X-Post: Whale Oil Beef Hooked - Fiji Releases Draft Constitution

by Whaleoil (Hat Tip) on March 22, 2013

The Fijian government has released the draft constitution:

The Prime Minister has invited all Fijians to participate in the formulation of Fijis new constitution by providing their feedback on the draft document.
Fijians are urged to read it, discuss it, and debate it. We want to know what you think. To provide us with your feedback via Facebook, go to the Constitution tab and add your comments. 

Despite the best efforts of Australia and New Zealand Fiji is making good progress towards their first truly democratic elections. Parliament will consist of 45 members as opposed to 71 previously and no upper house of unelected hereditary iTaukei Christian chiefs. They have also included a fairly decent bill of rights.

2013 – Fiji Draft Constitution by cameron_slater

2013 - Fiji Draft Constitution

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X-Post: Whale Oil- Whale in Fiji: Speaking with Leighton Smith

by Whaleoil on September 5, 2012

I was in at NewstalkZB this morning and Leighton Smith grabbed me on the way past and we spoke for a few minutes on my observations in Fiji.
Have a listen [podcast posted below] to my observations on Fiji.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

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X-Post: Whale Oil- Whale in Fiji: Pio Tikoduadua

by Whaleoil on September 5, 2012 

While in Fiji I was fortunate to meet Pio Tikoduadua, Permanent Secretary – Office of the Prime Minister. Again access was easy to obtain and certainly without the high levels of security that New Zealand politicians have around them. For a country that supposedly is under military control I certainly was left wondering just where are all the troops that need to go back to the barracks.

We discussed the “smart sanctions” and the impact on Fiji. Contrary to the intention of the “smart sanctions” in forcing Fiji to return to the democracy that we want for them, they have in fact helped Fiji to find their won way forward. Trade and Tourism has in fact grown despite the sanctions. The sanctions though have caused a deep resentment of the New Zealand and Australian governments. Mainly because the effects have been at a deeply personal level and have affected the health of people. They believe that the sanctions have failed the foreign policy goals of New Zealand and in fact have strengthened Fiji internationally and economically.

Here is a short summary [video posted below] of the pertinent points:



Pio Tikoduadua was openly dismissive of Phil Goff and his comments about Fiji prior to the South Pacific Forum. New Zealand’s neo-colonial attitude is not appreciated and the Fijian people and government find it insulting and condescending. The discussion around the independence of the judiciary and the effect of the sanctions on recruiting judges and officials. Tikoduadua believes that New Zealand’s and Australia’s belief that their judges and lawyers are the only ones that somehow qualified to work in Fiji is quaint and condescending and without merit.

The discussion over the Constitutional Reform process in Fiji was refreshing and one that perhaps New Zealand can learn from. There are no limits to the constitutional discussion and as I drove around Fiji there were constant advertisements encouraging people to participate and have their say about the Constitutional framework. Which then led into a discussion about the three constitutions that Fiji has suffered under, all that were “cooked up” by politicians and the processes ignored the people of Fiji.

The collusion of politicians and the Great Council of Chiefs to produce a constitution that created racial separatism that could only have caused problems. For these reasons they believe that Fiji needs to create its own Constitution.

The full audio [posted below]of the interview is below:

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Whale Oil- Radio N.Z. perpetrates lies about Fiji petition

Whale Oil recent post on Fiji, analyzes the Radio NZ coverage on the alleged 600k signed petition for a 3 minute democracy in Fiji.

The excerpt:

Radio N.Z. perpetrates lies about Fiji petition

It is a while since I wrote any­thing about the coun­try of my birth, but Radio NZ has finally dri­ven me to it.

Prob­a­bly the sin­gle best site on Fiji is Fiji the way it was, is and Can be. He has got stuck into Radio NZ. Unfor­tu­nately his blog isn’t widely read so I take this oppor­tu­nity to spread the word more effectively.

Before I do I must choke out good com­ment about the recent work of Mur­ray McCully to change the par­a­digm and rhetoric around Fiji.

Now onto the Radio NZ bol­locks.

“Fiji’s peo­ple have been fairly meek and accept­ing in the face of three years of mil­i­tary rule – but not any longer. On Fri­day, they sub­mit­ted a peti­tion to the mil­i­tary regime call­ing for the restora­tion of democ­racy and elec­tions by the end of the year. It was backed by over 680,000 peo­ple – more than 80% of the country’s pop­u­la­tion.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how the regime responds to this. With that level of mass oppo­si­tion, its not as if they can arrest every­one (besides the obvi­ous prob­lem of num­bers, the sol­diers may not be will­ing to arrest their fam­i­lies). OTOH, unless the peo­ple are will­ing to turn their mass oppo­si­tion into colour-revolution-style mass protests, then the regime may not in fact have to do any­thing.”

