Fiji: All About Political Beliefs

The indigenous Fijians are better educated now and capable of making up their own mind without pressure from the Methodist Church on behalf of a political party.Members of the Methodist Church should not be misled by the claim that the draft Peoples Charter is going to be imposed on the people.

read more | digg story

The Audacity of Change in Fiji.

Fiji Times article previewed Barrack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco stadium, Denver.



Meanwhile, Fiji Water's Green Gal was present at the Democratic National Convention schmoozing with celebrities, according to the Fiji Green blog post. It's quite a shame that Fiji Green Gal had chosen to occasion to market its product, rather than sparing a moment to understand the historic nature of the event or cover the contents of the convention.

In spite of the separation of Obama's campaign from the Pacific, it has secured a growing legion of admirers and supporters in Fiji, such as Max, who is featured in the Obama website.

Obama's entire inspirational speech is available here (MP3).

Posted below are the Youtube video.

Part 1





Part 2





While such inspirational words by Obama is definitely stirring America, Fiji is at its own political crossroads and the winds of change blow, amidst the thorns of resistance.

In a Fiji Live (FL)article, Mahendra Chaudhry of Fiji Labour Party questioned why, Australia and New Zealand do not have communal seats themselves, yet have incessantly arm twisted Fiji, to revert back to that archaic voting system.

The excerpt of the FL article:

Read poll report, FLP tells Rudd, Clark
28/08/2008
Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry says Kevin Rudd and Helen Clark should read the report on Fiji’s electoral system by the late Tomasi Vakatora and Dr Brij Lal to understand why Fiji will not hold elections in March 2009.

Chaudhry, in the first of the FLP’s draft Peoples Charter consultation process, has openly told the Australian Prime Minister and his New Zealand counterpart that no amount of undue pressure will force Fiji to have elections by March 2009 because the current electoral system does not give equal value to votes and was racially divisive.

He said the report showed that there was a need to get away from communal voting system and a suggestion was made that communal seats be reduced to 25 and have 45 open seats while maintaining the 70-member parliament.

Chaudhry added that despite this the preferential voting system with 45 communal and 25 open seats was added into the 1997 Constitution, therefore racially dividing Fiji.

He maintained that the current electoral system did not have a clear guideline on the composition of parliament as well.

The FLP leader said if there was a race-based electoral system in Australia and New Zealand, the two countries would not make such comments.

Earlier this week while launching the draft People’s Charter, Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama said Australia and New Zealand did not have any idea what needed to be done have complete democracy in Fiji.

This, he said, was only in the hands of the people of Fiji. Fiji faces suspension from the Pacific Forum if it does not conduct elections by March 2009.

While some egalitarian neighbors of Fiji have exerted diplomatic pressure to steer Fiji back to an accelerated democracy, they also need to be reminded of the ageless words of Dr. Martin Luther King:

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-anti revolutionaries.
~Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968

In a follow up to an earlier SiFM post titled Religion and Politics- A Dangerous Cocktail;
recently, there have been some misgivings from the Methodist Church about Fiji's Charter, as described by the blog post by 'Babasiga'.

Fiji's National Council responded to the Methodist Church's reaction to the charter, which was covered by Radio New Zealand web article. The excerpt of the RNZ article:

Fiji’s National Council attacks Methodist Church leadership for rejecting Charter

Posted at 08:22 on 28 August, 2008 UTC

Fiji’s National Council for Building a Better Fiji has launched a scathing attack on the Methodist Church over its rejection of the Council’s draft People’s Charter.

At its annual conference Fiji’s Methodist Church voted unanimously against the Charter, saying it cannot be seen to support a military-backed government, which took power by force.

Don Wiseman has more:

“The Church’s general secretary, the Reverend Tuikilakila Waqairatu, calls the Charter an illegal and dangerous document. But in a news release the National Council says it is disappointed by the Church’s decision. It says many people are amused by the new moralistic tone of the Church leadership, given its support for previous coups.

The Council says the Reverend Waqairatu has not shown how the Charter will cause division and it asks how peaceful ethnic relations can be fostered or future coups stopped without the help of the police or military. It says the members of the Methodist Church should not be misled by claims the Charter will be imposed on people, but that the people will decide. The Council says this is in direct contrast with the actions of the Church leadership which forces its minority views on the people.”

