The news that Lynda Tabuya is to co-chair an anti-pornography task force has to be the ultimate insult to the Fijian people from a government that long ago lost the plot and is now a clear and present danger to the nation’s moral wellbeing.
The best that can be said is that no-one knows more about pornography than the woman who actually created her own pornographic images and sent them to her lover, Aseri Radrodro. The worst is that this announcement proves beyond doubt that the “weed” and Jack Daniels-fuelled sex siren of Room 233 is a shameless hussy and that her patron, the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, really has gone gaga.
Honestly, Fiji. I genuinely thought that we had seen it all. But just when we think that standards of conduct in public life couldn’t fall further, of course there’s more. Yes, always more in good ‘ol Fiji. I don’t know about you but I thought I had become unshockable. But these headlines really had me gagging on my breakfast madrai.
Is there any decency at all in this government that would have anyone, yes anyone – Manoa Kamikamica, Sashi Kiran, anyone with a skerrick of ability to still tell right from wrong – admitting that this is an outrage? A pornographer posing as an anti-porn crusader given official carriage of an anti-pornography task force? Seriously. How can you bastards live with yourselves?
Which amoral idiot thought that this was a good idea? Prime Minister Gaga himself? And which cockamamie communications advisor thought it would be good to make this announcement on the very day that the Minister for Women and Children is giving her written response to the pornography complaint against her before the PAP inquiry into her conduct in Melbourne?
Talking of PR advisors, now is as good a time as any for Grubsheet to disclose my own relationship with Lynda Tabuya. It isn’t as salacious as others, though even a man of advancing years like me isn’t immune to the charms of the Great Temptress. Just ask the Prime Minister.
No, my “big reveal” is that before the last election, Lynda Tabuya called me in Sydney and offered me a paid position as her PR consultant with a view to her eventually becoming prime minister. Yes, cross my heart and hope to die, as we used to say at Drasa Avenue School back in the day. I politely declined and told her, among other things, that the baggage I carried from working for “Gorvis” would be an albatross around her neck that she didn’t need.
When the images from Room 233 at the Windsor Hotel were first leaked, I genuinely believed that they were fake and wrote to her commiserating at being the target of doctored images created by misogynists. I told her to be strong and said I hoped that karma would get the bastards. It seemed a little odd at the time that she replied “thank you for your blessing, Graham” without addressing the veracity of the images themselves. But perhaps this background might explain to those of my readers like Charlie Charters why I am like a dog with a bone on this issue. Why my sense of betrayal – having now been convinced the images are genuine because Aseri Radrodro’s wife found them on his phone – is so acute.
Suffice it to say, I am deeply relieved that the poisoned chalice of promoting Lynda Tabuya to be prime minister and defending her from herself has passed from my lips. But were I to give her some free advice rather than the paid position she offered me, it would be this:
1/ Pull your head in.
2/ Stay out of the media at all costs while thousands of Facebook users rage about your complete lack of self- awareness.
3/ Drop the designer glasses and tight-fitting fashion ensembles and wear only sulu vakamarama and subdued tones.
4/ Stay away from the police because their investigation is only going to lead them to your own front door.
5/ Stop promoting alcohol use by your Kadavu kai vata by offering your favourite tipple (Jack Daniels) to the locals in rugby raffles.
6/ Stop talking about the dangers of pornography when half the country is ogling pornographic images you took of yourself.
7/ Stop sharing images of a child being beaten when the Online Safety Commission has specifically asked all Fijians not to. The fact that they haven’t sent you a formal notice matters not a jot. It is wrong.
8/ Get your response to the PAP inquiry in on time today and cut the crap about the images and texts being fake. There is hard evidence that you confessed to Sainiana Radrodro about your affair and begged for forgiveness and it will eventually surface on the public record.
9/ When you appear before the inquiry on Monday, beg for the Party’s forgiveness just like you begged Sainiana Radrodro for her forgiveness.