Now read on to see where this non­sense came from.

RadioNZ reports, with­out prior enquiry, ques­tion or com­ment, that a peti­tion “said to have the sup­port of more than 600,000 peo­ple” has peti­tioned Bain­i­marama to hold elec­tions this year. Link.( See other RadioNZ links below.) And Coup­four­point­five has fol­lowed suit.

So Radio NZ got some info on a peti­tion sup­pos­edly from over 600,000 Fijian cit­i­zens to request a return to democ­racy and silly twat no Mal­colm Har­brow duti­ful starts spread­ing the lie. nor­mally he researches a bit more beyond the issues but his blink­ers are always on over Fiji.

So where did Radio NZ get their info from?

The infor­mant and main peti­tioner was Suliasi Dau­ni­tutu of Quean­beya, NSW, who is linked to the Aus­tralian FijiDemoc­ra­cyNow move­ment. Suliasi said the peti­tion­ers, most pre­sum­ably liv­ing in Fiji, “are afraid to express [their views] openly, so it’s being done through var­i­ous polit­i­cal par­ties … Lead­ers of the Fiji Labour, SDL and National Fed­er­a­tion Party…”

So. This is a peti­tion based on past party mem­ber­ship lists not indi­vid­u­als who have signed in their own right or given par­ties to sign on their behalf. The lists were appar­ently given by these par­ties to Suliasi and then handed by him to Bain­i­marama! I cer­tainly wouldn’t like to belong to a polit­i­cal party, or any other orga­ni­za­tion, which was so free with its
mem­ber­ship list. And if Bain­i­marama is as vin­dic­tive as Suliasi would claim, he isn’t doing his peti­tion­ers any good by giv­ing him their names and addresses. The peti­tion is imme­di­ately sus­pect on these grounds.

Well, well, well three holes in the ground. No-one has actu­ally signed a peti­tion. The peti­tion is made up of mem­bers of oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal par­ties, with not a sin­gle sig­na­ture to sup­port the con­tention that 680,000 or the claimed 80% of pop­u­la­tion have signed the peti­tion. In the num­bers there is a prob­lem to, apart from the obvi­ous that there is no way that the SDL, Labour and the National Fed­er­a­tion Party could pos­si­bly have 80% of the pop­u­la­tion enrolled as mem­bers. Though with Qarase any­thing is possible.

It is also sus­pect on the num­ber of peti­tion­ers claimed:

600,000 by RadioNZ; 685,936 by Suliasi, the main peti­tioner. How does he come even close to his 600,000 made up mainly of those on the party lists?

The adult pop­u­la­tion at the 2007 cen­sus was only 518,000, and the com­bined first pref­er­ence votes given to these three par­ties in the 2006 elec­tion totalled under 240,000. I doubt that more than a few of these vot­ers were reg­is­tered mem­bers of the party for which they voted.

Fur­ther, it can­not be pre­sumed that vot­ing for these par­ties four years ago would result in sim­i­lar num­bers vot­ing for them today,
or the same vot­ers being opposed to what Bain­i­marama has been
try­ing to achieve since 2006. Vot­ing for a party is a lim­ited
man­date.

Mine does not assume it can speak on my behalf on all issues. But if all 240,000 “signed” the peti­tion, a fur­ther 440,000 for­mer Fiji cit­i­zens and other peo­ple liv­ing over­seas would also need to sign to reach 686,000!

Did it not occur to some­one in RadioNZ that 600,000 is more more than the total adult Fiji pop­u­la­tion of 518,000 recorded in the 2007
cen­sus, approx­i­mately one-third of whom were too young to
vote?

Or did they con­sider the daunt­ing task of get­ting at least 360,000 Aus­tralians and New Zealan­ders to sign to get even close to their
600,000? Such a mas­sive peti­tion would have reached the ears of the
media. Why have we not heard of it until now?

Dig­ging deeper, Suliasi’s peti­tion was in sup­port of a peti­tion by Vil­isi
Naduka of Caubati in Nas­inu who first came to pub­lic atten­tion when in Octo­ber 2008 he parked his car across the road at Nabua, Suva, in
protest against the Coup.

Suliasi says the peti­tion was handed to Bain­i­mara last Fri­day
after­noon but Visili says he posted it after pray­ing at the
Methodist Church and pre­sent­ing a copy to the Church
Pres­i­dent, not that the dis­crep­ancy really mat­ters other than rais­ing the ques­tion of what else Suliasi may have got wrong.

Well. the num­bers are cer­tainly sus­pect and so is the fact as to who pre­sented what and when. Sounds like com­plete bol­locks. Time to sell Radio NZ methinks.

The NZ tax­payer should not be sub­si­diz­ing such poor jour­nal­ism. Fancy Labour sup­port­ing such and inept bunch of hope­less fact checkers.

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