The cusp of political change which Fiji finds itself and those at the reigns, perhaps can find solace in an appropriate quote from one of America's greatest President:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Abraham Lincoln

This renewed resistance to the Charter in Fiji, orchestrated by the Methodist Church and the SDL political party has more to do with the synergy of religion and politics in Fiji, superimposed with class warfare.

Few outside observers of Fiji's socio-political situation totally understand the strata of complexity, let alone know how to unravel the Gordian Knot.
A brilliant article written in August 2000 by a former Fiji academic outlines this scenario and arguably the contents still hold true with chilling reminders.

The excerpt:

August 2000

THE TROUBLE WITH FIJI

The recent political crisis reportedly pitching indigenous Fijians against Indo-Fijians, was attributed to rising nationalism by the mainstream media. But the problem is more complex than that.

By Teresia Teaiwa

There are Fijian provinces, and traditional Fijian confederacies, but the two military coups of 1987 and the recent hostage crisis illustrate with disturbing insistence the erosion of the indigenous Fijian social order.

The problem with prevailing analyses of the political situation in Fiji is the notion that the conflict is between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.

The ‘race’ card is misleading and mischievous, and unfortunately, Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji’s first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister, played right into it with his abrasive style of leadership.

But Chaudhry is not the problem. Through the fortunes and misfortunes of the country’s three indigenous Prime Ministers - Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Dr Timoci Bavadra, and Sitiveni Rabuka - we see the increasingly problematic configuration of indigenous leadership in the country.

Ratu Mara’s leadership draws on his own chiefly title, Tui Nayau; his wife’s, the Roko Tui Dreketi, from the confederacy of Burebasaga, is the highest chiefly title in the islands; and his close association with a tight elite cohort of European, part-European and Indo-Fijian business interests.

Ratu Mara’s leadership, however, alienated rival chiefs, proletarian and nationalist groups within his domain of eastern Fiji, and generated resentment in the western provinces.

The late Dr Timoci Bavadra, Prime Minister in the predominantly Indo-Fijian Labour/National Federation Party coalition government, was consistently described in the media as a ‘commoner’ even though he came from a noble Fijian background.

The problem with Dr Bavadra’s political genealogy in 1987 was not because of his Labour ideology or his ‘commoner’ status; it was because powerful sectors of indigenous Fijian society - in the east - were not ready for a Prime Minister from a western province.

Being both a ‘commoner’ and national leader was not a problem for Sitiveni Rabuka. In fact, a large part of Rabuka’s popularity with indigenous Fijians is linked to his ‘commoner’ status.

For indigenous Fijians, Rabuka’s inter-weaving of his traditional ‘bati’ or warrior genealogy (in the eastern province of Cakaudrove), his career in the modern armed forces, his identification with and deployment of Christian/Methodist discourse, his staging of the two coups d’etat in 1987, and the support he has consistently received from the Great Council of Chiefs, qualified him for leadership.

Rabuka even gained political mileage out of his ‘human frailties’: sexual and financial indiscretion, as well as flip-flopping policy decisions.

Many indigenous Fijians identify with Rabuka much more easily than with the aristocratic Ratu Mara. In opposition to the elder statesman of Fiji, Rabuka developed his own ethos of populism and ‘can-do’ capitalism - exemplified by the National Bank of Fiji debacle.

During his time as Prime Minister, a brash nouveau riche elite of ‘indigenous’ Fijians developed and thrived. George Speight is a good representative of this group, but an even better example is his mentor and benefactor Jim Ah Koy: both illustrate a new opportunism with regards to identity politics in Fiji.

A ‘general elector’ MP in the 1970s, Chinese/Fijian Ah Koy was sent into political convent by Ratu Mara for insubordination. Concentrating his energies in business during the 1980s, Ah Koy’s phenomenal success became worthy of a Horatio Alger story.

In the first post-coup election of 1992, however, Ah Koy re-emerged as a political candidate, this time on the indigenous Fijian electoral roll, and has represented his maternal constituency of Kadavu in Parliament ever since.

Like Ah Koy, George Speight’s father, a ‘part-European’ and former general elector named Sam Speight, became a ‘born-again Fijian’ in the post-coup era.

Sam Speight legally changed his name to Savenaca Tokainavo, winning an indigenous Fijian electoral seat in Parliament in the 1992 and subsequent elections.

In Fiji’s disconcertingly racialised electoral system (comprising three electoral rolls - Fijian, Indian and General), general voters have historically aligned themselves with indigenous Fijian chiefly interests.

