X-Post: # Secrets And Skeletons: The Inside Story. .

Astonishing details are emerging of the secret role played by the Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, in the removal of the Solicitor General, Sharvada Sharma, which has triggered a constitutional crisis in Fiji months out from the 2022 election.


The circumspection and fear of retribution that usually keeps the mouths of insiders firmly shut in Suva has given way to a torrent of information as outrage mounts over the circumstances of the SG’s dismissal. It also encompasses wider concerns about the conduct of the Prime Minister and his Attorney General that go to the heart of their fitness to hold public office.




A job for the cat in the hat






Pieced together, it is an amazing tale of how the Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, used the Prime Minister and the weight of his office to try to strongarm Sharvada Sharma into resigning for his alleged “misbehaviour” in presiding over the failure of the state case to remove the SODELPA MP, Niko Nawaikula, from the Parliament.

According to multiple sources, Sharma was summoned to the office of the Prime Minister, where he was told by Frank Bainimarama that he had lost the trust of the AG and he wanted his resignation. When Sharma refused, it set in train a series of events that have not only compromised the PM and the AG and triggered a crisis of confidence in their leadership and judgment.
CJ Kamal Kumar with the AG

When the PM’s attempt to get the SG to resign failed, the Chief Justice – as chair of the Judicial Services Commission – advised the President to suspended Sharvada Sharma and then seven weeks later, advised Konrote as the outgoing president to dismiss him.

Yet that dismissal was demonstrably unlawful. The 2013 Constitution stipulates that the Chief Justice – as JSC chair – must set up a formal tribunal of three judges to hear any allegations of misbehaviour against a judicial officer, report its findings to the president and make those findings public. Virtually the entire legal establishment in Fiji is aghast that instead of doing this, Justice Kumar evidently advised the President that he was entitled to dismiss the SG without any formal hearing whatsoever.

Why he did so hasn’t yet been explained, with the government issuing a bald late night announcement of the dismissal two days after it occurred without giving a reason for the termination, let alone addressing the unlawful nature of the decision.

Yet it was unquestionably an illegal act that contravened Fiji’s supreme law and within three months of Kamal Kumar being sworn in as permanent Chief Justice. It is already having far-reaching consequences for confidence in the judiciary and the rule of law in Fiji as Sharvada Sharma and his legal team – led by lawyers Richard Naidu and Jon Apted at Munro Leys – prepare to lodge an application for a judicial review of the decision.
The outgoing president, Jioji Konrote




The episode has also engulfed and compromised the Chief Justice, Kamal Kumar, and the outgoing president, Jioji Konrote, because their sacking of the SG without a hearing was in direct contravention of the 2013 Constitution.


The Chief Justice is now between a rock and a hard place. Wearing his hat as Chair of the Judicial Services Commission, Kamal Kumar has – according to senior lawyers – already pre-judged the SG’s guilt on the accusation of misbehaviour by unconstitutionally advising that his commission be terminated without a hearing.

So there is no question – they say – of Kumar presiding in judgment over a review of his own decision wearing his hat as Chief Justice. He will have to recuse himself and the application will have to be heard by another judge.

If that judge finds that the SG’s sacking is unlawful because it is in breach of the constitution, where would that leave the Chief Justice, the former President, the Prime Minister, the Attorney General and the man who filed the original complaint against Sharvada Sharma, Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem? We are deep into unknown territory yet as things stand, it isn’t hard to imagine them wallowing in an ocean of pain of their own making in a putt-putt with a broken motor just months from the 2022 election.
Firebrand MP Niko Nawaikula


No-one who knows the inside story is in any doubt that the entire saga has its origins in the AG’s hatred for Niko Nawaikula – the firebrand indigenous nationalist who regularly taunts him in the parliament – and his obsession to have Nawaikula expelled as an MP.

Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum evidently saw his chance with Niko Nawaikula’s open admission that he had contested elections using an alias instead of his birth name. And as he has done before, the AG used the Supervisor of Elections as the vehicle for achieving his objective, instructing his house elf, Mohammed Saneem, to mount a court action to remove Nawaikula from the Parliament.

It was meant to have been straightforward – Nawaikula charged with a breach of the electoral laws, tried and removed, all without the AG’s fingerprints on it. But the law wasn’t on the side of Saneem and Khaiyum but Niko Nawaikula.