10/ Tell the Prime Minister that you want to go to the backbench for a period of self reflection and to work out your drug and alcohol-related issues before he does it for you.
11/ Work diligently between now and the next election to rebuild public confidence in you as a politician and you may just be able to save your political career.
12/ Under no circumstances become co-chair of the anti-porn task force.
13/ Refer to item 1.
Now Lynda, you obviously thought I was good at what I do or you wouldn’t have tried to hire me to help you become prime minister. So kindly take my advice. Otherwise your current “crash through or crash” approach is heading in only one direction. Political self- immolation. The bonfire of the vanities.
Totally agree with everything you say. It is mind boggling.
Just thought a group of us women will go home and invest into an existing NGO long term that looks after children. While we acknowledge the NGO, we cannot stand Tabuya’s famed leadership and her immaturity. This is it. We are out. And by we I mean good long term investors with funds and experience in the sector.
Fiji will keep saying goodbyes to a lot of things in the area of family harm now. Simply because they have a poor leader at the top that is Tabuya.
PM has to get this sorted right away. Just this news has set back investors where there is a need.
Its like saying a thief was appointed chief of anti burglary taskforce.
Congratulations to Lynda…but LOL
I want to know if Tabuya will post any videos or images up of children going through any violation as she did this week.
Can we trust her to keep anything about children safe?
Will we now find all videos of abuse on children on her social media page?
Will she upload the videos that involves sexual harm and pornography?
What’s the absolute assurance that she won’t?
And there lies the answer that this woman is not trustworthy and she is dangerous with any sensitive information that is about children.
Sack her now.
Thats like appointing Ron Jeremy to be the Pope or leaving Trump in a locked room with Victoria’s Secret models and assuming they’re all going to be safe.
Grub by name and grub by nature.
You are Really a despicable human being!
Karma is a great leveler, one day you will have to pay for all this pathetic rubbish that you pass off as authentic journalism. You belong in the gutter with all the other grubs.
Really? Anyone would think that I was in Room 233 having brutal illicit sex, smoking “weed” and swigging Jack Daniels.Now run along and have a blessed weekend.
What a great moralist you are Grubby!
Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone!
I don’t know what you get up to in your own life, old chap, but I have never smoked dope in any hotel room and used pornographic images to entice the spouse of a colleague in an adjoining room to leave the marital bed to join me for brutal sex that left me struggling to walk the following day.
But even if I did, the difference would be that I am a private citizen and Lynda Tabuya is a government minister bound by codes of conduct, accountable to those who voted for her and with a special responsibility to uphold the law.
You want to brand me as a “moralist” but it is the duty of any journalist in a democracy to hold elected officials to account – something that I am willing to do when other journalists in Fiji shirk that responsibility. If you don’t like it, kindly eat a bag of shit.
Well, thank God that Graham holds Fijian officials to account, especially in the absence of any other journalists, particularly Fijian journos who do not do their job. If it wasn’t for Grubsheet, most of us would be in the dark. So vinaka vaka levu Grubsheet.
Are you the Mike Towler that was trying to stop the government from raising the minimum wage in Fiji all so you wouldn’t have to pay your factory workers more and you’d make more profit yourself? Your fights with a Tabuya were in the papers. At that time she seemed to care more for the people, she wanted the increase. But somehow you two must have made a deal with the devil.
You came to Fiji and benefited from slave level wages that you would have never had in your home country but you wanted to keep it that way for your own company and industry, not thinking about all the people in Fiji that needed that increase. And to this day the wages are so low nobody can survive.
You threatened that jobs would go to Asia if the government increased the minimum wage. Reading that was very sad to see your greed and not caring about people.
All the newspaper articles are there buddy for all of us to see.
If you want to give us facts about your allegations but don’t call others despicable. You clearly have something personal to gain by trashing others just as you had something personal to gain by not raising the minimum wage.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle (coalition government) the cow (cost of living) jumped over the moon. The little dog (opposition and some members of the public) laughed to see such a fun and the dish (Lynda) ran away with the spoon (Aseri)
This little dog is rolling over holding its tummy…brutally hilarious ????
Now we have seen it all. We always think that. We always think, “well, now we have seen it all!”.
But always, there is more. The next day, or the next week. There is always something worse. So now we just have to sit and reflect on what could possibly be next in this round of Nationally embarrassing and shameful blunder?
This is an excellent write-up, Davis, keep up the fair reporting on this matter
Your advice to the Minister of Women is timely and she should do the honorable thing, resign as a backbencher for now…
We all make mistakes and she asks for forgiveness from the people of Fiji including PAP and the Coalition Government.
God Bless you and your family
PDR
A dogs breakfast of a woman.
Shame on the Fiji Coalition.
You must be an Australian!
Dog’s breakfast!!! Hahaha. Love it!
She has no morals and shamefulness left. You were advocating for the wrong people last election and see how they rewarded you – by banning you from Facebook so that the truth is suppresssed. To many, only fijileaks and grubsheet offer any genuine and investigative reporting as people don’t have any better to look to in the local media, which despite media freedom have sold their souls to the devil
Agree! Lynda is the one who should be banned on FB!
Minister for children and she posts videos of children being abused for her own political mileage. Shameful!
I am concerned about the poor girl who was beaten. And the Minister of Women then shared that video publicly 2.4k people shared it from her page, 1000 views. What is the message here? It certainly is not protecting the privacy of the child.
It certainly isn’t protecting her vulnerability. Is it get beaten and become a social media star? The Minister of Women needs to take a course on the rights of the child. She has just exploited a child’s vulnerability for her page views and uses her ‘status’ to justify it. How humilitated must that child be? I can’t think of a less fit person for this role, other than an education minister who raped and mutilated his former wife.
That alone is reason to be sacked. Couid you please file a complaint. Remember they said there were no complaints against her. They never even investigated the weed. Please do file a complaint with relevant dept regarding this. If people like you did file, they would have to do something. Either that or get a petition of signatures if Mother’s and Father’s that demand she be sacked. How can anyone want her overseeing anything to do with women or children is a mystery.
I heard God is currently renovating hell for these Coalition Devils.
Graham,
A lot of the substance levelled against Lynda here is deserved. There are a couple of issues I suggest you reconsider:
1. Do NOT tell a woman how to dress – it is misogynistic to infer that style/fashion has impact on ability and substance, and reductive to do so. It isn’t helpful, and does not add to your argument. Focus on her actual behaviour, and her lack of honesty and integrity as a supposed leader of the country.
2. She is undoubtedly wrong in her conduct and response on her affair with Aseri. That said, intimate photos sent with the expectation of privacy are not the same as pornographic images/videos circulated widely. That they were ‘leaked’ cannot be taken to mean that she is a distributor of pornography. Conflating the two is not helpful, nor fair. Focus on her denial of the affair and subsequent lies to the public, not on ‘pornography’.
Tupou, it is perfectly legitimate for a PR advisor to suggest appropriate dress and I would tell a man in the same position to wear a dark suit and a subdued tie rather than a garish floral shirt.
Of course, the images Lynda sent Aseri Radrodro are pornographic. They are designed to arouse sexual desire and entice him to leave his wife’s bed and join her in another room while his wife sleeps.
So, sorry, but I reject your assertions on both counts.
One of the anti porn task is about sexual aggression; now is this the same as “Brutal sex”.?? Going through the list, I believe Lynda is the best qualified, both through knowledge and experience and I hope that, through proper practical application and examples the task force (quite many of them, I believe most volunteered) would arrive at a pleasurable judgement. It’s only the age of consent that may be the issue. And there may be issues of the types of porn; gay porn, soft porn, hard core porn, trans porn, it/they/them porn and of course Appu’s porn. I’ve gone through the terms and there is no timeline, which implies there will be be an unlimited “meetings and consultations”. As the queen once said in Melbourne “I’m exhausted on this cai”.