The category of general voters covers Fiji’s multitude of ethnic minority communities: Banabans, Chinese, Europeans, Gilbertese, ‘part-Europeans’, Samoans, Solomon Islanders, Tongans, and Tuvaluans.

‘Part-Europeans’ form the largest and most influential group of general voters. In the post-coup era, they have shifted away from their historical identification with colonial European privilege to reclaim their ‘part-Fijian’ or vasu-i-taukei roots.

This shift in ‘part-European’ identification reflects a recognition of the contemporary realities of political power in Fiji: indigenous Fijians’ rule.

George Speight claims to represent indigenous Fijian interests. Sporting his European name, speaking exclusively in English, drawing on his Australian and American degrees and wearing his designer clothes, Speight does indeed represent indigenous Fijian interests.

But Speight’s indigenous Fijian interests are neither those of Ratu Mara nor of the late Dr Bavadra’s. Speight’s version of indigenous Fijian interests coincides in many areas with Rabuka’s version.

But the men Speight has surrounded himself with also represent a changing of the guard from Rabuka’s.

And what of Speight’s relationship with the marching/looting masses, who were inspired by the illegal actions in the House of Parliament on Friday, 19 May 2000? It is a relationship of convenience.

Speight has about as much respect for the 1997 constitution he once praised, as he does for the indigenous marama in Sulu and Jaba helping herself to bales of cloth through the shattered window of a store.

The march was organised by church and Taukei Movement leaders, and though the looting may not have been planned, they certainly enabled it.

Looting has become an ominous feature of recent indigenous Fijian responses to crisis: during the floods of 1998, at the tragic crash site of Flight PC 121 in 1999, and now in the streets of Suva - ‘the millennium city’.

The chiefs and church ministers stir their people but they do not control them: a group of alert and ambitious businessmen has used this feature of Fijian leadership to its advantage.

The impoverishment and disaffection of indigenous Fijians is not a result of 12 months of leadership by an Indo-Fijian. It is the result of 30 years of modern indigenous Fijian leadership that has sacrificed the economic and cultural well-being of a people for the advancement of a few. - Third World Network Features

·

About the writer: Teresia Teaiwa is a lecturer in Pacific Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

The above article first appeared in African Agenda (Vol. 3 No. 3, 2000).

A Photo Essay of Fiji squatters was published by Time Magazine.

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs

Fiji Paddles Own Canoe In Light Of Pacific Forum Censorship

Fiji's 'delay' in holding a general election by that date reportedly arouses strong feelings in the Pacific region, not least in the two developed metropolitan powers, Australia and New Zealand.

read more | digg story

Fiji govt critic Peters ‘to stand aside’

One of the Fiji interim Government’s most fierce critics, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, is to stand aside from the job.Prime Minister Helen Clark announced today that Peters would stand aside until the Serious Fraud Office completes investigations of donations to his NZ First political party.

read more | digg story

Aust, NZ face chequebook diplomacy claim

Australia and New Zealand aid to the Pacific Forum countries may have influenced the threat to suspend Fiji, says Fiji’s acting High Commissioner to Australia Kamlesh Arya.

read more | digg story

A Play Called Visitors.

"In the Loop", a radio program produced by Radio Australia highlights the play titled 'Visitors' by Larry Thomas, which covers the dimension of ethnicity, enveloped in the dramatic and emotional setting of a home invasion robbery. Listen here (MP3).

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs

New Zealand Business Council Critical Of PM's Fiji Comment

The Government must temper criticism of Fiji for not honoring election pledges or risk damaging trade worth $450 million a year, says the New Zealand Pacific Business Council.

read more | digg story

Are we treating Fiji fairly?

Taking their lead, somewhat reluctantly, from Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific Forum nations have placed Fiji’s interim government on notice that if it doesn’t hold a general election by March 2009 it faces suspension from the Forum.

read more | digg story

Fiji to exclude NZ from talks

The attorney-general in Fiji’s military-led government says it will hold its own forum to discuss elections but New Zealand will not be invited. Radio New Zealand International today reported that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had invited… [NZ Herald Politics]

read more | digg story

Moving Fiji Forward-A Video.

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs

Fiji's Beta Democracy- A Moral Imperative: Video Expose

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs

Kevin Rudd embarrassed by 'Vietnam' insult to NZ P.M

As if wearing a brightly coloured tropical shirt and yellow beads at an international summit wasn’t embarrassing enough, the Australian Prime Minister found himself at the centre of an offending gaffe about his New Zealand counterpart this week.

read more | digg story

Aussie Blackhawk Helicopters Invaded Fiji's Airspace.

