dear. In what capacity do you run around Fiji? Wearing a mask to hide your true identity? Seriously, I’m an open book compared to most of you jokers. Yawn.
Mr Davis, he is not in Fiji. These type of people hide their faces and write against the Government.
People such as Rajendra Chodhri, Rajen Naidu, Dr Shaista Shameem, Ballu Khan, Imrana Jalaal …. are the ones hiding abroad and glued to various blogs trying to prove to the world that they are freedom fighters.
No, Graham, you are not wearing a mask but its time to dropped the mask – who you are working for in Fiji, if at all – or is Aunty Nur Bano Ali paying you secret dosh besides Qorvis.
Dr Ali seems like a nice lady but she doesn’t come across as a soft touch and I don’t think she’s of a mind to pay me anything. Now that you’ve suggested it, though, I suppose I can always go and see her. But to answer your substantive question, take a look at the right hand side panel above. Yes, I admit it. I’m a part time consultant to Qorvis and, strangely enough, they even offered to pay me for the work I do. It’s an odd arrangement, I know, because people like you work for nothing. By the way, what do you do?
I am a hard-working Indo-Fijian taxpayer whose part salary is taken from this illegal regime to pay Qorvis ($40,000 a month) to spew propaganda on behalf of the regime via you and the Fiji Sun! Why dont you go an earn an honest living or tell the real truth – i.e. how much are you getting paid for your service in Fiji
What I get is none of your Goddam business, just as what you get paid is none of mine. The fact that you even describe yourself as an Indo-Fijian tells me that you’re a relic of another age and don’t get the Government’s non-racial program at all. Frankly “Indo-Fijian”, I don’t give a damn what your racial make-up is. But I do give a damn that you define yourself in such terms and that you’re downright impertinent to boot. Eff off.
Hahaha!!!, Nicebola one Graham
Well answered Mr Davis. There is a bunch of unemployed people who wants to know who is paid what. No one works for free and those who are unemployed are the ones who wants to know what others are paid.
Same question comes up in Chodhri jnr’s FB…………since he is also unemployed
Graham and Kavita – so its perfectly fine for Frank’s daughter to travel to France on our taxpayer’s money:
What Fiji Sun didn’t tell Fiji – Dictator’s daughter Bernadette went on taxpayers money with DADDY to “see” second new Airbus 330 in Toulouse, France
Honestly “Disgusted”, did Kavita and I say anything about this? If you want to make a point, you are free to do so here, in stark contrast to the censored Coup 4.5, which is promoting this story. But we didn’t say anything was “fine”, so leave us out of it.
Yes, Graham is right but its not C4/5 but Bernadette who plastered all the photos of her free junket on her facebook and Vasiti Vocea also posted her trip to Toulouse. Gosh, Fiji’s Marcos family!
Do you have proof that the taxpayers paid for her trip? Am sure Frank is paid enough to be able to foot the bill for his own daughter. In saying that, am not condoning his actions if you can prove that taxpayers money was used to pay for her fare.
Why is the military dominated by the itaukei? Interesting question. Before independence, it was part of colonial policy of indirect rule. Make sure the military is run by the itaukei under the leadership of chief and church (also itaukei) to ensure the weasley Indians didn’t take over to demand independence or equal rights or equal pay during the war. Once the Indians were allowed in the army, the government was no longer secure. After independence the army was kept itaukei as a way to ensure rule of the itaukei elite. The 1987 coup was evidence of the success of that strategy. Now, after 2006, girls and boys on Indian origin have given up even trying and choose much more academic careers. A parent want his kids to be doctor/lawyer/engineer.The army is no longer a choice for the Indo Fijians. So it is not about the current army leadership keeping other races out, its about the army having an institutional image which does not attract the academic minded. Long term, the army should think about marketing a more multi racial and dare I say it, more gender equal image. Even the americans have only this year started sending women to the front line, so all armies seem to have the same problem.
Mat Sitter,
I just can’t get over the weasley Indian thingi…..can you please explain…I’d appreciate that.