When the case was heard, it emerged that Saneem had already issued multiple exemptions for others to have their aliases accepted or their details corrected. So why was Nawaikula being singled out for special treatment? Simple. Because whenever the Master tells Dobby to go for it, he does. But whether it is Nawaikula or Sitiveni Rabuka before him, Dobby doesn’t have a great record of accumulating scalps for his Master in the courts.

The hapless Saneem is said to have confided to friends that he simply couldn’t say no to the AG, all of which makes the Dobby the House Elf caricature uncomfortably close to reality.
“Dobby the House Elf”: Mohammed Saneem

According to senior lawyers, Saneem had a weak case and certainly did not have the legal firepower necessary to bring Nawaikula down. If it did, then why is it that it took Nawaikula’s acquittal and reinstatement to the parliament for the government to introduce tougher laws requiring electors and prospective MPs to use their birth names?

That alone was a tacit admission of flaws in its own legislation. All this should surely have been obvious to the AG and Saneem before and after the trial. But it didn’t stop them from venting their rage in their humiliation at Nawaikula’s victory and triumphant return to the Parliament on the man they sent into battle without the proper legal ammunition.

When the acquittal was announced, the AG took the extraordinary step of complaining publicly about the failure of lawyers on both sides – an unprecedented attack in the media on his own legal team that should have served as a warning to Sharvada Sharma of what was to come.

Yet having given 24 years of dedicated service to the AG’s Department – ten of those years as Solicitor General – and having had a blemish-free career, his friends say Sharma assumed that the AG’s attitude would be the normal one in the face of such a defeat. You win some, you lose some and if you do lose because of deficiencies in the law, then you use your numbers in the parliament to tighten that law rather than drag out your guy in the horse hair wig and shoot him.
A subservient relationship. The SOE and AG

How wrong the SG was. Behind the scenes, an enraged AG sooled his house elf Saneem onto Sharvada Sharma, encouraging him to lodge a formal complaint of “misbehaviour” against the SG with the Judicial Services Commission over Sharma’s handling of the Nawaikula case.

Dobby’s forelock-tugging subservience instinctively kicked in. And for Sharma, more than two decades in the civil service amounted to nought as the AG and Saneem made him the scapegoat for laws that they had failed to make watertight.

Flashback to Thursday September 16 – 10 weeks ago today (Thursday Nov 18). As far as Grubsheet has been able to ascertain from third party sources, the following is the sequence of events, beginning with an extraordinary personal summons from the Prime Minister to the Solicitor General to come to a meeting in his office. According to Sharma’s friends, he had no inkling what was in store, though he may have been naïve not to have his suspicions after the AG publicly criticised him – albeit indirectly – for failing to get Nawaikula expelled.

According to his friends, when he was ushered in, the PM came straight to the point in characteristic fashion: “I’ll make this short. I want your resignation”, he reportedly said. Sharma is said to have asked the PM for time to respond to him in writing, which he did the next day and denied the allegations made against him.



“In happier days”: the SG (left) and PM (second from right)

Then on Monday September 20, he was called again by the Prime Minister to his office, where the PM handed him a pen, pointed to a pre-prepared resignation letter on the desk in front of him and demanded that the SG sign it, telling Sharma he had lost the trust of the AG. When the SG refused, the PM curtly ordered him from his office, telling his military detail to seize Sharvada Sharma’s phone on the way out. For Bainimarama’s chief legal advisor for 10 of his 15 years in power, it was the most humiliating of exits.

In a state of shock – say his friends – Sharma returned to his office on Level 7 of Suvavou House, where the ordeal continued. One of the AG’s bodyguards was waiting for him and demanded his laptop. And that was where the curtain came down on Sharvada Sharma’s decade of loyal service as SG. Even taking into account the sometimes imprecise recollections of third parties, this was clearly an execution of the most brutal and ruthless kind normally reserved for those guilty of grave wrongdoing.

And then later in the evening of Monday September 20, Sharma received a letter from the President’s Office formally telling him that he had been suspended on the recommendation of the Judicial Services Commission and without pay. This was an added humiliation in a government that routinely suspends civil servants on full pay while allegations against them are investigated. And yet another example of the chronic vindictiveness of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
Unambiguous: The 2013 Constitution.


What should have happened next to an SG suspended for alleged misbehaviour is laid out in precise detail in the 2013 constitution. It is worth repeating to enable readers to fully appreciate the gravity of what has occurred and the grave injustice inflicted on Sharvada Sharma.