Blackhawk helicopters violated Fiji’s Airspace and Flight rules in defiance of CAAFI Air Navigation laws in 2006.This was during the time Australia had warships on standby near Fiji in case there was a need for an emergency evacuation in the event of a coup.

read more | digg story

Hells and Frankie up a tree.

A loyal reader contribution.

read more | digg story

BALEDROKADROKA - Fidji and the Fidjians

Pillar Two of the draft People’s Charter on August 5, 2008 called for- Developing a common national identity and building social cohesion. This draft recommendation called for substituting - Fiji Islander, the national name for all citizens as enshrined in the 1997 Constitutionto – Fijian.

read more | digg story

Fiji pulls out of Pacific Islands Forum

Fiji has pulled out of this week's Pacific Islands Forum in Niue and is blaming the New Zealand government and Helen Clark for its decision not to turn up.

read more | digg story

Religion and Politics- A Dangerous Cocktail In Fiji?

Fiji Sun Editorial comments on the warnings by the Fiji Police to the organizers of the Methodist Church conference.

The excerpt of the FS opinion:

Double standards at party meetings

The Fiji Labour Party meets this weekend. And the National Federation Party has its annual conference in Nadi on Saturday. It would be naive in the extreme to imagine that the subject of the draft People's Charter - the hottest topic of the hour - will not come up for discussion at either event.

The FLP will support it while the NFP is more likely to take an opposing view. The question now is what line will the Fiji Police Force take?

We know it will take a very firm line at the Methodist Church annual conference which opens in Suva today. The police do not want the charter to be discussed, it seems. They have advised the church that if the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua Party wishes to take part it will be considered a political meeting for which the church does not have a permit.

Further, the church has been told that if the SDL wishes to use the occasion to campaign against the charter, the police will close the meeting. Police will increase their presence and closely monitor the conference. What are they afraid of?

The church conference is highly unlikely to be an occasion for any breach of the peace. If there is political activity, it won't take the form of riotous assembly or any other kind of illegal behaviour. The same can be said of the FLP and NFP gatherings. Once again we see how the police are politicised.

The once proudly independent force has become a tool for the suppression of dissent and the promotion of a political ideology. This is deeply worrying. It is no secret that this newspaper has had serious differences with the SDL and its policies in the past. We called some those policies racist then and we call them racist now. But that is our opinion which - so far at least - we are free to express.

Why should not the SDL be accorded the same right - the same right as any other political party - to put its policies and opinions before the people? What is the regime afraid of? Much of the SDL's support resides in the rank and file of the Methodist Church just as much of the FLP's natural constituency is among the cane farmers and parts of the trade union movement.

There is nothing new, abnormal or even objectionable about that. What is abnormal and completely objectionable is the use of the police to prevent one party from addressing its constituency while giving another free rein. The people who drive this kind of activity surely cannot believe that it will not be noticed by the people of Fiji or that it will somehow make dissent go away.

The fact is it will have the opposite effect. They will never admit it, but the SDL organisers will regard this ham-fisted use of the police as manna from heaven. For if the regime really wants to promote a party or even a point of view, the most effective way is to ban it. In the meantime the Fiji Police Force must assert its independence It has to enforce the law - that is to say the constitution - and not the interim (or any) government.

The Fiji Sun (FS) Editor highlights the alleged double standards of the Fiji Police, regarding the issue of political meetings.

The FS Editor claims that, since Fiji Labour Party and the National Federation Party also are holding their respective meetings; the SDL should also be free to hold theirs. That premise is correct up to a point.

What is abnormal and highly objectionable is that, SDL party is not holding their political meeting in isolation, it is being held in unison with the Methodist conference.

Sadly, the FS Editor attempts to to justify the SDL's position of hijacking the Fiji Methodist Church annual festival, despite the response of Fiji Methodist church leaders, who are distancing themselves from remarks made by certain SDL party officials, as reported in a Fiji Times article.

Church unaware of counter campaign

Thursday, August 14, 2008

THE Methodist Church says it's not aware of an awareness program to counter the People's Charter.

Church secretary general Reverend Ame Tugaue says he doesn't know who made comments about the church working with the Soqosoqo Duavata Ni Lewenivanua party during the course of the church's annual conference.