Kind Regards
@Mat Sitter, you draw a long bow connecting colonial policy directly with postindependence events. Sounds like an englishman at the battle of Agincourt.
@ Mat sitter
In addition to your comment, I wish to add that there is no such policy in the RFMF that states that ONLY Fijians could join or at the “other end of the stick”, that only a certain percentage of Indo-Fijians should be recruited. Whilst I am drawn to agree with your assumption that the military could have been an instrument utilised by former colonial masters as a tool to achieve “divide and rule”, it is imperative that I point out that there is no such thing in terms of tangible policy or actions by members of RFMF to stifle the ability of Indo-Fijians to join the military. In fact, it is the opposite from my experience. Members of RFMF of Indian heritage (past and present) have been well looked after and sort of “revered” by members of RFMF maybe due to their small number and their physical ability to foot it with other soldiers in terms of tough military training. For example, Kamal Kapur (from Semo, Nadroga) and Capt Narayan to name two. Your comment that after 2006 Indo-Fijians stopped trying maybe true but its certainly not because they are deliberately been stopped from doing so. I suspect (as you raised) that academic vocational pathway is the option they prefer more rather than soldiering.
Vinaka.
Quite right nzfijianatheart, I don’t think there is a policy banning nonfijians. Why should they join up if they don’t want to anyway? If memory serves me well, all the indians (boys) bar one in my class took up book-keeping class in Form 3 (many years ago now). They took to it like ducks to water. I don’t see this natural talent and inclination as evidence for the love of mammon let alone a colonial policy enforced from on high.
Mates,
Lets forget about the pre-independence days…the British never wanted Indians to join the army….and how could they as their motto was and always have been a divide and rule policy.
Oh and how can they not forget that they were driven away from India by an old man with a stick and a pinch of salt …what about an Indian with a gun!!.how could they forgive all Indians.
And shamelessly, each year the Queen would wear the stolen Kohinoor on her crown to open the British Parliament Session…….height of shame….and the days preceding to Indian independence, ships full of stolen artifacts/gold and you name it, sailed away to England…..and the likes of Charters have the galls to come and teach us about freedom and morality.
And wherever the the colonialist, be it the Ausies or British, have left, they trained the likes of their own and some locals to bark on their behalf.
And this brings me to the post independence era and the Alliance Government.
The likes of the Stinsons ( father and son ) and Len Usher and some wannabe “part” Europeans (the mickeys and the mouses) kept the colonialist agenda alive (remember Sam Speight and company…..when it suited them they were of European heritage and suddenly after the 1987 coup, they were the i-taukeis..some Taunivou…..wtf).
The rise of Butadroka and Apisai Tora did bring about the discussion on admitting more Indians into the Army and if memory serves me right there was wide spread opposition from the Alliance government…ridiculing Indians as being too skinny and when that didn’t work, it was said that separate meals to accommodate the mostly hindus will be too expensive.
And please folks do not tell me that Ratu Mara did not play a part in this with Charles and Peter Stinson constantly beside him. And believe me if the government of the day wanted to get in more Indians in the Army, they could have…they just did not want to.
If the government was so passionate in implementing a minimum 50/50 policy for the i-taukeis in government jobs and scholarships, than what stopped them from giving or at least actively encouraging about 20% of Indians to join the Army….didn’t someone once say that the land, the vanua and the army is what defines a Fijian and no one can take it away….
And if you create an atmosphere in an institution where you may not be welcomed, would you make an application to go there?????…and then later it becomes quite convenient to pronounce that the institution is open to everyone but the Indians have not applied to join in……politics of convenience ….remember….If the Indians were deliberately left out of this great institution, than do not blame them of not being Patriotic.
Train us as well and we will fight for this great country of ours…..
Looking back into the past helps, so I agree with matsitter looking back and making the point on colonial policy. Grubsheet’s article makes us think back too. And we should, but hopefully to come up with good conclusions because they will and more importantly are determining the future. In our minds anyway.
