"Shah says during these tough times when everyone is losing out on income, it will be difficult for bus companies to send two buses for a single trip and passengers need to wait for other buses if they see that a bus is getting full."
STATEMENT FROM THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH ON COVID-19
As announced by the Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services today, we have 1 new case of COVID-19. This is a 40 year old female from Wainitarawau Settlement Cunningham in Suva who attended the funeral in Tavakubu Lautoka on Friday, April 16 and had contact with the 53 year old hotel quarantine worker case announced earlier. Along with 6 other members of her family she has been admitted to the isolation ward at Navua Hospital. These 6 family members have so far tested negative. With this latest case, there are now 11 active cases admitted into hospital isolation units, five are older border quarantine cases announced previously. The remaining six are the cases reported since Sunday, April 18, which includes 3 border quarantine cases and 3 locally transmitted cases. Total active cases in hospital isolation units = 11 (8 border quarantine cases and 3 locally transmitted cases) There are also over 300 primary and secondary contacts of recent cases quarantined in border quarantine facilities in Nadi. Fiji has had 78 cases in total, with 65 recoveries and 2 deaths, since our first case was reported on March 19, 2020. 57 of these cases have been international travel associated cases detected in border quarantine. And 3 recently announced cases – the quarantine hotel worker, her daughter, and now this 40 year old contact in Suva, are our first cases of local transmission in over 1 year. A total of 43,487 COVID-19 laboratory tests have been conducted, with a daily average of 252 tests per day over the last 7 days, and a weekly average of 1892 tests per week over the last 2 weeks. There are currently 1043 people who have recently arrived from overseas undergoing mandatory 14 day quarantine in government supervised border quarantine facilities in Nadi.
Fijileaks: As parts of Fiji in LOCKDOWN, Where is AIYAZ KHAIYUM? There are widespread rumours circulating in Fiji and abroad that Khaiyum has been transferred to a hospital in India after developing complications following two major surgeries in Singapore. TRUTH? TOTAL NONSENSE FROM NFP: Neither Lord Rama nor Allah will keep HINDUS and MUSLIMS in Fiji safe from CORONAVIRUS. Totally crammed and confined indoor spaces are breeding ground for COVID. If these leaders insist on opening up religious institutions, they should be sent packing to MECCA and MUMBAI on first available flight. We have not seen the Opposition nor Government MPs observing Covid rules
LOCKDOWN FIJI: "Our positive patient is a 53-year-old woman working as a maid in the quarantine facility. The woman is a daytime worker and she resides in Nadi. It has been revealed that she had symptoms on Thursday, and authorities were not notified. That means she was contagious when she was at work on Thursday and later on Friday and Saturday when she traveled through the Lautoka and Nadi areas. Perhaps most worryingly, she attended a funeral in Tavakubu Lautoka on Friday and Saturday, traveling alongside other passengers by minivan...." Frank Bainimarama announcing localised lockdown. We wonder how many other Fijians have failed to notify authorities of Covid-like symptons? "The success Fiji has enjoyed - 365 days of COVID-containment, has made all of us far too comfortable with the pandemic that continued to rage beyond our shores. Social distancing has been ignored, masks have gathered dust tucked away in drawers, and businesses went back to operating as usual. The healthy habits that we learned 12 months ago were all but forgotten." Bainimarama reminding Fiji yesterday; he forgot to mention that a FFP donor businessman threw a $50,000 birthday bash for his wife's 50th birthday at GPH with no social distancing etc, etc, etc BOASTING RATHER THAN BOLSTERING COVID DEFENCES: We never saw him wearing a mask, nor social distancing. He was behaving as if FIJI was God's island while three million have died worldwide from Covid BAINIMARAMA'S PRESS CONFERENCE: Bula vinaka and good afternoon. As we announced in the early hours of the morning, Fiji is once again faced with a grave and present danger to the lives of our people. We have confirmed our first local case of COVID-19 in more than one year, and we must act quickly to stop it from spreading. This virus is not a new enemy, we have faced it before, we have defeated it before. We have the knowledge and the expertise to defeat it again. Like before, our success depends on the discipline of every Fijian and our adherence to the measures that we know can keep us safe. We have already fully mobilized our containment strategy, using the same tactics that led to the successful eradication of community cases in just one month, around this same time last year. As announced over the weekend, we detected a case of COVID-19 in a soldier who was working in a border quarantine facility. While he was carrying the virus, he had interaction with daytime staff of the facility. In a matter of hours, we identified his 69 first generation contacts –– meaning anyone with any chance of being a close contact –– and entered them into quarantine. All of them have been tested. 68 have tested negative. One has tested positive. Our positive patient is a 53-year-old woman working as a maid in the quarantine facility. Our investigation has revealed she had an interaction with the soldier when he showed up early to his room as it was being cleaned. Protocol dictates that overlap should not have happened, that is why the woman was not tested before re-entering the public. We’ll have to wait and see what further investigations reveal. What is clear today is that this breach in protocol cannot be repeated. In the meantime, we are confident that our system of border quarantine can function to the high degree it has over the past year. The woman is a daytime worker and she resides in Nadi. It has been revealed that she had symptoms on Thursday, and authorities were not notified. That means she was contagious when she was at work on Thursday and later on Friday and Saturday when she traveled through the Lautoka and Nadi areas. Perhaps most worryingly, she attended a funeral in Tavakubu Lautoka on Friday and Saturday, traveling alongside other passengers by minivan. Her movement using public transport, and her attendance –– in close proximity alongside many other Fijians –– at the two-day funeral, makes further transmission in the community highly likely. To limit the risk of mass community transmission, and to better screen the local population, we have established a Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area and brought new stringent health protection measures into effect. The Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area has been established from Qeleloa bearing towards Sigatoka, to Nacilau, Vakabuli, and the Waiwai Crossing bearing towards Ba. Ministry of Health and Medical Services personnel and disciplined forces have rapidly established screening points at these entry points. A 24-hour curfew for the entire containment area was announced this morning to allow our contact tracing teams to trace, identify, and quarantine those who may have had contact with this community case, and lay the groundwork to flush out any other cases of the virus from our communities. From this afternoon, we will be allowing for limited movement and COVID-safe activity within the Containment Area. These measures are stringent enough to minimise risk, but smart enough to allow people to have some sense of normalcy in their lives. The curfew hours will revert to 2300 hours to 0400 hours. Supermarkets and shops selling food can open so that people can buy food. Banks can open so that people can get money. Pharmacies can open so that people can get medicine. FNPF can open so that people can access funds. Other businesses, such as factories and shops, can open as well. However, it is vital that vendors and businesses ensure strict physical distancing before opening their doors. Make sure customers in queues are spaced out by two metres and manage crowding. Customer-facing businesses should limit customer capacity to 50%. Businesses that do not manage these risks with COVID-safe plans will be shut down. Within the Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area, higher-risk businesses, such as gyms, movie theatres, video gaming shops, cyber cafes, taverns, bars, billiard shops and amusement arcades cannot open for at least the next 14 days. Restaurants may not open for in-person dining, but may offer delivery and take-away services. We are also making arrangements to ensure fresh produce, basic food items, manufactured items, and other items can be sent in and out of the containment area. We have managed this sort of cross-border exchange before, and the Police have been instructed to be quick about these approvals so that these goods can flow as freely as possible. As we learned one year ago, these measures work, and staying at home saves lives. It’s the best and easiest way to protect yourself and your family from getting this deadly virus, and it’s the best way to help Fiji become COVID-contained once again. We expect these measures to be maintained for at least the next 14 days. Stay disciplined, and we will get through this. We know what is required of us, we have done this before. Most importantly, we know that it works. The new measures don’t end at the borders of the containment area. Nationwide, schools, including private schools, will be closed from tomorrow through at least the end of the term. School boarders will return to where they reside. If they are in the containment area and need to return home outside of the area, they will be allowed to leave in a highly controlled manner. For the rest of Fiji, the following restrictions will take effect for at least the next 14 days to allow people to go about their lives as safely as possible: • No religious services are to be held. Non-work gatherings should not happen at all. • Businesses can remain open with COVID safe plans. All businesses must require customers display the careFIJI app or they must register their details for contact tracing purposes. • Civil servants living outside of the containment area who work within the area should report to the nearest office outside of the Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area. Unfortunately, that does mean major events on the calendar over the next 14 days, including the Cocacola games, university graduations and rugby matches, will have to be cancelled. For those outside of Nadi and Lautoka, you have 24 hours to enter the containment area if you need to. But you will not be allowed to leave for at least the next 14 days. Those living outside of the containment area who are unable to attend work in the containment area will be allowed to access 220 dollars a fortnight from their FNPF. If funds are insufficient, government will top up their accounts. We will also approve individuals to travel through the containment area for flights out of Nadi. Aside from some cancellations today, repatriation flights will continue at Nadi International Airport. Though we will be capping visitor arrivals to ensure we have adequate quarantine space available to support our robust contact tracing effort. To ensure we have adequate space in quarantine facilities, those currently in their quarantine periods will be securely ferried out of the containment area to where they reside once they finish their 14 days of quarantine and clear a negative COVID test result. This situation is rapidly evolving, and –– like we always have –– your government will keep you updated every step of the way. My fellow Fijians, I know that this is a scary and difficult time for you, for your families, and for the country. It feels much like that chilling moment, just over one year ago, when we learned