Croz's 3rd Radio NZ Inte[r]view On Fiji.

Croz Walsh third interview (Mon. 12th April 2010) with Bryan Crump host of "Nights" program produced by Radio New Zealand, covers the recent happenings in Fiji: Cyclone Tomas, Media Decree and other prerequisite "cliff's notes" for the curious observer, of Fiji's political scene.


Interview posted in MP3 player below:



One point of contention from SiFM in this latest interview, is the apparent lack of bumper music of the Nights program, and the way Bryan Crump ended the conversation with a 10 second warning and apparent lack of segway protocol in wrapping up Croz's interview, perhaps on extreme time limits or budget constraints.




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Great Expectations? Pacific Academics Talk About The Meaningful Possibilities In Oceanic Education.

Pacific Academics from the Oceanic Transformations forum in Victoria University Melbourne, were interviewed by Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program.

Presenter: Bruce Hill at the conference of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies at Victoria University, Melbourne.

Speaker: Dr Helen Hill, Victoria University in Melbourne; Tereseia Teaiwa, head of Pacific Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand; Dr Michael Mel, University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea

Interview on MP3 player posted below.








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Banking On Reform- Fiji's NBF Crisis De'Ja Vu & U.S Financial System.

The US financial system reform Bill is currently in Senate. Albeit, some provisions within the Bill would not meet the liking of Elizabeth Warren, chair of a U.S Congressional Oversight Panel; also featured in interviews in an earlier, award winning documentary: "Maxed Out", an in-depth micro-analysis of the macro beast: "The Corporation".

Recent NY Times Caucus blog post, (and re blogged by Huffington Post); provides some additional background on Elizabeth Warren.

Video archived footage (posted below) shows Warren grilling current U.S Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner.

More from E. Warren (posted below).

Elizabeth Warren on Consumer Protection (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute on Vimeo.

Warren's principles should be highlighted to all practitioners of corporate governance and additional experts (self declared or otherwise) on Fiji's economy.

One of Warren's major point has been plainly, simply and outrageously absent in current banking practice. Paraphrasing the words of the Professor of Contract Law at Harvard; Warren did not understand or comprehend most of wording and legalese within a majority of credit card/loan agreements.

Fiji Live article, covers the recent civil service workshop reviewing the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) banking scandal that occurred in the mid 90s. It would also be prudent for the Fiji workshop participants to become well appraised with the ideas and solutions Warren is advocating, as a possible panacea.

This important proviso should be an essential operating prerequisite, in Fiji's banking industry.

The excerpt of F.L article 1:

Failure to follow procedure ‘led to crisis’
March 24, 2010 06:12:52 PM

The failure of Government procedures to be followed usually means a lot of money being defrauded, says former judge Nazhat Shameem.

While facilitating a corporate governance workshop in Suva, Shameem said the National Bank of Fiji saga was allowed to go on in the mid-1990s because certain procedures were not working.

“All procedures in place were not working and these included the Ministry of Finance audits, the Auditor General and even Cabinet where reports were being submitted.

“So all the mechanisms put in place by the Public Service failed! Why did they fail? How come all of them failed?”

Former Navy Commander Viliame Naupoto responded saying, “perhaps it is a case of government authorities being either too close (to the bank) or too far away”.

He said by being too close, the minister concerned may have been involved in the fraud, and by being too far, meaning the Auditor General would come in only at the end of the year to carry out his audit.

“It would have to be an oversight by authorities. That perhaps might be a contributing factor?” Naupoto suggested.

The workshop was attended by senior civil servants and the head of corporate organizations.

The F.L article quoted from vignettes within the workshop discussions. Parts of the Corporate Governance workshop topics explored the issues of regulation, role of media, regulators and the accompanying culture of silence that gave rise to the 1990's bank scandal in Fiji.

Fiji Live article 2 excerpt:

Rabuka govt was ‘dictating NBF policies’
March 24, 2010 01:03:08 PM

The government of former Fiji coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka was playing a lead role and dictating the policies of the National Bank of Fiji when it collapsed in the mid-1990s, a corporate governance workshop in Suva has heard.

Participants, mostly from statutory bodies in Fiji, were of the view that most board members of the bank at that time were reluctant to make a decision because the government of the day was dictating the bank’s policies and procedures.

Former High Court judge and workshop facilitator Nazhat Shameem then asked to what extent a government could dictate policies to a corporate body.

People benefiting from the bank she said, were not indigenous Fijians and Rotumans.

“What was happening at the bank was political influence. Could the board of directors at the NBF have said ‘no, we won’t implement such policies’, when it could mean a loss of jobs?”

One participant agreed that it was a moral question.

“The problem of not being able to speak out is a social issue. The board of directors, the Reserve Bank of Fiji and the Auditor General did not speak out except for the media.

“Witnesses were reluctant to come out and when they finally did, they changed their stories,” said Shameem, who was Director of Public Prosecutions at the time the NBF collapsed.

“It’s actually a huge social dilemma in Fiji,” she added.

Given the global economic situation and the debate on reform of the US banking industry, there are some slight commonalities, when or if compared with Fiji's NBF scandal.

Fiji Live (F.L) article 3 excerpt:

Media’s role in NBF crisis questioned
March 24, 2010 06:39:12 AM

The media told the public about the National Bank of Fiji crisis because no other organisation did, a workshop in Suva heard yesterday.

Former High Court judge Nazhat Shameem made the comment at a corporate governance workshop at Suva’s Holiday Inn.

Participants discussed whether the media responsibly reported the crisis or whether it just sensationalised the issue.

“While we understand, the role of the media, why was it allowed to inform the public when information could have been disseminated in a responsible manner,” one participant asked.

In response, Shameem said by the time the media got the story, the bank had already collapsed.

“If the media had not exposed the NBF fraud, who would have done it?”

“The question we need to ask ourselves is why the media told the story? The Auditor General could have done the audits.

“But no one did their job. All else failed, so the media stepped in” Shameem explained.

When the question of whether the media ‘mischievously’ reported on the issue was raised, Consumer Council chief executive Premila Kumar said the media did a good job of informing the public.

“After all, money in the NBF was all public money,” Kumar said

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Cyclone Tomas Hits Fiji,-Brief Video Footage.

News reports of Hurricane "Tomas" Category 4 level storm, that is leaving a wake of destruction through parts of Fiji, whose citizen's heads were 'bloodied but unbowed'.






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Scotland's rugby-crazy Fijian soldiers

A look at the Fiji lads in Scotland. Video posted 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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