Matsitters connecting the distant past with the later past not to mention its implied conclusions won’t create a better future I don’t think though the aims are good. But then I may be misreading his comments like I did his initial use of the ‘weasley indian’ words. He got out of that corner well.
Actually this Matt sitter thing did not get out of the corner…or so he may have thought. He was on my radar……a sitting duck waiting for a pot shot.
Strange but not surprising for someone who presumably read “countless documents from British India”….and writes “The Indians were distressingly fond of equal right and independence from British rule”….would use such words in this forum.
The tragedy is that these kind of people cannot put their thoughts into perspective using the keyboard.
But again as you say mate, that I may have misread his comments, it may have come from his heart.
Just google “weasley indian” and you will find that there are more English surnames than any reference to any Indian.
@Chand
I refer to the common image the colonials had of people of Indian origin. Found in coutless documents from British India. The Indians were distressingly fond of equal right and independence from British rule. That dislike and distrust transferred to Fijian rule by the same colonial rulers. I used the word to describe British attitudes towards the Indian settlers in Fiji.
Aah the British….oh yes.
They have their own class system
The Royalties…the English Elites and just so to be different, have a ‘different accent” to the rest. Oh and they have a very distinctive way of holding their cup of tea….different from the rest….the commoners.
Then comes the Lords…pronounced as Lards….the suckers of the royalty.
And to make the rest of the cronies happy, there are the Nobles, often pronounced as Nipples or Nibbles…..who nibble on the crust of the Lards and who in-tend nibble on the nipples of the Royalty.
Then comes the Flag bearers….who nibbles on the nipples of the lards….
And then comes the guys who feed on fish and chips on news papers and call it the national food, the culinary delight of Great Britain.
Damn this bloody weasley Indian.
@NZFijianatheart
Please explain why the Fijian Indian soldiers need “looking after” by the others? That term suggest patronage to me. They should be treated the same as all the other soldiers.
Hey chill out brother.
As they say in England: easy weasy weasely woss, give Charter the greasily toss.
Oilei cries the mamma boss, balls and all for the daughters loss.
Oh blimey…that weasely Indian again
@we are not to be patronised
What I mean by “well looked after”, was they were sort of popular amongst the rank.. It certainly didn’t mean that they required extra assistance or were treated as a minority. They were treated exactly like any other soldiers and by jolly they were damn fine soldiers.
My apologies if it came across as patronising, it certainly wasn’t my intention.
Maybe he meant the majority should look after the rights of a minority group?
@Mat sitter
Far from it buddy but thanks for the attempt.
Your explanation accepted NZFijianatheart. Apologies for misunderstanding you.
Some sort of divine justice in Britain Chand. They now prefer the Balti curry and the Rogan Gosht to fish and chips! The Indian takeaway has taken over.
Good piece on a very important event of our history in terms of the magnitude of its affect. Growing up all we hear is the version of what our family tells us plus the one our history teachers teaches us. I was four years old and being the son of a chiefly I taukei and naval officer I was unaffected to say the list.
My late father who was a personal friend of Frank, they were one of the first group to be recruited and joined the 300 strong navy that made up the newly formed navy squadron. Back in the late 70s and early 80s they were sent to various countries including Australia and New Zealand to learn the skills of ttheir trade.
It was through this that they started to expand their mind. I was pretty much lucky to have been raised in a sort of open minded way. My father was very much like Frank you could say they were cut from the same old school new thinking stone. I remember my mum always saying how my traditional Christian grand parents and dad locking horns in pretty much every aspect of raising me and my siblings up.
My dad was very much fair, respectful and has such a presence. He didn’t force his views on us, he allowed us room to choose. In the village there were families who were accused of voodoo that people keep away from. My dad treated them equally, he’ll invite them over at our village house for dinner and grog. And in the village meetings my dad always gave the women opportunity to say their views.