the first case of COVID-19 had entered the country. Back then, what was most frightening about having this pandemic here at home wasn’t what we knew about it –– it was what we didn’t know. Today, we face that same enemy, but we are armed with experience. Our contact tracing team is tried and tested, our isolation units have proven successful at containing the virus, and our frontline workers know their task, and know it well. But today, we also may be facing a new, more contagious, and deadlier variant of COVID. We’re seeing variants pop up around the globe, from the UK to the US to Brazil, India, and South Africa –– variants are resulting in new surges, even in places that are highly vaccinated. We must, at all costs, be vigilant. We cannot let the past year of freedom from the virus lure us into a false sense of safety. Because the truth is, the success Fiji has enjoyed - 365 days of COVID-containment, has made all of us far too comfortable with the pandemic that continued to rage beyond our shores. Social distancing has been ignored, masks have gathered dust tucked away in drawers, and businesses went back to operating as usual. The healthy habits that we learned 12 months ago were all but forgotten. But over the course of the past year, the science has become even more clear that mask-wearing and physical distancing is absolutely essential to stop the virus from spreading. So now, more than ever, we need every woman, man, and child, and every business of every size, to go back to following that proven rule book. That’s why we are enforcing the same, strict containment measures that have proven successful in the past, and it’s why our contact tracing team is working overtime to identify and isolate every known contact of this latest case. But we can’t win this battle without you. You all play a pivotal part in our containment efforts. We need every Fijian to do their part to contain this virus, and each and every one of you can help us again defeat this disease. I hope we all remember the screening clinics we relied on last year to screen for cases of the virus. We are re-activating that network of screening clinics across the country to keep those with COVID-like symptoms away from vulnerable people who visit Health Centres and into separate, dedicated spaces specially designed to effectively identify possible COVID-19 cases. If you have a fever, or any symptoms, like a dry cough or a loss of taste, visit one of these clinics immediately. I advise Fijians in the containment area to wear masks –– it’s the one thing that may be most important in stopping the spread. Masks are absolutely proven to protect yourself and others from contracting COVID, so we need each of you to urgently pick up this habit. I know that, for the past year, we’ve had the luxury of not needing to put on masks every day, like billions of others have around the world. But today, that needs to change. And I can’t stress this enough: Everyone needs to download the careFIJI app on their phones if you can. Situations like this one are exactly why we created careFIJI, and its use now is more critical than ever before. As always, these measures will change with our situation. If we identify new cases, new restrictions will come into effect. The containment area may grow, or constrict to more targeted regions. We will announce those changes through our official government sources, namely the Fijian Government Facebook page. If you do not read it there first, it is not government policy. Full-stop. I wanted to end today on a bit of good news –– I know we all need it. As of today, 24,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be arriving through the COVAX facility. It’s another reminder that even though we are apart from the rest of the world, we have never been alone through this crisis. The entire world is up against this challenge, and we can only overcome it together. The PS for Health and Medical Services will be announcing the details of our vaccine deployment soon. In the meantime, stay alert for symptoms within yourself or your family –– early detection is absolutely essential to stop the spread. Call number 158 if you’re feeling at all unwell. Vinaka Vakalevu. Thank you, and God bless Fiji. The Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong says right now their biggest area of interest is Tavakubu, Lautoka where the 53 year old woman who tested positive for COVID-19 attended a funeral on Friday and Saturday.
Dr Fong says the information they are getting from the woman indicates that apart from three individuals who had travelled to Moturiki, Lomaiviti all other people at the funeral were from a church circuit within Lautoka. He further says they have traced the 3 people who went to Moturiki. Dr Fong adds their team in the West has shown a boundary that they maintained and they will be going through that group as part of the screening process. He says they will have to set up a number of mobile and fixed screening clinics throughout Nadi and Lautoka. Meanwhile Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama says only 1 of the 69 first generation contacts of the soldier that tested positive for COVID-19, has tested positive for the disease. Bainimarama says 68 have tested negative. He says the positive patient is the 53-year-old woman working as a maid in the quarantine facility. Bainimarama says their investigation has revealed she had an interaction with the soldier when he showed up early to his room as it was being cleaned. He says protocol dictates that overlap should not have happened, that is why the woman was not tested before re-entering the public. The Prime Minister says they will have to wait and see what further investigations reveal. He says what is clear today is that this breach in protocol cannot be repeated. In the meantime, they are confident that their system of border quarantine can function to the high degree it has over the past year. The woman is a daytime worker and she resides in Nadi. It has been revealed that she had symptoms on Thursday, and authorities were not notified. The Prime Minister says that means she was contagious when she was at work on Thursday and later on Friday and Saturday when she travelled through the Lautoka and Nadi areas. Bainimarama says perhaps most worryingly, she attended a funeral in Tavakubu Lautoka on Friday and Saturday, travelling alongside other passengers by mini bus. The Prime Minister says the woman’s movement using public transport, and her attendance in close proximity alongside many other Fijians at the two-day funeral, makes further transmission in the community highly likely. To limit the risk of mass community transmission, and to better screen the local population, Bainimarama said they had established a Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area and brought new stringent health protection measures into effect. The Nadi and Lautoka Containment Area has been established from Qeleloa bearing towards Sigatoka, to Nacilau, Vakabuli, and the Waiwai Crossing bearing towards Ba. Ministry of Health and Medical Services personnel and disciplined forces have rapidly established screening points at these entry points.Source: Fijivillage News
Fijileaks: We understand Chaudhry meant 21 October 2012, and has rectified the mistake he had made in the above letter to Chief Registrar From Fijileaks Archive, 2012
WARNING from Fijileaks: If we are to believe RAJENDRA CHAUDHRY, commenting on another story from our Founding Editor-in-Chief: |
Fijileaks, SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Two of Mahendra Chaudhry's top political lieutenants - the late lawyer and former Attorney-General ANAND SINGH [RIP] and former FLP Cabinet Minister DR GANESH CHAND - were key players who assisted our current Founding Editor-in-Chief in 2007-08 to nail Chaudhry senior. Chand used his economic skills to analyse Chaudhry's entire tax records dating back to 1992. These two later betrayed us - one went onto defend Chaudhry in Fiji High Court on the tax charges and the other is sneering at our Editor-in-Chief from the shadows. | Et tu, Brute, Then Fall Chaudhry |
FLP: Serious allegations against Goundar Shipping
LABOUR Leader Mahendra Chaudhry says the statement by transport minister Faiyaz Koya that allegations levelled at Goundar Shipping were being investigated, lacks credence.
For months now the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has been waiting for the Fiji authorities to investigate serious allegations against Gounder Shipping for human trafficking and worker exploitation as well as falsifying registration documents and endangering the safety of passengers and seamen.
It has called for a thorough investigation of Goundar Shipping operations in Fiji, a call that is supported by the Fiji Labour Party.
Since late last year, the Party has been raising questions regarding the safety of passengers on board Gounder Shipping vessels that also carry dangerous cargo ie truck tankers carrying fuel.
Minister Koya told the Fiji Times today (9 April) that the allegations had been taken seriously and were being investigated.
However, Mr Chaudhry said the ITF allegations have been before government for months now. How come the investigations are still on-going?
“The issue here is the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF) under whose watch these questionable practices are reported to have taken place, some of them bordering on criminal intent. It is a very serious issue to falsify registration documents which have listed one of the company’s vessels as being 14m shorter and with a 2,431 lower gross tonnage,” Mr Chaudhry said.
According to the ITF, this was obviously done to avoid more regular “dry dock” maintenance required of its size as well as having more skilled crew on board – thus endangering the safety of both passengers and crew. .
Mr Chaudhry has been engaged in an on-going battle with the MSAF regarding the propriety of allowing fuel laden truck tankers on board passenger vessels, putting the passengers at grave risk in case of fire.
He maintains the vessel in question, Lomaiviti Princess V, is not specially designed to carry dangerous cargo. Nor is it fitted with sophisticated fire fighting equipment to deal adequately with such an emergency.
“These ships, used to ferrying passengers, are not specifically built to carry ‘dangerous cargo’ such as truck fuel tankers and I have not been satisfied by assurances from the Maritime Safety Authority (MSAF) that the ships were compliant with international safety requirements in such cases.
“I wrote to the MSAF late last year questioning the propriety of allowing Goundar Shipping to carry fuel laden truck tankers on board passenger ships, putting the safety of passengers at risk,” said Mr Chaudhry.
MSAF had replied saying that the ship, the Lomaiviti Princess V, was “surveyed to meet the requirements of IMDG code (International Maritime Dangerous Goods) which includes fire fighting hydrants with hose, ventilation system and sprinkler system”.
“I wrote back to say that the fire fighting equipment referred to were “grossly inadequate to contain any inferno in the event of a combustion associated with the truck fuel tankers carried on board the vessel”.
“Now I am horrified to learn from allegations made by the ITF that many of the vessels in the company’s fleet did not even have “functioning fire and protective equipment on board, severely endangering crew and passengers,” said Mr Chaudhry.
The ITF allegations followed earlier investigations of human trafficking and worker exploitation against Goundar Shipping lodged by Filipino seafarers.
ITF’s investigating officer Sarah Maguire said further investigations showed that “concern may not be limited to widespread exploitation of seafarers, but may also include potentially falsifying official safety documentation and endangering the lives of thousands of passengers who use its services every week”.
She said if the information provided to ITF was correct then “the lives of passengers and workers aboard these ferries were in serious danger”.