“112- (3) If the President, acting on the advice of the Judicial Services Commission, considers that the question of removing a Judge, Magistrate, Master of the High Court, the Chief Registrar or any other judicial officer appointed by the Judicial Services Commission from office ought to be investigated, then—

(a) the President, acting on the advice of the Judicial Services Commission, shall appoint—

(i) in the case of alleged misbehaviour—a tribunal, consisting of a chairperson and not less than 2 other members, selected from amongst persons who hold or have held high judicial office in Fiji or in another country;

(b) the tribunal …enquires into the matter and furnishes a written report of the facts to the President and advises the President of its recommendation whether or not the Judge, Magistrate, Master of the High Court, the Chief Registrar or any other judicial officer appointed by the Judicial Services Commission should be removed from office; and

(c) in deciding whether or not to remove a Judge, the President must act on the advice of the tribunal …

(6) The report of the tribunal… made under subsection (3) shall be made public”.

While the course of action that the Chief Justice and the President should have taken is unambiguous, no time frame is set for the process. Yet there’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. And it was clearly a denial of natural justice to keep the SG suspended without pay without a timely announcement of a date for the tribunal hearing stipulated by the Constitution.
Chief Justice Kamal Kumar.A full seven weeks passed and nothing happened. But then came Diwali on Thursday November 4 and Sharvada Sharma – a devout Hindu – was preparing for his religious devotions.

According to his lawyers, suddenly there was a knock at the door and a police officer handed the suspended SG a letter from the Judicial Services Commission. The letter required him to answer 31 detailed questions and gave him a deadline precisely 48 hours later to submit those answers – by 4.00pm on Saturday November 6.

His lawyers advised Sharma that the standard response time given to any officer of state subjected to formal complaint is 14 days yet he had been given just one business day – Friday the 6th – to prepare his defence. On the Friday, Sharma’s lawyers wrote to the Commission describing the time frame as “absurd and unfair” and offered to provide a response within eight working days. But this was immediately rejected by the Commission, which wrote back saying the Saturday deadline was immovable. In response to that, Sharma’s lawyers wrote back on the Saturday telling the Commission that the suspended SG denied all of the allegations in the complaint against him and would provide a detailed response. But he could not and would not do so by the end of the day and rush his response just so the Commission could “tick a box”.

And that’s where things rested until a bolt from the blue on the following Wednesday, November 10, when Sharvada Sharma received a letter signed by HE the outgoing President, Major General Jioji Konrote, terminating his appointment for “misbehaviour” and saying his failure to reply to the Judicial Services Commission’s 48-hour “please explain” deadline was “tantamount to cumulative misbehaviour”.



Injustice

48 hours to answer 31 questions posed seven weeks after his suspension. In the words of another old saying, the wheels of justice turn slowly. But, after a seven week hibernation and deafening silence, they were suddenly turbocharged to lightning speed when it came to dealing with the suspended Solicitor General.

The unconstitutional circumstances of his summary dismissal have sent shock waves through the ranks of those officers of state covered by the Judicial Services Commission, including judges, the Chief Registrar and the DPP.

Because if the right to a Tribunal hearing of an allegation of misbehaviour can be denied to Sharvada Sharma, it can be denied to anyone. Without constitutional protection, they are all a formal complaint away not from a mechanism to defend any allegation against them but from being kicked onto the street.

So why was there such a reluctance in this instance to uphold the constitutional requirement for a tribunal hearing that would have allowed the deposed SG to defend himself?

Was it because there are no grounds to question his conduct beyond losing a case under a law that the government itself acknowledged was deficient by altering it after Niko Nawaikula’s trial? Was it a case of the AG and Mohammed Saneem using the SG as a scapegoat for their loss of face in bringing the case against Niko Nawaikula in the first place?

Did they gamble on Sharvada Sharma not having the stomach for a lengthy legal battle and think he would fall on his sword under the weight of the Prime Minister’s, er, assertive persuasiveness? All this is rich fodder for any judicial review if that review is granted.

IF being the operative word. Because the next phase of this crisis will come if that review is denied.

The rule of law is paramount in any democracy, as is the separation of powers between the executive in the form of the elected government and the constitutional offices, including the judiciary. What has happened in Fiji is a blurring of those lines as the FijiFirst government makes a determined assault on the institutions of state – first by abolishing assessors in criminal trials and setting up a separate FICAC court to try its opponents and now a full- blown assault on the Constitution that it imposed on the nation in 2013 but whose provisions it ignores when it becomes inconvenient.