When my grand dad tried to protest or over rule him he will just kindly tell him dad this are our wives, sisters and daughters do you honestly wish to treat them like outcasts by not hearing their cries. My mum said that every men in that village hall from my grand pa onwards all felt so emotional at the realisation of how they’ve treated our women that from that day they vowed that all future meetings and decision will include the voices of women.
I believe that what Frank has done and is doing is a reflection of that group of young naval officers in the late 70s and early 80s who after being exposed to foreign countries through their naval course realised that Fijis potential to be fair and great is achievable. They dared to dream beyond their narrow Fijian mind and our generation now is the by product of that. And I for one am greatful that Frank has done what he and his friends have always talked about.
This is why I believe that Frank will succeed or die trying because his cause isn’t based on money or power but a genuine dream for changes which was inbeded in him along with his young naval officers friends long ago.
The recent “Australia pledges $105.5million aid for development to Fiji for 2 years starting from next year” is just too good to miss in terms of trying to buy influence. The good old Australian political way of cheque book diplomacy is well and truly alive. When I read that piece on the Fiji times I just giggled because it shows the desperation of Australia to influence Fiji.
Their influence in the pacific sphere that they’ve enjoyed for so long has for the past few years been challenged and defeated by Frank and his government. Its now even more important to vote for Frank in the election because with him at the helm Australia will never have their ways with us.
We have shown and given our pacific islanders brothers and sisters guts to stand up to Australian influence and how wonderful that feels.
Cool it bro. Every country is engaged in ‘shaping and influencing’ of some sort. It is part and parcel of international diplomacy.
Australia’s economy is larger than all the ASEAN countries put together. Australia is an aid donor and the South Pacific is in its backyard. It has traditionally provided aid to the region. Besides Fiji, it recently promised substantial aid to Samoa as well.
A politically stable and prosperous South Pacific where individual countries are able to provide for the welfare and advancement of their peoples, is in everyone’s interests, including Australia. Their aid will help promote these interests.
Cheers
Do you have official stats to back up you statement with regards to the size of Australia’s economy, in comparison with ASEAN?
Pity they don’t use it for the Asylum seekers or the Aborigines! Julie must think Voreqe is a dope all the sweet talk from NZ and Aussie is just simple back stabbing. We will take the money but we ain’t doing want velly -Soolyyyy!
How Samoan govt protects media freedom: where is Samoan govt chief lapdog Terry Tavita?
May 24, 2013, APIA (Samoa Observer ): Three female reporters from the Samoa Observer were threatened and assaulted in the presence of three police officers.
A truck with a tanker on its back tipped over on Wednesday in the village of Vailima near Apia. Two reporters were taking photos of the truck when a man told them to stop but they refused and were abused and assaulted.
Media situation
Some time back, in an interview with Radio New Zealand International’s Alex Perrottet Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi gave a glowing report on the safety of media personnel in Samoa. He said Samoa had the safest and the freest media in the Pacific (HAHA, Samoan pm is both a lair and a joker).
After the accident, one reporter told the man she would lodge a complaint with the police. To which the man said: Why don’t you make your complaint with the police officers here?. None of the police officers intervened.
When reporters asked the policeman why they were not doing their duty, he said: The man has already told you not to take any photos, but you still did.
Media threat in Samoa
Samoa Speaker La’auli Leuatea Polata’ivao says reporters will lose the “privilege” of access to the House if they report anything other than official Hansard.
A hard earned reputation for good governance in Samoa is at risk of being lost if recent threats and bans against media persist, warns the Pacific Freedom Forum.
“The government of Samoa prides itself on a regional reputation for transparency and accountability,” says PFF Chair Titi Gabi.
“Good governance however loses pace as soon as threats to ban news media are made,” she says.
Speaker of Parliament La’auli Leuatea Polata’ivao this week accused news media of misquoting debate in the house.
He called on media to stop interviewing members of parliament outside the house and rely solely on official Hansard records of the debate.
Describing access by news media to Parliament as a “privilege”, La’auli said that reporters could be charged under 1960 laws that carry a maximum sentence of six months in prison, a $100 fine, or both.