She called on the MSAF to immediately suspend the company’s shipping licence to operate until a proper safety assessment was made.
“The ITF’s revelations have also raised serious questions about the integrity of the MSAF in so far as they relate to the allegations of falsified registration and safety documentation and passenger and maritime worker safety standards at Goundar Shipping Ltd,” said Mr Chaudhry.
“The allegations seem to suggest failures on the part of MSAF for which it must also be investigated.
“It is in the public interest that an independent investigation is forthwith carried out into the matters raised in the ITF allegations. Meanwhile, the Minister responsible must take immediate action to safeguard the safety of the passengers travelling on Goundar Shipping vessels,” Mr. Chaudhry said.
For months now the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has been waiting for the Fiji authorities to investigate serious allegations against Gounder Shipping for human trafficking and worker exploitation as well as falsifying registration documents and endangering the safety of passengers and seamen.
It has called for a thorough investigation of Goundar Shipping operations in Fiji, a call that is supported by the Fiji Labour Party.
Since late last year, the Party has been raising questions regarding the safety of passengers on board Gounder Shipping vessels that also carry dangerous cargo ie truck tankers carrying fuel.
Minister Koya told the Fiji Times today (9 April) that the allegations had been taken seriously and were being investigated.
However, Mr Chaudhry said the ITF allegations have been before government for months now. How come the investigations are still on-going?
“The issue here is the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF) under whose watch these questionable practices are reported to have taken place, some of them bordering on criminal intent. It is a very serious issue to falsify registration documents which have listed one of the company’s vessels as being 14m shorter and with a 2,431 lower gross tonnage,” Mr Chaudhry said.
According to the ITF, this was obviously done to avoid more regular “dry dock” maintenance required of its size as well as having more skilled crew on board – thus endangering the safety of both passengers and crew. .
Mr Chaudhry has been engaged in an on-going battle with the MSAF regarding the propriety of allowing fuel laden truck tankers on board passenger vessels, putting the passengers at grave risk in case of fire.
He maintains the vessel in question, Lomaiviti Princess V, is not specially designed to carry dangerous cargo. Nor is it fitted with sophisticated fire fighting equipment to deal adequately with such an emergency.
“These ships, used to ferrying passengers, are not specifically built to carry ‘dangerous cargo’ such as truck fuel tankers and I have not been satisfied by assurances from the Maritime Safety Authority (MSAF) that the ships were compliant with international safety requirements in such cases.
“I wrote to the MSAF late last year questioning the propriety of allowing Goundar Shipping to carry fuel laden truck tankers on board passenger ships, putting the safety of passengers at risk,” said Mr Chaudhry.
MSAF had replied saying that the ship, the Lomaiviti Princess V, was “surveyed to meet the requirements of IMDG code (International Maritime Dangerous Goods) which includes fire fighting hydrants with hose, ventilation system and sprinkler system”.
“I wrote back to say that the fire fighting equipment referred to were “grossly inadequate to contain any inferno in the event of a combustion associated with the truck fuel tankers carried on board the vessel”.
“Now I am horrified to learn from allegations made by the ITF that many of the vessels in the company’s fleet did not even have “functioning fire and protective equipment on board, severely endangering crew and passengers,” said Mr Chaudhry.
The ITF allegations followed earlier investigations of human trafficking and worker exploitation against Goundar Shipping lodged by Filipino seafarers.
ITF’s investigating officer Sarah Maguire said further investigations showed that “concern may not be limited to widespread exploitation of seafarers, but may also include potentially falsifying official safety documentation and endangering the lives of thousands of passengers who use its services every week”.
She said if the information provided to ITF was correct then “the lives of passengers and workers aboard these ferries were in serious danger”.
She called on the MSAF to immediately suspend the company’s shipping licence to operate until a proper safety assessment was made.
“The ITF’s revelations have also raised serious questions about the integrity of the MSAF in so far as they relate to the allegations of falsified registration and safety documentation and passenger and maritime worker safety standards at Goundar Shipping Ltd,” said Mr Chaudhry.
“The allegations seem to suggest failures on the part of MSAF for which it must also be investigated.
“It is in the public interest that an independent investigation is forthwith carried out into the matters raised in the ITF allegations. Meanwhile, the Minister responsible must take immediate action to safeguard the safety of the passengers travelling on Goundar Shipping vessels,” Mr. Chaudhry said.
- Fiji High Court Judge Anjala Wati, 1 April 2021
- "From the evidence, I too do not find Mr. Rakesh Prasad’s evidence reliable. He informed the ERT that it was only around 6pm when Captain Robert Sosene called that he realized that Mr. Ieli was missing from the vessel. On the contrary, Ms. Maureen Prasad says that she had handed the sick sheet to Mr. Rakesh Prasad and that she has no idea what he did with it. Captain Inoke also testified that he informed the office to look for a reliever.
- The two witnesses’ evidence is clear that Mr. Rakesh knew that Mr. Ieli will not be at work and that he had to find a reliever for Mr. Ieli. It appears that Mr. Prasad did not take any immediate steps to find a reliever and when it was too late, he decided to put the blame on the worker. To save himself because of his shortfall, Rakesh conducted himself in a manner that is unacceptable and unfair.
- Mr. Rakesh started hassling and threatening the worker which is not permissible. A sick worker is entitled to rest and not to be hassled and made to worry about his work. He need not worry about dealing with text messages threatening him of his employment future with that employer. This is grossly unjustified.
- What also makes Mr. Rakesh Prasad’s evidence suspicious is when he told the ERT that when he called Mr. Ieli he was told by Mr. Ilei that he is in a family function and that he will not report to work as he had tendered a sick sheet. Even if Mr. Ieli was in a family function, he would not dare say that as his livelihood was important and he needed to have work for himself. Having given the sick sheet, Mr. Ieli would have simply indicated that he was sick. Why would he say that he was in a family function? I find that the issue of attending a family function is concocted by Mr. Rakesh Prasad."
Goundar Shipping Services v Ieli [2021] FJHC 214; ERCA 06 of 2017 (1 April 2021)IN THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS COURT
AT SUVA
APPELLATE JURISDICTION
CASE NUMBER: ERCA 06 of 2017
BETWEEN: GOUNDAR SHIPPING SERVICES
APPELLANT
AND: PILI IELI
RESPONDENT
Appearances: Ms. Kinivuai for the Appellant.
Ms. L. Mataigusu for the Respondent.
Date/Place of Judgment: Thursday 1 April 2021 at Suva.
Coram: Hon. Madam Justice Anjala Wati.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
JUDGMENT
___________________________
Cause
Hon. Madam Justice Anjala Wati
Judge
01. 04. 2021
AT SUVA
APPELLATE JURISDICTION
CASE NUMBER: ERCA 06 of 2017
BETWEEN: GOUNDAR SHIPPING SERVICES
APPELLANT
AND: PILI IELI
RESPONDENT
Appearances: Ms. Kinivuai for the Appellant.
Ms. L. Mataigusu for the Respondent.
Date/Place of Judgment: Thursday 1 April 2021 at Suva.
Coram: Hon. Madam Justice Anjala Wati.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
JUDGMENT
- Catchwords:
___________________________
Cause
- The employer appeals against the decision of the Employment Relations Tribunal (“ERT”) of 22 February 2017 on its findings that the employee Pili Ieli was unlawfully and unfairly dismissed for which the employer was ordered to pay a sum of 3 months wages for unlawful dismissal and 3 months wages for unfair dismissal to compensate hum for the humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to the feelings of the employee.
- The employer is in the shipping industry providing transportation to the public from the outer islands. The employee was engaged by the employer as a second officer on board the vessel, Lomaiviti Princess 2.
- Both parties have a conflicting position on the issue of whether the employee was terminated from work. The employee says that he was terminated from work on 13 December 2013 and the employer says that it was the employee who did not report to work after an incident on 13 December 2013.
- There is even conflict on the turn of events culminating to the employee leaving work. In order to correctly identify each party’s version of the event, I will refer to the material evidence of all the witnesses in the ERT.
- The first witness for the employer was Captain Inoke. He had been working for Goundar Shipping Services since 2011. He said that he remembers having a conversation with Mr. Ieli on the morning of 13 December 2013. Mr. Ieli had requested him if he could get time off to attend a family function. He wanted to sign off and not go to Koro Island. He told Mr. Ieli that a replacement needed to be found for him before he can get the time off.
- Captain Inoke said that Mr. Ieli was part of the manning crew. Since it was a Friday and it was late in the afternoon, a replacement could not be found. According to the Captain, he told the management that a reliever needed to be found for him.
- In cross- examination he stated that he cannot confirm whether the ship was properly manned when it sailed to Koro Island because he had signed off.
- The next witness for the employer was Mr. Rakesh Parasad. He is the Manager Finance of the employer. He said that on 13 December 2013, the vessel was to return to Koro Island and Mr. Ieli had to be part of the manning crew.
- According to Mr. Prasad, at about 6pm, the Master of the vessel Mr. Robert Sosene asked him on the whereabouts of the 2nd Officer. It was only then when he realized that Mr. Ieli had left the ship following which he attempted to contact Mr. Ieli. He called on Mr. Ieli’s mobile which was switched off. He then referred to his file to get an alternative contact. He found his wife’s number. The wife answered the phone and he managed to talk to Mr. Ieli.