Make no mistake. Rather than strengthening our institutions to make them more resilient and allow for smooth transfers of power when the people decide a political party has run its course, Fiji under Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum is more dictatorship than democracy – a parliament that is manipulated by the ruling party, opposition figures detained and released at will, institutions stacked with FijiFirst supporters and now blatant defiance of the Constitution, the supreme law.

It is the Zimbabwe road – a journey into darkness and regression as a nation – and Bainimarama and Khaiyum are leading us all down that path.
Serious questions of conduct.

And history shows that when the supreme law is disregarded comes the slippery slope of there being one law for the leadership and another for everyone else.

The Prime Minister and the Attorney General have already both left themselves vulnerable to this charge – the PM for allegedly putting a stop to a police drug investigation into a close family member and the AG for allegedly asking his female staff for late night massages while travelling overseas. They are stories that you will never read or hear in the Fijian media. But they go to the heart of their credibility and fitness for high office.

In the case of the PM, the arrest of his close family member for drug possession allegedly triggered a phone call to investigating police threatening not only their own jobs but the disbanding of the entire section unless the investigation was halted. Soon afterwards, the Acting Police Commissioner, Rusiate Tudravu, resigned. Whether the two are linked Tudravu hasn’t said. But at the very least, the episode raises serious questions about the Prime Minister’s conduct and the even-handed application of the law.

In the case of the AG, there were allegedly complaints by female members of his staff that he was in the habit of summoning them to his hotel room while travelling overseas and asking them for massages.

While these were said to be of a non-sexual nature, it evidently caused enough discomfort for the women to raise the issue at a higher level. As with other celebrated cases in the “Me-Too” era, it is the disparity of power and the ability of an employee to say “no” that is the issue, as well as whether the alleged approaches were appropriate.
Hands on government. Allegedly someone else’s hands.

It is believed that complaints made by the women in question to the former deputy solicitor- general, Tracey Wong, were a significant factor in Wong’s subsequent resignation.

She was reportedly sidelined and cold-shouldered when she took it upon herself to raise the issue with the AG – an episode that doesn’t sit well with Khaiyum’s carefully crafted image as someone who empowers young and ambitious women in his office. He prides himself on hands-on government. Occasionally someone else’s hands, it seems.

Morale in the AG’s Chambers – where I worked myself for the best part of six years – has been severely dented by the Solicitor General’s dismissal. His designated successor, Acting Solicitor General, Preetika Prasad, has – according to colleagues – put on a brave face but is said to have been a highly reluctant recruit.

And the resignations of other lawyers in the AG’s Office are a clear indication of general dismay at the SG’s treatment. Sharvada Sharma’s “second” in the Niko Nawaikula matter – the competent and popular Seema Chand – has resigned and so has another valued state lawyer, David Solvalu, who has accepted a position with the private law firm, Howards.

So the AG returns to the office from COP26 at the head of an unhappy ship that is destined to get a lot less happy as the election approaches and he comes under increasing strain. Because even at the best of times, Khaiyum has a reputation for being capricious and erratic. And for his staff, giving him a massage is no assurance of longevity when he has so ruthlessly dispensed with someone of the calibre of the SG, who had loyally served him for ten years and helped him write the constitution to which he now gives the finger.
Dobby’s “regret”

While Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s self-belief is as immovable as his devotion to Islam and sense of destiny, his house elf, Mohammed Saneem, is said to be somewhat less confident these days. In fact, in the wake of Sharvada Sharma’s dismissal, Saneem – in private at least – is evidently expressing a degree of regret.

The SOE’s cockiness, nervous laugh and oversensitivity to criticism – say those who know him – masks an ambitious, capable yet deeply insecure individual who is acutely aware of the AG’s power to make or break him.

While ever he does his master’s bidding, Saneem is in “make” mode – propelled through the ranks as permanent secretary for justice and then Supervisor of Elections on his seemingly unstoppable path to fulfilling his cherished ambition to be a High Court judge.

Yet Saneem – it seems – has enough self-awareness to realise that he is locked in a Faustian Pact with the AG. And behind the bravado that was again on display on FBC’s For the Record on Sunday night, he is said to be painfully aware that he is now a pariah, especially with his fellow lawyers, and would not survive a change of government. All of which has the effect of binding him to the AG, his Master, even more.

That bond isn’t as strong, of course, as the one between Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and Frank Bainimarama, who the AG prevailed on to try to persuade the SG to go willingly, presumably on the basis that the PM was more likely to intimidate Sharvada Sharma into resigning.

The AG clearly had no idea of Sharma’s strength of character and resolve even after ten years by his side – a lack of judgment about people that will eventually be his downfall.



Mere Vuniwaqa

The tactic backfired with spectacular consequences. And now dismissed in unconstitutional circumstances, Sharvada Sharma is determined to fight to clear his name.

He joins someone else in exile who Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum also forced from office in recent months – the former government minister, Mere Vuniwaqa. Former close colleagues (Sharma as SG and Vuniwaqa as permanent secretary for justice), both are loose cannons cast from the ship of state who have the ability to cause considerable damage in an election year. Because if anyone knows where the bodies of the Bainimarama era are buried, they do.

Many people like me wonder how on earth the AG could have been so reckless, with the election countdown in full swing, not to have tied these loose cannons firmly to the deck.

But, of course, it’s always crash through or crash for Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. It’s just that crash now seems the more likely outcome if and when the people finally get their say.

Most Fijians have developed a distaste for the AG’s controlling and punitive manner and the PM’s faux bonhomie and barely concealed irritation with everything.

And after 15 years, people are generally sick of the sight of both of them, with their supercilious grins and factory-generated messaging, including such gems as “Covid-19 has made us stronger”, blah, blah, blah. Even with their handling of the Covid calamity, there are 694 reasons not to re-elect this tired old duo – the disproportionately high number of Fijian dead and counting.
Game’s up.

We’re through with the swaggering cowboy act and we didn’t vote for outlaws. In the final analysis, like all governments, the time has come for FijiFirst to reinvigorate itself with a period in opposition.

So they can at least do us the honour of obeying the constitution they imposed, give us a free and fair election and leave quietly when the Fijian voters decide “it’s time”. Oh and tell your people with the guns that the will of the Fijian people’s is paramount and the people have the right to choose even a “snake” to lead them if that’s what they want. Because that’s democracy.

Alas, I personally have little confidence that Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum will do the right thing. Because like all tyrants (the definition in ancient Greece was a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally), they think what’s right for them is right for everyone else. Democracy, Bai-Khai style. And bugger anyone else.














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X-Post: # THE VENTRILOQUIST AND HIS DUMMY

 

iPad or notes. The ever present prop

Frank Bainimarama cannot have a formal meeting with anyone of consequence without it being fully scripted for him, which is why his iPad or a set of notes comes between him and anyone who sits down with him, as in these pictures from COP26.

It is the way in which Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum maintains total control over the Prime Minister. Because speaking notes from the various branches of government such as Foreign Affairs go to Qorvis to turn them into conversational style and then Qorvis sends them to the AG, who approves them and forwards them to the PM. So that whether Bainimarama is speaking to Boris Johnson, Antonio Guterres, Patricia Scotland or the World Wildlife Fund, it isn’t so much Bainimarama speaking as Khaiyum. Just as the PM reads out speeches on an autocue that have been approved by the AG, with Bainimarama never once, in my experience, having had input into the content of those speeches during my entire six years of writing them from 2012-2018.

It has always frustrated Frank Bainimarama that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum invariably keeps him waiting for his speeches and notes. Indeed, he sometimes becomes agitated as the minutes tick by and the time for an engagement approaches and he still hasn’t received what the AG wants him to say.

It always struck me as unnecessary and even humiliating for the Prime Minister to be left dangling like this, not to mention the risk that the PM would fumble his delivery with not enough practice. But the AG’s favoured tactic has invariably been to leave emailing the relevant document till the last possible moment so that no-one else around the Prime Minister has a chance to read it and make changes that deviate from the AG’s narrative.

When I was the author of this material, I cannot count the number of times the PM’s bodyguards anxiously called me asking for a speech or speaking notes when it was the AG who was sitting on them – sometimes for a day or two – without passing them on. The PM was kicking the cat in telling his security detail to pester me because he knew all along that I was under strict instructions not to bypass the AG and send them to him directly. 

As Prime Minister, Bainimarama could have easily asked Khaiyum himself to hurry things along but he would never do so, which is a telling insight into their relationship in itself. Because it is all about the desire to control and the willingness to be controlled – the bizarre and frankly sad spectacle of the dummy waiting for the ventriloquist to bring him to life with words that he cannot formulate himself.

With this in mind, I had to smile when Sitiveni Rabuka said again on the weekend that Frank Bainimarama had lost control of the government. Because he has never had control in the first place. It’s the guy next to him or at his shoulder in these telling pictures from COP who pulls the strings and is the real power in Fiji.

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The Candidate- Fiji PM To Contest 2014 Elections

Fiji Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama has confirmed his candidacy in the 2014 elections. Video of FBC interview (posted below)


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Address By Fiji P.M To 64th Session Of UN Assembly.

Fiji's Prime Minister, J.V. Bainimarama's address to 64th session of the UN General Assembly. (PDF copy of speech)
Fiji Village article.

An article originally appearing in DNews.com described the experiences of University of Idaho Graduate who is interning at Fiji's Permanent Mission to the United Nations based in New York.

"I was there all week basically as (the Fiji delegation's) eyes and ears," he said.

Despite ongoing political unrest in Fiji, Donahue said he had "no problems at all" interacting with his supervisors and co-workers in the mission.

He said people realized the importance of setting aside the country's problems for the sake of positively representing Fiji to the United Nations

The intern described a situation:

He did get to experience some political controversy when the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, spoke to the U.N. General Assembly.

"I didn't know that he was going to be there," Donahue said, adding that there was suddenly security everywhere. "I was just stuck in the middle of it." Donahue said the internship was beneficial because he learned hands-on about the inner workings of the United Nations and the different ways countries approach each other.

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Helen Clark's Political Demise- A Paradigm Shift For Kiwi Voters?

In a Fiji Times aritcle, T.R. Singh's analyzes the results from the 2008 New Zealand elections and describes how Helen Clark's ultimate election defeat, was a by-product of her sophmoric name-calling and the seismic shift of the East Indian electorate from Labour to the National party.

Notwithstanding the scorn developed from the not so smart-sanctions directed at the touring Fiji Soccer team, blurring the line between sports and politics; which inextricably morphed the once lovable Aunty Helen, into the wicked witch of the South.
Frank Bainimaram's call to ex-Fiji residents to vote Aunty Helen out, was the coup-de-grace; along with the ripple effects of the global credit crunch cum recession.

The curse of Bainimarama

By Thankur Ranjit Singh
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

T here is little love lost between former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark and Fiji's Interim Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama.

Relations between the once friendly neighbours descended to all time low and called each other names like school kids. The sort of things Helen Clark called Bainimarama also hurt a large section of Fijians and Indo Fijians, if feedback from local ethnic station, Radio Tarana is anything to go by.

While all the niceties about democracy is well and good, the situation in Fiji has been complicated, and leadership in New Zealand was not prepared to appreciate the homegrown problems and complications that did not have clear cut answers.

The past elections in Fiji gave all the indications of a fully fledged democracy, but the aristocratic and ascribed chiefly system determined the winners, more often than not on a racially divisive politics where the Methodist Church also played a crucial part.

While all are jumping on the bandwagon to see elections in Fiji after USA and now, New Zealand elections, many supporters of democracy in Fiji wish to overlook the fact that elections by themselves do not deliver democracy.

This has been so in Fiji, where despite the catch-word of elections, Fiji had been quite far from a model of democracy that NZ and Australia thought it was during the past, supposedly democratic regime under Qarase.

To remove the pseudo democracy, Frank Baini-marama took an unprecedented action to charter a better future for Fiji which the shades and mirages of democracy could not deliver. The bad blood between Clark and Bainimarama appeared to have started when Helen Clark tried to become the peacemaker between Qarase and Baini-marama in Wellington in late 2006, and was very confident of reaching a solution.

However when Bainima-rama was meeting NZ delegation in Wellington, it is alleged certain diplomats were trying to urge the military to overthrow and arrest him when he returned.

Of course the peace deal never held, and Qarase was unceremoniously removed.

Many are of the view that Helen Clark's failure to tame Bainimarama has been the main course of her and her government's animosity towards Fiji.

It went to the extent that those wishing to enter NZ have to fill a form saying that they are not related to Bainimarama or any military personnel.

Of course we know what a farce it was as many people bumped into spouses and siblings of soldiers which comprised the netball team that played in New Zealand recently.

But it was poor Fiji soccer goalkeeper Tamanisau who paid the price for telling the truth and loving a soldier's daughter. He was denied a visa because his military father in law (apparently father of fiancÚe) was outlawed by NZ authorities.

In fact it was New Zealand which suffered the scorn of world soccer body FIFA and paid a heavier price of losing the right to host the games in NZ. Many Kiwis viewed this immigration requirement a vindictive action and saw it as a nonsensical requirement, unprecedented in NZ history.

The bad blood between the two leaders went to such an extent that Bainimarama last month called on Fijians and Indo Fijian voters through Radio Tarana in Auckland to oust Helen Clark in the election. Bainimarama is reported as saying that Helen Clark wished to be Queen of the Pacific and there was nothing worse for Fiji than her.

Of course my personal analysis and other indications had shown that there has been a dramatic shift of Indo Fijians from the NZ Labour Party which they worshipped during David Lange's tenor.

While Fiji's Daily Post newspaper, in an erroneous editorial slated Bainimarama for his call, and called him to be more courteous in international diplomacy, it ignored all the names Clark had called Bainimarama.

The paper also amplified its ignorance by quoting wrong statistics that Indo Fijians only comprised some 6000 voters, hence were no political force here. The Indian population in NZ exceeds 104,000 with some half of them being Indo Fijians.

Now, coming to the call from Bainimarama, did it really have an effect on Fijian voters?

While people were in a mood for change, my analysis shows that there has been a swing away from Labour, and you need not be a rocket scientist to determine that.

In Helen Clark's Mt Albert electorate, she polled 65 per cent of votes in 2005 election while this went down to 42 per cent in the election held this month. a drop of almost one third.

That shows that her personal preference with the voters has degenerated dramatically.

On the other hand National Party's electorate votes jumped from 19 to 36 per cent, showing a shift. With some 2800 fewer people voting this year, Clark's personal majority was reduced by just over 6000 votes, showing a clear shift of her personal voters of the past years.

However percentage of party votes in her constituency went up by four per cent showing that while people there have preference for Labour party, their personal preference for her went down decisively.

In other electorates of important Labour ministers, the results were inversely related to that of Clark.

There was marginal reduction in personal preferences while the preference for the party showed greater shift away from Labour to National.

The trend in the new Labour leader, Phil Goff's Mt Roskill electorate was with three per cent reduction in personal votes with seven per cent drop in party votes.

Similar margin and trend was also seen in David Cunliffe's New Lynn Electorate.

However, Chris Carter in my electorate of Te Atatu showed a greater margin of shift in party votes which went down by some 12 per cent while Carter personally was seen as a popular candidate.

What happens in such cases is that while voters tend to vote for their popular candidates for electoral votes, the larger chunk of Party votes went to National.

Similar trend in other electorates was what spelt disaster for Labour and a decisive win for the National Party.

People in Fiji and elsewhere need to appreciate that in New Zealand, we give two votes, one to the candidate in the constituency (they call it electorate here) and the other to the party.

Of 122 seats in NZ Parliament, only 70 are contested. The other 52 are given to list candidates depending on the percentage of party votes.

This system is well geared to Fiji and I will explain this in greater detail some other time, and show how ignorant politicians are hoodwinking Fiji people about the proposed change in the electoral system.

Can they explain how come NZ, with a population of over four million has two Indians in its Parliament?

Rotumans and for that matter Indo Fijians and other minorities have nothing to fear from the proposed changes which reflects the system that NZ has.

From migrants point of view, while treatment towards and relations with Fiji may have had marginal and even questionable effect on the voter preference, the biggest issues that determined voter preferences hinged on soft stance of Labour on law and order situation, the soft stance on dole bludgers and the nurturing of a welfare state and lack of encouragement and support for New Zealand's engine room, the small businesses.

In an economic slump, it appeared people banked on a self-made millionaire, John Key, to rescue the country from its economic crisis.

It is hoped the National government and its partners can live up to the hope people had placed on John Key who had been passed on as a relatively rookie party leader and politician.

Whether Bainimarama's call contributed to shift in voters is still questionable and debatable, but it is hoped the National-led government will take a more matured stance towards an important neighbour and engage Fiji in fruitful discussion to resolve its political impasse.

John Key has surprised all by brokering a politically expedient and nation-uniting gesture in bringing diametrically opposed Rodney Hide's ACT and Peter Sharples Maori Party in his fold. It is hoped Key will nurture and promote a similar conciliatory acumen towards Fiji which the Labour Government failed to achieve.

* Thakur Ranjit Singh is an Auckland-based third generation Indo Fijian migrant community worker, a commentator on Fiji affairs and a human rights activist.

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