Based in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea Gabi said that, “We fear the threats from the Speaker shows an outdated understanding of the role of media , as outdated as the law he is quoting from, one from the colonial era, two years before independence in 1962.”
PFF co-Chair Monica Miller said the Speaker of Samoa was mistaken to think of access to Parliament as a privilege for journalists doing their job.
“Freedoms of movement and speech are fundamental human rights that Samoa has proudly proclaimed as a constitutional democracy and full member of the international community for the last 51 years,” she says.
“His comments betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the necessary separation of powers between parliament, government, courts and the press,” says Miller, based in Pago Pago.
“News reporters are not Hansard reporters, for a very good reason – they are there to ask questions that protect the public interest – not accept everything members of parliament say, without question.”
Outside of Parliament, an opposition MP confirmed to local media that he had not been misquoted, and that news reports of his accusations against government were, indeed, accurate.
Local media say that they have never been able to get copies of the official Hansard or even order papers from Parliament staff.
Under parliamentary privilege, fair and accurate reporting of parliamentary debate is fully protected, by law.
An earlier PFF release questioned the independence of police in Samoa after they followed “advice” from the Prime Minister not to speak with media anymore.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi later claimed he had “instructed” police to reverse the ban and answer questions.
GD… Still have a vision for all Fijians parallel to those of the illegal regime… Yes GD no matter how you see it… for good or worst… right????. I hope the Australian intelligence is stomping on GD’s rights and gathering as much information from his personal emails and correspondences as possible .. but do not worry GD will not mind as he approves this sort of behavior by thugs from the island where the world should be….
You seem fixated on GD, and give him god-like powers, and too much credit and attention; it could be some form of disorder (beware GD). This problem is not of GD’s making, as you are foolishly implying. GD does not have the solutions either. He had an opinion about the 2006 coup. Right or wrong, it was shared by many in Fiji and abroad, and for very good reasons, if you care to do your homework.
GD provided some much needed balance and context about the coup that was lacking in the media. Like you, media sees things purely in black and white when it comes to Fiji. If people like you had been as vociferous about previous coups as they are about this one, we would have nipped the coup culture in the bud. You only coming out of the woodwork now, like the many racist Fijian ultra-nationalists and 1987/2000 coup supporters who have conveniently become democrats overnight.
Still, I am one of those who believes the 2006 coup was not warranted. But it happened. Get over it and go back to your life, just as the rest of Fiji is doing. We need to move ahead.
I’m pretty sure they have more important things to do but if you are correct, about the most serious crime they have him for at present is two spelling mistakes in the past three years.
So what then, pray tell, should be the viable alternative vision?
We all know what international diplomacy is. Every countries foreign policy will and should always have the interest of their country foremost however it should be into consideration a slight interest after its own that of the particular country they’re dealing with and not have an attitude of contempt.
The Australian government have long known about the undemocratic and outright unfairness of Fiji’s previous democratic policies under the Rabuka, Mara and Qarase government. They however did absolutely nothing because they were enjoying the power they had over our previous weak politicians that enable them to get whatever they so please.
Now all over a sudden their power and influence which they’ve been accustomed to for so long have suddenly been removed they then start shouting democracy calling internationally for Fiji’s return to democracy. The question is what type of democracy are they on about. Whenever they quote democracy to Fiji I giggled because their hypocritical attitudes is just too big along with their ego to miss.
New Zealand have realised Fiji have become more educated basically grown up and catch their bullshit so they’ve chilled. Australia however seems to care less about being found out. It draws a picture of a bunch of pathetic lying piece of shit imbeciles. I’ll be more then happy if our government don’t ever wanna have anything to do with the Australian government but just the bare minimum.
My apologies to loyal readers but I am experiencing continuing difficulties with WordPress. I have two articles that I’ve been technically unable to post. All I can do is to try to resolve the problem ASAP. Thanks for your forbearance.
The Dog ate my homework, too!
This sounds suspiciously like the mad barking dog from Canada?
Well spotted. I’d say indupitably.