- Mr. Prasad says that he asked Mr. Ieli why he was not on board and he replied that he was in a family function. Mr. Prasad said that he told Mr. Ieli that the vessel needed to sail and he needed to report to duty. Mr. Ieli replied that he could not as he had provided a sick sheet to the office. Mr. Prasad said that he told Mr. Ieli that the sick sheet could not be relied upon as he was in a family function and that he needed to report to duty.
- Mr. Ieli again responded that he would not come as he was on sick sheet. Mr. Prasad said that he then sent a text message to Mr. Ieli to the effect that if he failed to report to duty within 30 minutes then his employment may be terminated. Despite that message, Mr. Ieli did not report to work. Attempts were made to locate a reliever but to no avail. The vessel had to sail without a reliever. She was delayed by 2 hours.
- On the sick sheet, Mr. Prasad said that it was not provided to him but to one of the officers. Mr. Ieli had tendered the sick sheet and gone. The sick sheet says that he was supposed to return to work the next day but Mr. Ieli did not come back to work. He however did come to the vessel on Monday where he packed his belongings. After that he came to the office and informed that he was leaving. He was there in the office with Mr. Goundar when Mr. Ieli came. Mr. Ieli came to the office to let them know that he was leaving the office.
- After that Mr. Ieli did not contact the office. The employer had not terminated him. It was Mr. Ieli who left on his own accord after failing to report to work. The issue was reported to The Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji. If Mr. Ieli reported to duty the next day, the employer could have taken disciplinary action against him but he was not terminated. He was not told that he would be terminated but that he may be terminated because he needed to be warned. Deserting a ship is a serious offence.
- In cross-examination Mr. Prasad said that he had the powers of firing and hiring the crew on the vessel. He did not accept the sick sheet because when he called Mr. Ieli he said that he was in a family function and for Mr. Prasad not to disturb him.
- He also admitted that when the vessel sailed without a 2nd officer on board, it was given clearance by one of the officers from Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji. One of the officers is always there to clear the vessel for sail. Even on this occasion the clearance was given for sail after the passengers and the cargo was checked.
- Mr. Prasad denied that he had only given Mr. Ieli 15 minutes to report to work or that when he called Mr. Ieli, he was told that he was at work with the sick sheet. He also said that he cannot recall whether there was a ship sailing on the very next day of the incident but that the office was open. He denied that he told Mr. Ieli on the Monday he reported to work that he was terminated.
- The employer’s 3rd witness was Ms. Maureen Lata Prasad. She said that on 13 December 2013, Mr. Ieli came to the office. It could be around midday but she is not sure of the time. He left his sick sheet on the table. She saw the sick sheet. She told him to fill in the leave form which needed to be filled and authorized by the Captain. Mr. Ieli however just walked away. She followed him but he went away. She did not see him after that day.
- In cross-examination she said that when Mr. Ieli had handed over the sick sheet, she did not show it to the Captain but showed it to Mr. Rakesh Parasad. She had no idea what Mr. Rakesh Prasad did with the leave. She said that his sick sheet was paid after two years.
- The worker stated in his evidence that he had been working for this employer for the past 6 months. On 13 December 2013 Mr. Robert Sosene was the second in command of the ship. The Captain was not there. The Captain is the Master. He therefore had to approach Mr. Robert Sosene. He told Mr. Robert Sosene that he needed to go and see a dentist. Mr. Sosene allowed him to go. This was about 8am.
- He was given the approval to leave the vessel. When he visited the dentist, they did some filling of the tooth and since there was still some pain, a sick sheet was given to him. He got the sick sheet around midday which he took to the office and gave it to Maureen Prasad.
- When he handed the sick sheet, Maureen asked him what it was. He said it was a sick sheet and she did not say anything after that so he left straight for home. At around 6 pm, Mr. Rakesh Prasad called him on his wife’s phone. He told Rakesh that he was sick and that he had handed the sick sheet around midday. Rakesh then disconnected the line. A few minutes after he called again and said that they have not found a reliever so he had to report to work. He informed Rakesh that he had a sick sheet. Mr. Ieli said that he then disconnected the line.
- Mr. Ieli said that it was the duty of the employer to find a reliever. Rakesh sent him a text that evening that he should be on board in the next 15 minutes otherwise he will be terminated from work. He still did not report. He was on sick sheet. He had to report to work the next day but since Rakesh had sent him that message and there was no ship on the next day he did not go to work. He was to report to the ship and not the office.
- He went back to the office on Monday. He saw Captain Inoke, Rakesh and one Tarun there. Rakesh informed him that they were discussing about his case and why he was not answering the phone on the subject day. Rakesh then said that there is nothing that they can do but to terminate his employment. After hearing this from Rakesh, he went to the ship and collected his belongings.
- In cross-examination he denied that he had any discussion with Captain Inoke on 13 December 2013. He also denied that when he handed over the sick sheet to Maureen, she asked him to fill in the leave form. He denied that she followed him and that he did not flee from there. He does not know about the procedure of filling in a leave form. He does not have a contract so he does not have the obligation of finding a reliever. He said that the way Rakesh had written the text message indicated that he had been terminated.
- He did not discuss the matter with the Director of the Ship Mr. Goundar. He does not deal with him but deals with the Operations Manager and the Masters of the ship. He insisted that the message from Mr. Rakesh was that he will be terminated if he did not report to work in 15 minutes not that he may be terminated. He clarified that on Monday, Rakesh had told him that there was nothing they could do as he was terminated from work.
- The ERT found that since the employee was in employment for more than 3 months, he was entitled to be on paid sick leave. The employer had wrongly refused to accept the sick sheet. The sick sheet has not been challenged. The same was issued by a registered medical practitioner certifying the worker’s incapacity to work. If the employer doubted the sick sheet then action should have been taken against the worker and the medical practitioner. When it did not, it is deemed to have accepted the same. Having accepted it, it could not behave the way it did when the worker did not turn up for work.
- The sick sheet was supplied around midday and this constitutes reasonable notice to the employer. The employer therefore should not have been calling the worker. Instead it should have been actively involved in looking for a reliever for the worker. The evidence of Captain Inoke also suggests that he had asked the employer to look for a reliever.
- The employer’s act of sending a text message saying that the worker may be terminated constitutes termination of the worker in the circumstances which was unjustified, unlawful and unfair. The ERT accepted that the worker could not go to work the very next day because there was no ship but when he did go to work it was confirmed that he was terminated.
- The employer raised 2 grounds of appeal. The 1st is that the ERT erred in law and in fact in finding that the worker was terminated when the same could not be established on a balance of probability and the 2nd is on the award of 3 months wages for humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to the feelings of the worker.
- The 1st ground requires me to examine whether the ERT was correct in making a finding that the worker was terminated and not that he failed to report to work as required by the employer. I must say that since there was conflicting evidence on whether the employee was terminated or that he left work, it was for the ERT to accept one version and reject the other. It accepted the employee’s version and I find that it was open to the ERT to do so on the basis of credibility of a witness. I do not find that there is any material upon which I can impeach the finding of the ERT.
- The employer says that the message sent to the employee was not conclusive that the employee had been terminated or will be terminated but that he may be terminated if he did not report to work in 30 minutes. If that is so, the employer should have produced the text message in court as it could have been retrieved. That evidence was not produced in the ERT for it to make an assessment or to even accept the employer’s version.
- In any event, if the employer had not terminated the employment then when it saw Mr. Ieli collect his belongings and leave the ship, it should have taken an immediate step to clarify the position that he had not been terminated and that he was required at work. This was necessary in light of the text message that was sent by the employer. It was not difficult for the employer to work out from the conduct of Mr. Ieli that there could be a possible misunderstanding.
- One must not forget that it is the employer’s version that Mr. Ieli reported to work on the Monday and collected his belongings. He came to the office and informed that he was leaving. He was not asked why he was leaving. Why not and why was he not told that he had not been terminated? It only makes sense that this was not done because the employer had already terminated the employee.
- From the evidence, I too do not find Mr. Rakesh Prasad’s evidence reliable. He informed the ERT that it was only around 6pm when Captain Robert Sosene called that he realized that Mr. Ieli was missing from the vessel. On the contrary, Ms. Maureen Prasad says that she had handed the sick sheet to Mr. Rakesh Prasad and that she has no idea what he did with it. Captain Inoke also testified that he informed the office to look for a reliever.
- The two witnesses’ evidence is clear that Mr. Rakesh knew that Mr. Ieli will not be at work and that he had to find a reliever for Mr. Ieli. It appears that Mr. Prasad did not take any immediate steps to find a reliever and when it was too late, he decided to put the blame on the worker. To save himself because of his shortfall, Rakesh conducted himself in a manner that is unacceptable and unfair.
- Mr. Rakesh started hassling and threatening the worker which is not permissible. A sick worker is entitled to rest and not to be hassled and made to worry about his work. He need not worry about dealing with text messages threatening him of his employment future with that employer. This is grossly unjustified.
- What also makes Mr. Rakesh Prasad’s evidence suspicious is when he told the ERT that when he called Mr. Ieli he was told by Mr. Ilei that he is in a family function and that he will not report to work as he had tendered a sick sheet. Even if Mr. Ieli was in a family function, he would not dare say that as his livelihood was important and he needed to have work for himself. Having given the sick sheet, Mr. Ieli would have simply indicated that he was sick. Why would he say that he was in a family function? I find that the issue of attending a family function is concocted by Mr. Rakesh Prasad.