"Who is the person making these comments," he asked. "I've spoken with the Police Commissioner on this issue." Mr Tugaue denied the church think-tank was meeting members of the SDL party.

Police spokeswoman Ema Mua could not be reached for comment.

Party president Solomone Naivalu said earlier the awareness program would continue. Mr Naivalu said the campaign would coincide with the interim Government's public relations program. "We have decided in the next six weeks to counter issues affecting members of the SDL party - the Fijian people," he said.

"The strategy we have decided on is to work with Christian churches, especially the Methodist Church. Two of us (SDL executives) are part of the Methodist Church think-tank and the SDL's stand on the charter is almost the same as the church." Mr Naivalu said their view would be also distributed at the Hibiscus Festival.

Acting interim Prime Minister Ratu Epeli Ganilau said it was a pity the SDL party had opted out of the NCBBF process.

Apparently, the SDL party President, Solomoni Naivalu was quoted in the Fiji Village article, stating that religion and politics go together.

Politics and Religion Go Together-SDL
Publish date/time: 13/08/2008 [14:04]

The SDL party has today stressed that politics and religion go together as they get ready to use the Methodist Church conference to go against the draft People's Charter.

SDL President, Solomoni Naivalu confirms that they will ensure that all the Methodists coming to the conference in Suva from tomorrow know why the draft should be opposed. When questioned on whether this would see the mixing of religion and politics, Naivalu said their stand is clear on this issue.

Naivalu is now hoping that the Methodist Church standing committee will give them the green light to distribute information on why the draft Charter needs to be opposed.

Meanwhile Director of Information and Military spokesperson, Major Neumi Leweni said if the issues to be discussed at the church conference turn political, then it will be a political assembly and police need to look into the matter.

Raw Fiji News blog posting, blasts the folly of the SDL President. The excerpt of the RFN post:

SDL President a no brainer
August 13, 2008

SDL President, Solomoni Naivalu, is already proving to be another bad choice by the ousted political party. And the party’s management committee members who decided to use the Methodist Church conference to promote their anti-Charter drive are a tactless bunch of people too. No wonder they were easily toppled from power. Key players in the party just don’t have what it takes to know when and how to attack, when not to piggy back and when to be still and be quiet.

SDL party seem to lack badly in the strategic and PR side of things and it shows. The same old thinkers who think people in this day and age can be bought by their provincial, chiefly and hollyghost bullcrap are still there. People are tired and weary of all these color-barring status seekers and wouldn’t give a damn what color blood runs in anyone’s veins. Whether it’s royal blue, red, black, yellow or even pollkadot orange and purple, they wouldn’t care less. All they want is food on the table, education for their children, water from their taps and the very basics of life. SDL have a lot of strategic political learning to do from Mahendra Chaudhry, but not his lies though.

The SDL party is repeating simple mistakes that got them and the nation into soo much trouble during their reign. They are placing incapable, no brainer individuals in key positions who always end up costing them their arm, leg, leadership term and possibly an election win if they are not careful. Naivalu is one of them. He is an opportunist and didn’t hesitate to jump ship to SDL when SVT started sinking. Making an announcement on SDL’s desire to piggy back on the Methodist Church conference is not worthy an announcement at all. Not only is the scum bag letting the cat out of the bag but who really wants to know! Just get on with it and test how effective it’ll be!

The guy has no understanding of good governance and its disappointing to see that the ousted SDL Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase didn’t raise this during their discussion. How could they put the Methodist Church into jeopardy by making such a pronouncement. And how could they even suggest it when two of their members are part of the Methodist Church think tank? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? The Methodist Church must not allow Naivalu and his uncreative SDL management committee to use them. They have a totally different agenda from that of the church. SDL is in the business of winning elections, the church is in the business of winning souls. And as for Naivalu, RFN predict he will take SDL to ruin. The guy has no credibility. No one respects him. He is a put-off.

It is selective for the Fiji Sun Editor to obfuscate the difference between a religious and a political organization and the permits issued by the Fiji police are by extension given to one entity, not both.
While the SDL party had hoped to capitalize on this opportunity, to spread their political ideology within the Methodist church conference, it came with the price of having the conference permits being canceled outright by the Police.

Unfortunately, the difference between the two organizations have been blurred by some SDL party sympathizers, who are also lay preachers, and as such these blurring of roles also come with the baggage of blurring of ideals and blurring of finances. Where does this blurring begin and where does it end?

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs