Sitiveni Rabuka is the opposite of Joe Biden – seemingly fit in body yet losing his marbles one by one as the months progress, as opposed to the physically frail US President who appears, from this distance at least, to remain sound in mind.
Today’s Fiji Times not surprisingly makes a virtue of the Prime Minister competing in the Oceania Games at the age of 75 as an example to the nation of the benefits of sport. Yet it is also another example of the local emperor fiddling while the nation burns – a desperate attempt to create a distraction and shift the public’s attention away from the mayhem all around him.
Rabuka presides over a government that is unravelling as quickly as his own grasp on reality. We don’t know the extent of the public’s disaffection because the Fiji Times simply stopped publishing its Tebbutt opinion polls after reintroducing them with great fanfare after the Coalition victory 18 months ago. We got to see just one that showed Sitiveni Rabuka riding high on a wave of public acclaim. But we can be sure that in the wake of the parliamentary emoluments scandal, the government’s approval rating will have reached rock bottom – its fortunes turned to ash.
As those around the Prime Minister try desperately to think of ways to reverse the slide into political oblivion, they are doing what the Roman emperors did – give the people “bread and circuses”*. The bread will be wage rises in next month’s budget whether or not the country can afford it and the latest circus is the revival of the Hibiscus Festival this year after a five year hiatus. Plus images of the Prime Minister as “action man” in a desperate cry of “look at me, look at me, not at the mayhem all around me”.
It isn’t going to work. Everyone knows that the Prime Minister is losing it. His return to power on the false promise that he had learnt his lessons from the 1980s and 90s has been a disaster. It has been a massive con job of more bread for our politicians than the poor and a circus of tired old tricks that no longer hold the public’s attention.
When election day finally comes, Fijian voters aren’t going to have the image in their minds of an able, physically fit leader presiding over a dynamic government but a bunch of incompetent, self-serving pigs with their snouts buried deeper and deeper in the trough.
* panem et circenses (Latin): “Two things only the people anxiously desire – bread and circuses.” One for the ages from the Roman writer, Juvenal, on how the emperors kept the populace happy by distributing free food and staging huge spectacles. The bread was the regular handouts of grain and the circuses included gladiators fighting to the death and Christians being fed to the lions. The Roman version of the Hibiscus Festival.
He’s also on the front page of the Fiji Sun with some nonsense about him “humouring the crowd”. The rest of the nation is decidedly less than amused.
Roll up, roll up! Here comes the circus, folks!
Anyone for keke?
Look at me, look at me!
And please, please try to forget this.
Can someone please show us an opinion poll now?
“Sitiveni “I gave myself the authority to do the coup” Rabuka could have gained more respect had he won a medal. After all he was competing in the 75 plus age category. Only the Fiji Times can be trusted to be highly exhilarated with a sixth place. Didn’t he ask for heads to roll when Fiji sevens didn’t win after Hong Kong.
The PM could’ve gained more respect if he had not supported sex and drugs in his cabinet, taken action on the ministers involved and scrapped the pay rise indulgence.
He would have gained more respect if he stopped the racially motivated ethnic cleansing of the public servants.
He is just making up the numbers in his sports whilst collecting pay in politics for doing nothing that improve the lives of the Fiji citizens. It is better for him to retire and work further on improving his sixth placing.
When shit hits the fan, dangle another carrot because Fijians are gullible. To them, anything is ok. The Sevens and now Hibiscus is a good way to keep things at ease. Then it is the womanizer PM acting like a hottie and throwing Fiji’s lifelines away. All is fine. It is the Fijian mentality to start celebrating.
Health system is a mess.
There is nothing to show as a country that genuinely speaks of anything better.
The government boasts on anything and mostly all news is another aid related activity.
Total reliance on everything aid.
The country is hitting rock bottom. We have been here before. These are the given traits of Rabuka’s leadership. He is not forgetting or wasn’t ill advised. He is fooling Fiji on purpose. Typical snake.
We really miss trustworthy opinion polls. Following the hiatus, Tebbutt would be dying for business and should thus wash their hands of the Fiji Times and engage with the Fiji Sun, whose recent hard-hitting editorials would be best supplemented with credible and robust opinion polls. Come on Caz Tebbutt, you can surely do so!
It is worse. Remember how his indigenous supremacy agenda back in 1987 led to the looting and eventually collapse of the National Bank of Fiji, how his cronies were torpedoed into positions and how under his watch the Indians mainly were terrorized, their properties taken away resulting in the huge exodus.
Now he is cunningly doing these ‘legally’ , using his cronies such as Lynda and even supported by NFP in terms of weaning the top echelons of the civil service and other diplomatic and statutory bodies of non I Taukeis. His reward of the emolumets package to the Speaker, President and the Leader of the Opposition is unprecedented. He knows how to exploit greed which he is only too aware of from his previous roles.
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A pitiful sight those sagging muscles of his. He should have just worn a singlet.
in the words of a Croatian Boxer, “i can see muscles but i can’t see heart”
Fiji deserves better than this
Whoever is handling PR for the PM is an amateur. It’s going from one disaster to another. And Rambo needs to stop answering any question put to him. He needs to learn to “I’ll get back to you” and avoid having words being put in his mouth. Where is the discipline? His PR guy obviously doesn’t have the balls to instruct him.
Only fans will understand this photo
Any possibility of you coming to Facebook?
No, unfortunately I am banned permanently after a complaint from Lynda Tabuya about the images I published from Room 233 was upheld by the thought police at Meta.