- What also concerns me is that the employer failed to call Captain Robert Sosene to give evidence. He was a very material witness in the matter since Mr. Ieli says that he had approved Mr. Ieli’s time off to see a dentist.
- I do not endorse the employer’s views that Mr. Ieli needed to have his sick sheet approved. This may hold true for annual leave but if a worker falls sick and is not able to work, he need not have to wait for the employer to approve his leave. That would be most absurd because in that situation the employee would be expected to work until his sick leave is approved. The request then becomes redundant.
- I also do not agree with any insinuation by the employer that it was Mr. Ieli’s duty to look for a reliever. It is for the employer to make arrangements for such situations. It is in the sailing business and such matters can always arise. Sufficient provisions ought to be made to cater for sick employees.
- I have no reason to overturn the decision of the ERT that through the text message, the worker had accepted that he was terminated which was confirmed on the Monday by Rakesh. Although Rakesh denies this, it was for the ERT to accept which version of the evidence was more credible.
- I also find the termination to be unfair. I accept that Mr. Ieli was terminated by the text message of Mr. Rakesh. In terminating him, he was not treated fairly as he was definitely harassed when he was sick and put to unnecessary inconvenience. This action does not show good conduct on the part of the employer in dismissing him. I therefore do not find that the award of the 3 month’s wages for unfair dismissal is unjustified.
- In the final analysis, I find that the appeal has no merits and I dismiss the same. I uphold the orders of the ERT. The employer is to comply with the orders of the ERT within 21 days from the date of this judgment. I also order costs in favour of the employee in the sum of $3000 to be paid within 21 days.
Hon. Madam Justice Anjala Wati
Judge
01. 04. 2021
From Fijileaks Archive, 2012, based on documents supplied by Rajendra Chaudhry. That was when he was yet to create FACEBOOK account
FACT: 1.6 million Chinese citizens die each year in CHINA from respiratory illnesses linked to small particulate matter emissions, of which 27 percent come from cement production
In 2011, our current Founding Editor-in-Chief had revealed in Coupfourpointfive how Tengy (Fiji) Ltd was allowed to establish the cement factory in Fiji. Remember, in 2011, Coupist Frank Bainimarama
didn't give a damn about the environment nor human rights
Fiji Times was forced to sell 90 per cent of its shares to local investors but the regime has encouraged a new Chinese factory in Suva that has no local partners
By VICTOR LAL The pugnacious and illegal Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum, ordered the owners of the 140-year-old newspaper into local ownership or face closure, out of sheer vindictiveness. And yet, the same 90 per cent local ownership principle was waived against the Chinese owned Tengy Cement (Fiji) Company Ltd, when the Ministry of Lands and Mineral Resources formalized the 99 year lease agreement last December with the company to build the country’s second cement factory in Veisari, Lami. Tengy was granted a 33 acres industrial lease. The illegal Bainimarama regime had issued the Chinese investors with an industrial lease, cutting short the waiting period from 24 months to just eight weeks, a record breaking time. The illegal Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources, Netani Sukanaivalu, commended the work of various Government ministries and departments for helping facilitate the needs of Tengy Cement (Fiji) Company Limited in record time. “This is what Government had been saying all along, that Government ministries and departments must re-look at their systems and processes and ensure we reduce our turn-around time." |
Sukanaivalu said what used to take government two years to finalise, took just two months to complete.
He boasted: “Tengy is one of the first Chinese companies to accept the Prime Minister's invitation. I'm particularly pleased that the Fiji government has stood true to its commitment to facilitate - in the shortest time possible and within reasonable cost - the request from foreign investors.
"Today, we witness a historic occasion in as far as government facilitation is concerned. What use to be 24 months turnaround time is now reduced to only two months. This means that government system and processes could be viewed to improve on our responsiveness.”
How it all began – A Passage to China
In August last year, the dictator Bainimarama announced that a Chinese cement producing company had expressed interest to set up a cement plant in Fiji.
“This company has indicated its willingness to set up their business in Fiji and I welcome them,” the dictator said. He revealed that he was approached by the company and he extended an invitation to them to visit Fiji and ascertain the conditions for setting up the plant.
The setting up of another cement factory in the country in Fiji, the dictator claimed, will help decrease the price of cement by creating competition for the few cement companies in Fiji who are indulging in cartel activity.
The dictator claimed the cement companies in Fiji had been asked to decrease the prices of cement but had not relented. “They have not done so and now it’s better to bring in another company to do just that for a lower price. Monopoly is bad for the people and I’ll make sure to put a stop to that.”
Bainimarama said he was determined to break the monopoly held by the sole cement producer in the country - Fiji Industries Ltd. (Coupfourpointfive wants to know why, if we are to accept the dictator’s monopoly thesis, his own army officers are monopolizing all crucial civil service and other institutions?)
The dictator had met the Tengy cement company investors during the Shanghai Expo, where Fiji also had a booth to entice investors to the corruption riddled Fiji.
Also present with the dictator were Khaiyum (doubling up as illegal Minister for Trade and Commerce) and Fiji Trade and Investment Board (FTIB) chairman Adrian Sofield, who had taken up his new post in June 2010. The Chinese ambassador to Fiji was also up there.
The Road to Company Registration in Fiji
A Coupfourpointfive investigation into Tengy reveals the Chinese company was awarded the Foreign Registration Certificate Number 10-01-79 on 21 December 2010 by the FTIB CEO.
In awarding the Certificate, the CEO wrote to one Fugang Zao, P O Box 2563, Government Buildings, Suva, that the Certificate was for the Chinese company to establish a cement factory; and to manufacture and retail cement products.
The company was informed that “the foreign investor must have at least $250,000 in paid up capital in the form of cash from the operational date, to be brought fully into Fiji within the 12 months implementation period”. In addition, “the foreign investor must not engage in any other business activities not specified in this certificate”.
Jamnadas and Associates
The scandal ridden lawfirm of Jamnadas and Associates acted on behalf of the Chinese company. In this instance, it was not Renee Lal (partner in Jamnadas and Associates, and now accused of $400,000 fraud involving a Ghanian businessman) but Mele L Rakai, an Associate with the lawfirm who was involved in the formation of Tengy, as evidenced from his affidavit to the Registrar of Companies.
The two directors of the company are as follows: Teng Fei Zhao and Yu Bian. Both are Chinese citizens. The two gave their addresses as P. O. Box 2563, Government Buildings, Suva. The secretary of Tengy has been listed as one Ray Zhao.
The share capital of the company is one million dollars Fiji currency divided into 1,000,000 shares of $1 each, with power for the company to increase or reduce such capital.
The signatures of Teng Fei Zhao and Yu Bian, was personally witnessed by Dilip Jamnadas, solicitor, Jamnadas & Associates, Suva.
He boasted: “Tengy is one of the first Chinese companies to accept the Prime Minister's invitation. I'm particularly pleased that the Fiji government has stood true to its commitment to facilitate - in the shortest time possible and within reasonable cost - the request from foreign investors.
"Today, we witness a historic occasion in as far as government facilitation is concerned. What use to be 24 months turnaround time is now reduced to only two months. This means that government system and processes could be viewed to improve on our responsiveness.”
How it all began – A Passage to China
In August last year, the dictator Bainimarama announced that a Chinese cement producing company had expressed interest to set up a cement plant in Fiji.
“This company has indicated its willingness to set up their business in Fiji and I welcome them,” the dictator said. He revealed that he was approached by the company and he extended an invitation to them to visit Fiji and ascertain the conditions for setting up the plant.
The setting up of another cement factory in the country in Fiji, the dictator claimed, will help decrease the price of cement by creating competition for the few cement companies in Fiji who are indulging in cartel activity.
The dictator claimed the cement companies in Fiji had been asked to decrease the prices of cement but had not relented. “They have not done so and now it’s better to bring in another company to do just that for a lower price. Monopoly is bad for the people and I’ll make sure to put a stop to that.”
Bainimarama said he was determined to break the monopoly held by the sole cement producer in the country - Fiji Industries Ltd. (Coupfourpointfive wants to know why, if we are to accept the dictator’s monopoly thesis, his own army officers are monopolizing all crucial civil service and other institutions?)
The dictator had met the Tengy cement company investors during the Shanghai Expo, where Fiji also had a booth to entice investors to the corruption riddled Fiji.
Also present with the dictator were Khaiyum (doubling up as illegal Minister for Trade and Commerce) and Fiji Trade and Investment Board (FTIB) chairman Adrian Sofield, who had taken up his new post in June 2010. The Chinese ambassador to Fiji was also up there.
The Road to Company Registration in Fiji
A Coupfourpointfive investigation into Tengy reveals the Chinese company was awarded the Foreign Registration Certificate Number 10-01-79 on 21 December 2010 by the FTIB CEO.
In awarding the Certificate, the CEO wrote to one Fugang Zao, P O Box 2563, Government Buildings, Suva, that the Certificate was for the Chinese company to establish a cement factory; and to manufacture and retail cement products.
The company was informed that “the foreign investor must have at least $250,000 in paid up capital in the form of cash from the operational date, to be brought fully into Fiji within the 12 months implementation period”. In addition, “the foreign investor must not engage in any other business activities not specified in this certificate”.
Jamnadas and Associates
The scandal ridden lawfirm of Jamnadas and Associates acted on behalf of the Chinese company. In this instance, it was not Renee Lal (partner in Jamnadas and Associates, and now accused of $400,000 fraud involving a Ghanian businessman) but Mele L Rakai, an Associate with the lawfirm who was involved in the formation of Tengy, as evidenced from his affidavit to the Registrar of Companies.
The two directors of the company are as follows: Teng Fei Zhao and Yu Bian. Both are Chinese citizens. The two gave their addresses as P. O. Box 2563, Government Buildings, Suva. The secretary of Tengy has been listed as one Ray Zhao.
The share capital of the company is one million dollars Fiji currency divided into 1,000,000 shares of $1 each, with power for the company to increase or reduce such capital.
The signatures of Teng Fei Zhao and Yu Bian, was personally witnessed by Dilip Jamnadas, solicitor, Jamnadas & Associates, Suva.
The Deputy General Manager says they have been working with General Machinery, the company responsible for transporting material from the Suva Wharf to their Lami factory and says they are ensuring that the emission is reduced
Fijileaks: If these leaders and their backers feel they don't have the political gumption to take on Bainimarama's FFP in their own right, they should just F**K OFF from Fiji's political scene. Basically, by agreeing to wear Sitiveni Rabuka's bridal underpants, all in the hope of dislodging the FFP, they will be signalling that they have no self-confidence in leading their own parties into the next election, and even forming the next government. If these leaders feel they don't have what it takes to defeat FFP, they should just wind up their parties and disappear into the sunset. We can't believe that instead of taking Rabuka's new party head on, they are already creeping up under his sulu to gaze at the crystal balls to see what political benefits they will get by letting RABUKA lead a united Opposition front in 2022. As we have expressed privately, it is time the NFP dumped BIMAN PRASAD as leader and appointed LENORA QEREQERETABUA to lead NFP into the 2022 election. Its time to INJECT some firepower into politics and put up a WOMAN against Bainimarama. Get rid of old farts, grey or black-dyed haired MALES as LEADERS.
A COUPIST IS A COUPIST. Whether it is Rabuka or Bainimarama
YES, LETS GIVE TWO-FINGERS to those colluding with Coupist Rabuka
Speaking to FBC News this afternoon, Sitiveni Rabuka says there’s not been any direct talks between him and Tabuya but nothing is being ruled out.
The former SODELPA Leader who was seen to be grooming Tabuya for more power and control of his old party, says he does not want to jeopardise her position as a senior member of the SODELPA caucus.
“For her, the easiest person to work without of Parliament or in another party would be me. And that’s my view, not hers, Let me make that very clear.”
Tabuya had earlier said that she is fielding offers from other parties to join their ranks and she is keeping her options open if things don’t work out with SODELPA.
Rabuka meanwhile, is also throwing around some big names and potential supporters of his political ambitions, saying he has never kept it a secret.
“I am talking about Charan Jeath Singh, then we have Biman Prasad who is an old friend anyway, Save Narube was in the talks before 2018, We have not been able to attract Mr Chaudry from the Fiji Labor Party nor Ro Tupou Draunidalo from the HOPE Party.”
Rabuka claims to have exceeded the 5,000 signatures needed to register a political party and plans to make his application by the end of this month.
The former SODELPA Leader who was seen to be grooming Tabuya for more power and control of his old party, says he does not want to jeopardise her position as a senior member of the SODELPA caucus.
“For her, the easiest person to work without of Parliament or in another party would be me. And that’s my view, not hers, Let me make that very clear.”
Tabuya had earlier said that she is fielding offers from other parties to join their ranks and she is keeping her options open if things don’t work out with SODELPA.
Rabuka meanwhile, is also throwing around some big names and potential supporters of his political ambitions, saying he has never kept it a secret.
“I am talking about Charan Jeath Singh, then we have Biman Prasad who is an old friend anyway, Save Narube was in the talks before 2018, We have not been able to attract Mr Chaudry from the Fiji Labor Party nor Ro Tupou Draunidalo from the HOPE Party.”
Rabuka claims to have exceeded the 5,000 signatures needed to register a political party and plans to make his application by the end of this month.
BLACK DAY: A WIN FOR RABUKA WILL EMBOLDEN HIS NATIONALIST SUPPORTERS TO RAPE INDO-FIJIAN WOMEN, HAVE CASSAVA SHOVED UP THEIR VAGINAS, AND THEY WILL BE TOLD TO STRIP, PARADE, AND COOK NAKED FOR RACISTS. This sort of scenario will play on the mind of Indo-Fijian voters in the 2022 election. In fact, this is what happened during the George Speight 2000 coup as AIYAZ KHAIYUM dared to point out in Parliament. The speech is a classic. It will remain in Hansard as a classic. Khaiyum had a vision but he lost it along the way when power and wealth intervened. The priority has shifted for this arrogant crook of a man. What happened to Indo-Fijian women was an extension of what coupist Rabuka, Inoke Kubuabola, and his thugs did to them in 1987
It is time the NFP woke up and accepted that Indo-Fijians will not return to the party. They will remain with FFP, purely for security reasons, after what the coupist, racist thug Rabuka did to them in 1987. As the late Sir Vijay Singh pointed out, Rabuka did NO FAVOUR to Indo-Fijians with the 1997 Constitution. He returned to them what he had stolen in 1987 under the pretext of indigenous rights
From People's Coalition Government website, 27 August 2001
"The NFP and the Alliance Party, and later the NFP’s newfound bride Sitiveni Rabuka and the SVT, manipulated race and ethnicity to perpetuate the politics of race and hate in Fiji. The NFP is, broadly speaking a racist Indo-Fijian ethno-centric party, which manipulated Indo-Fijian fears and helplessness to remain on the political scene for over 30 years until the Indo-Fijians woke up from their ‘coolie mentality’ in 1999, and drowned them in the political bathwater. Now, the NFP leaders are once again using religious forum, temples, and holy occasions in the name of multi-racialism to manipulate ethnicity and whip up the politics of fear in the Indo-Fijian community. It is time, therefore, to stop blaming Chaudhry. Its time for the NFP leaders to look into the skeletons in their own political cupboards. It is time the NFP came out of the bridal underpants of the so-called moderate Fijians, some of whom have blood on their hands and racial exclusivity feelings in their hearts."
The great Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore once wrote that, ‘The bond of kingship that prevails within the community not only protects it from wanton cruelty and injustice from inside but is the natural nerve channel through which we directly feel our own race in its entirety. But the stranger from outside can easily be unjust, owing to the fact that he has not to pay for his conduct in his own feeling and be checked by that deeper sensibility which goes directly beyond the miscellany of facts into the heart of living unity. And for the sake of his own benefit and other’s safety he must bring with him his inner light of imagination, so that he may feel truth and not merely know facts’.
In many respects, the National Federation Party (NFP) was founded in the 1960s to protect Indian interests in Fiji. Some would even argue that it was founded to protect the bourgeoisie and big Indo-Fijian mahajans (businessmen) in the country. Whatever the aims and objectives of the original founding fathers of the NFP, the Indo-Fijian community, like its Fijian counterpart, is heavily fragmented. The lines of cleavage are many. There are divisions into formal political parties; there are ethnic divisions between the descendants of ‘girmitwala’ and khula (free) ‘bombaywallah’. Indo-Fijian politics is further fragmented by immunerable clashes of personality between leading political figures. Inevitably, on each major issue facing the Indo-Fijians a united response is difficult to achieve, even in times of grave Fijian provocation, violence, and political vandalism.
Moreover, in the current political climate, there is a deep division between Indo-Fijian leaders who comfortably set in front of their TVs eating their favourite chicken curry and roti, and between their rival Indo-Fijian political counterparts who suffered for 56 days at the hands of the pseudo-Fijian nationalist George Speight and his Nazi-like storm troopers, including the mysterious ten Indo-Fijian businessmen and countless others who backed the overthrow of the Peoples Coalition Government of Mahendra Pal Chaudhry.
In view of this, the NFP’s crude attempt recently to lay the blame on Fiji’s racial, economic and political problems on the shoulders of deposed Prime Minister Chaudhry smacks of cheap, crude, mischievous, and gutter politics.
The disguised attack, tantamount to calling for the political and even personal ‘assassination’ of Chaudhry at the recent annual NFP convention, is a case in point. The former NFP leader Harish Sharma told the political gathering that the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) was a sinking boat and it would do everything possible to stay afloat. He said the FLP was telling voters that the NFP was behind Speight’s civilian coup. Sharma called on voters to think wisely about whom they wanted as their leaders after the August elections. According to the Fiji Times, Sharma called on sufferers of the political crisis to get rid of such leaders. ‘One man above can destroy a nation. If there’s a man amongst us, we should get rid of him. I won’t name him but I guess all of you know who I am referring to,’ Sharma told supporters at the party’s annual convention in Suva.
He also said the biggest problem faced by the Indo-Fijian community was the expiry of land leases and that the only way to resolve the issue was through dialogue. ‘If you are going to annoy the landowners, then what hope will leaders have to solve the problems? In their 12 months of leadership, they (FLP) were not able to give any tenant even five days lease.’ Sharma also claimed that after 30 years of independence, the country was still divided into racial compartments and the progress of the nation had been disregarded. The NFP president Joginder Singh spoke on the 1997 Constitution, saying the party was instrumental in providing leadership for the negotiations. ‘We delivered the Constitution and I believe we would have delivered a solution to the land problems to resolve the land problems,’ he said. ‘We will work with Fijian leaders to resolve the land problems after the elections’. He warned politicians to do away with racial politics, saying Fiji was home to all people, regardless of race and religion. Bauan chief and former High Court judge Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, who also spoke at the convention, supported him. Ratu Joni, however, failed to berate his hosts, the NFP leaders, for the state of racial affairs in Fiji. It is they, and their party, of all the Indo-Fijian leaders, who kept the two major races - Fijians and Indo-Fijians-apart since the 1920s.
The Wolves Among the Hawks
It is surprising that some of the cheerleaders at the NFP convention included Adi Kuin Speed of the FAP, Filipe Bole of the SVT, Tupeni Baba of the New Labour Party, former Cabinet ministers David Pickering and Meli Bogileka, former parliamentarian Ofa Duncan and former senator Dalpat Rathod.
What a motley gathering to endorse the NFP sermon on multi-racialism at a pre-dominantly Indo-Fijian political party. It was not long ago, in 1999, when Adi Kuini tried to lay claim to the Prime Ministership of Fiji over the head of Chaudhry on the grounds that the FAP was the largest Fijian political party in Parliament. Baba, on the other hand, as he made a failed bid to oust Chaudhry from the FLP leadership, told the world that Fiji was not ready for an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister and that he should lead the nation as an ethnic Taukei to reassure the rent-a-mob Fijians who had helped depose his own Peoples Coalition Government of Fiji. And still going further into the dark and violent recesses of history-1987- Bole played a leading role as a Taukei to help the Father of the Two Coups in Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka, to overthrow the Timoci Bavadra-Harish Sharma’s FLP-NFP Coalition Government of Fiji. Rabuka was aided and assisted by the leader of the New Labour Party, Ratu Meli Vesikula, the most ruthless fanatic and fearsome leader of the Taukei Movement, and now a born-again multi-racialist.
The truth of the matter is the 1997 Constitution, which Chaudhry and others, including the international community, forced Rabuka to promulgate, was designed in such a way to ensure that the SVT-NFP Coalition was returned to power in the 1999 general elections. Rabuka was to continue as Prime Minister and the former NFP leader Jai Ram Reddy, was designated as his Deputy PM. The election result, as we all are aware of and which does not need repeating here, went the other way: to the FLP and its Coalition partners. Now, the NFP leaders who failed to win a single seat in the last Parliament are blaming Chaudhry for all the ills afflicting the nation.
Sharma toppled as Deputy PM in 1987
Can the former NFP leader Harish Sharma explain to the nation why he was overthrown by the racist pseudo Fijian supremacist Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987 as Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji? Was it because he was the ‘one man who alone was hell-bent on destroying the nation’ in 1987? Is Sharma saying that George Speight and his thugs were absolutely right to overthrow Chaudhry as PM? Why was it that the 1999 Peoples Coalition Government of Chaudhry was overthrown in 365 days, and the 1987 FLP-NFP Government of Sharma was overthrown in only 33 days? Was it because of the presence of Chaudhry as Sharma’s Minister of Finance in 1987? Or was it because Sharma was ‘a danger to Fijian culture, chiefs, land and language’ in Fiji?
It is time the likes of Sharma and the NFP parliamentarians stopped playing cheap politics with the lives of Indo-Fijians in Fiji? It is time the NFP answered some long-hard questions. It is time for the NFP to explain why after 30 years of independence Fiji is still a divided nation.
We will try and answer some of the questions. One is the opportunistic politicians in the NFP and the Fijian politicians in other parties. Another reason is that the NFP and the Alliance Party, and later the NFP’s newfound bride Sitiveni Rabuka and the SVT, manipulated race and ethnicity to perpetuate the politics of race and hate in Fiji. The NFP is, broadly speaking a racist Indo-Fijian ethno-centric party, which manipulated Indo-Fijian fears and helplessness to remain on the political scene for over 30 years until the Indo-Fijians woke up from their ‘coolie mentality’ in 1999, and drowned them in the political bathwater. Now, the NFP leaders are once again using religious forum, temples, and holy occasions in the name of multi-racialism to manipulate ethnicity and whip up the politics of fear in the Indo-Fijian community. It is time, therefore, to stop blaming Chaudhry. Its time for the NFP leaders to look into the skeletons in their own political cupboards. It is time the NFP came out of the bridal underpants of the so-called moderate Fijians, some of whom have blood on their hands and racial exclusivity feelings in their hearts.
NFP and Land Problems
It is absolutely appalling and mischievous to blame Chaudhry and the Peoples Coalition Government for the land problems. The land problem facing the Indo-Fijian community is the result of the politics of the Alliance Party and the NFP ‘ALTA Gangs’ makings. During one the parliamentary sessions in the late 1970s Ratu Mara, then Prime Minister of Fiji made a curt and pertinent remark on the behaviour of the Indo-Fijian leaders. He reminded the House that on the Opposition benches were some of the best legal brains in the country, and if they really wanted to, they could solve the land problem amicably. Instead, what we witnessed was the pathetic infighting among the NFP politicians on the land issue.
ALTO breaks NFP
In 1976, to allay Indo-Fijian fears, the Alliance government passed the Agricultural Landlords and Tenants Act (ALTA), which guaranteed Indo-Fijians 30-year leases, but, unlike the specification of the 1967 ALTO’s three 10-year periods, the 1976 Act specified an uninterrupted 20-year lease, plus 10 years. This Act split the National Federation Party (NFP): a group of NFP parliamentarians including Harish Sharma, defying their colleagues’ demands for 99-year leases, supported the Alliance which, constitutionally, needed 39 votes, including that of the Speaker, to push the Act through Parliament. Mrs Irene Jai Narayan and Karam Ramrakha, along with Messrs Hargovind Lodhia, Isikeli Nadalo, Anirudh Kuver, Sarwan Singh and Captain Atunaisa Maitoga, favoured the Bill. Siddiq Koya and his trusted lieutenants, Messrs Chirag Ali Shah, Apisai Tora, Ujagar Singh, Chandra Pillay, Ram Jati Singh and Edmund March, led the anti-ALTO movement. Koya’s main objection to the Bill was what he sincerely believed to be a dangerous rent-fixing mechanism in it.
Many Indo-Fijians rightly concluded that the passage of the Bill spelt the end of their fight for long-term security. The opposing faction charged the NFP ‘ALTO Gang’ with selling out the community while the Alliance faced similar charges from the Fijian Nationalist Party (FNP), which claimed that the extension of the leases robbed the Fijians of their land rights. And once again the land issue emerged as a source of conflict. As K.C. Ramrakha put it: ‘No matter what Mrs Jai Narayan would have said on the ALTO, Koya was determined to oppose her and the party broke into two pieces over this Bill. Please do not forget, it was not Karam Ramrakha who broke the party, it was an issue, the ALTO bill.’
‘Blood will Flow’ - Ratu Mara
Similarly, an attack by Ramrakha on the NLTB provoked the then Minister of Fijian Affairs, Ratu William Toganivalu, into stating that the Board would lease no more land to the Indo-Fijians. But it was the then Prime Minister and now President Ratu Mara’s statement on land matters that took the Indo-Fijian community by storm. On 1 March 1978, while the House of Representatives was debating a government sponsored motion to grant $1,27000 to the NLTB, Ratu Mara warned the country of the Fijians’ response if their land rights were trampled upon. In his statement to the House, claiming that he had been provoked by an Indian MP’s ‘malicious, insulting and provocative statement on the NLTB’, Ratu Mara said: ‘Why do the Fijians feel so emotional when questions of their land is discussed in this House? If people, the citizens of this nation, do not understand the deep emotional feeling of the Fijians, they should know now because if they tread on it and hurt it, blood will flow in this country’.
Others, notably Sakeasi Butadroka, saw a peaceful and bloodless solution to the land issue: the mass deportation of the people of Indian origin at the expense of the British government. The Indo-Fijians worst enemy was the NFP itself: it had divided the Hindus and Muslims into Dove and Flower Factions in 1977 as the opposing leaders fought for the control of the NFP leadership and its mango tree symbol.
Reddy’s Toilet Remark
In the 1982 general elections, the then leader of the NFP, Jai Ram Reddy, had successfully negotiated with the Western United Front (WUF), led by two western chiefs, Ratu Osea Gavidi and Ratu Napolioni Dawai, to fight the election as NFP-WUF Coalition. Reddy presented the Coalition as Fiji’s ‘first truly multi-racial coalition capable of responding to the wishes of all communities’.
But the election followed what London’s influential The Financial Times described as ‘a bitter campaign dominated by racial issues and marred by smear tactics’, and a major official inquiry opened in March 1983 into the conduct of the campaign. What was supposed to be a clean 1982 campaign characterized by promises of providing one kind of amenity or another broke all rules of the political game. The personalization and vituperation disrupted the clam of a ‘budding democracy’ and revealed all the political depravity and often-ugly competitiveness characteristic of a plural society in which restraint imposed by traditional values was ignored.
The pettiness and character assassination took an ugly turn when Reddy, with uncharacteristic rashness, told a political meeting in Labasa that Ratu Mara would even open a toilet to shake a few more Indian hands to get their votes. The Alliance Party branded Reddy ‘racist’ and claimed that this remark had insulted the Fijian people and the chiefs.
As a result, a group of villagers, led by a ‘touchy’ chief, demolished a temporary building where Reddy was holding a political meeting. In another incident, a chief banned Coalition candidate’s holding meetings in the Yasawa Islands. He later claimed that all political parties opposing the Alliance Party had been similarly banned.
NFP and Fijian cannibalism
Not to mention the introduction by the NFP-WUF into Fiji the Australian Four Corners Programme which pointed out that the Fijian leaders were descendants of cannibals ‘who ate and clubbed their way to power in these islands centuries ago’, and that ‘the democratic chief of Fiji for the past 12 years is such a descendant: a Ratu, a Chief, and a Knight too, Sir Kamisese Mara’.
The end result was the hardening of the position of the Great Council of Chiefs attitude towards the Indo-Fijian leaders, and indirectly, towards the Indo-Fijian community. Shortly after the 1982 election results, the GCC began calling for the change to the 1970 Constitution and that Fiji should be led by a Fijian Prime Minister in Fiji. Some Fijian politicians, who set the stage for Rabuka to overthrow the Bavadra-Sharma Coalition Government in 1987, thus manipulated the lingering fear and loathing of the Indo-Fijian leaders to the extreme. Captain Savenaca Draunidalo, Adi Kuni Bavadra Speed’s ex-husband who was recently dismissed for allegedly improper sexual activities in a public place, assisted Rabuka in his illegal act. Ironically, the NFP had alleged in the 1982 elections that Clive Speed (now the husband of Adi Kuini), the former Australian journalist, was ‘churning out election propaganda for the Alliance Party’.
In the 1987 elections, the Fijian nationalists, in a similar language that they deployed against Chaudhry last year, had claimed that Jai Ram Reddy was the ‘bullet’ and Bavadra, the late husband of Adi Kuini, was a ‘gun’. In other words, and despite the fact that the vast majority of important and sensitive portfolios in the Bavadra-Sharma government was held by ethnic Fijians, the Indo-Fijian leaders were secretly planning to takeover Fiji.
So, it is time the NFP stopped playing the ‘Speight Card’ in reverse to blame non-NFP leaders for the tragic and sad state of others in Fiji, notably the plight of Indo-Fijian farmers.
The Tale of Two Chiefs and Land Problem
The district of Ba has an historical anomaly. It has two tui or kings and both are called Tui Ba. One lives in the village of Nailaga and the other in Sorokoba. Rival claimants to the Tui Ba title could not claim outright victory and thus resulted the anomalous co-existence of two tui. The senior line lives in Nailaga and the new line lives in Sorokoba. The historical rivalry between the two lines persists in contemporary power struggles. The Ba district formed a political party, the Party of National Unity (PANU), and became a minor but important partner of the 1999 governing coalition.
The Tui Ba in Sorokoba (also known as Tui Ba 1 Bulu) was the current patron of PANU and an influential member of the Fiji Labour Party/Fijian Association Party/Party of National Unity (FLP/FAP/PANU) government coalition ousted by rebels in May 2000. He is also a personal friend and supporter of the deposed Prime Minister Chaudhry. The other Tui Ba titleholder in Nailaga is a staunch member of the Soqosoqo Vakavulewa Ni Taukei (SVT), which lost power. The political significance of Ba lies in economics. The district lays in a province, which is the location of some of the largest tracts of agricultural land under sugar, Fiji’s largest export earner. It is also home to a large number of mostly Fiji-Indian (Indo-Fijian) cane farmers. The formation of PANU has had its fair share of internal dissension the cause of which can be explained in terms of the power struggle between the two chiefly lines.
A major issue fuelling this tension was the loss by political maverick Apisai Tora (PANU’s former General Secretary) at the May elections to a Labour candidate and coalition partner. Tora claimed Chaudhry had reneged on a deal which saw the two coalition partners fielding parallel candidates for the same constituency. Tora’s loss was also related to the different political affiliation of the two leading tui of Ba.
A major casualty was the Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Agreement (ALTA). From June to September this issue sparked bitter debates in the nation’s boardrooms, Parliament and media. Eventually, at PANU’s annual general meeting, Apisai Tora was removed, a move that was endorsed by the two tui, and replaced by cabinet minister Ponipate Lesaivua as party leader. Without their joint agreement, Tora’s removal would have been a slow and costly affair.
This perceptive analysis of Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano in the recent issue of the Journal of Pacific History, we think, neatly captures the recent and perennial infighting inside the Fijian leadership, and also starkly demonstrates why the Chaudhry government could not solve the issue of leased land to the Indo-Fijians. Most recently, the FLP again alleged that Tora was threatening the Indo-Fijian cane farmers over the expiry of land leases.
Fiji’s racial and political problems are complex and intricate, and the blame for the racial gulf that divides the nation lies at the doorsteps of the NFP and the Alliance Party, who had for many years been able to attract big Indo-Fijian businessmen and Gujarati merchant votes in successive general elections. The Gujaratis, particularly the big businessmen, flocked to the Alliance in order to protect their financial interests in the country. We must not forget to remind ourselves of the contribution of the Indo-Fijians in the Indian Alliance, including my late father who was for several years the President of the Tailevu North Alliance District Council.
The Indo-Fijian mahajans, money, and ‘Mother India’
Sadly, some Gujarati businessmen still behave as if they are still living in the Fiji of the 1920s, when they first arrived here, rather than living in the country in the 21st century. Even some of their own kith and kin have called for the public flogging of some who allegedly funded the overthrow of the Chaudhry government. In the eyes of the descendants of Indo-Fijian coolies, the behaviour of some of the Gujarati’s can be characterised as a tale of divided loyalties and shame as our own refugee children had been going hungry in the camps in Girmit Centre in Lautoka.
When the devastating earthquake struck the Indian city of Gujarat on 26 January of this year, it’s after shocks were felt millions of miles away in the remote islands of Fiji. The Gujarati community of Fiji suddenly woke up to share the pain and suffering of their countrymen in ‘Mother India’. It was time for communal solidarity with their kinsmen, both in prayers and monetary contributions. We are not privy to any statistics about how much money was funnelled through the Bank of Baroda, if any, to assist the earthquake victims.
But what we do know from press reports is that the Interim Government contributed $20,000 towards the rehabilitation and assistance of the victims. The question one needs to ask is whether the money reached its intended beneficiaries. Or was is swallowed by the upper caste Gujaratis and Jains who refused to move in and share even sleeping tents with the Dalits (the so-called Untouchables) in the village of Adhoi.
Our Gujarati friends, the ‘Gujis’ or Bambaiyas, have every right to be irritated with us, for after all; death and disaster is no respecter of race, class, creed, religion or caste. God’s adversity is man’s opportunity to come together in one grand wheel of humanity. Why are we even bothered to raise the issue in our column?
The answer is three fold: first, there is an old worn-out saying that ‘charity begins at home’; secondly, the Interim Government sent the money that was our taxpayers money, and thirdly, we are raising the issue because of a small but significant story that appeared in the respectable British newspaper, The Guardian, and which might have escaped the notice of our readers and the authorities, not to mention the bambaiyas of Fiji.
On Saturday 17 February 2001, the Guardian’s India correspondent, Luke Harding, filed the following story from the town of Adhoi: ‘In a dusty field in the village of Adhoi, white tents flap emptily in the wind. Near by, young boys fly kites, cows graze in the dirt and the sun beats down. In the days after the devastating earthquake that wrecked this part of western India, soldiers arrived and erected the tents as emergency shelter. But the village’s influential upper caste Patel community refused to move in. There was nothing wrong with the tents. The problem was the new neighbours 15 metres away: Adhoi’s Dalits (Untouchables) who had already set up a makeshift camp using old bed sheets and bamboo poles. As the days went by the tents the army had set up remained eerily vacant? Eventually the soldiers took most of them away. Three weeks after the quake ripped across the state of Gujarat, killing at least 30,000, it is clear that in the village at least, shared adversity has done little to break down old prejudices. From lower caste Hindus and poor Muslim families there are mounting accusations that much of the aid that has cascaded into Kutch, the worst affected district, has been withheld from them. In the hours after the tremors reduced Adhoi’s main street to rubble, burying a parade of small girls, villagers worked to retrieve more than 400 dead. But, the poor and their leaders, allege, when the first aid trucks appeared the next day members of the dominant Jain and Patel communities diverted them towards their own people.’
‘For the first three days we had nothing to eat,’ a Dalit villager, Pravin Bharward, complained to the Guardian: ‘They told the trucks to avoid us and said we were disease-ridden.’ The Jains started a relief kitchen, but only the upper castes were encouraged to eat, he said. Two days later, a swami (holy man) arrived at Adhoi with three trucks and began a separate camp for the ‘backward’ castes. ‘If it wasn’t for the swami we would have died of hunger,’ Bharward said. Though Adhoi is completely destroyed, the Guardian found that the Gujaratis refuse to live next to the Dalits. The Dalits camp is to the north. Next door are the Kolis, another ‘backward’ caste.
The Patels and the Jains have set up camp down the road, close to the village’s shattered and pigeon-infested temple. The shepherd caste is somewhere else. Gujarat was the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, who fought against the evils of caste. He gave the Dalits, the name Harijans- The Children of God.’ Gandhi also played an influential role in the ending of the Indian indentured labour system throughout the British Empire. In fact, the last Indian coolie was technically freed on 1 February 1920 in Fiji.
But three-quarters of a century later his or her descendants are still ‘coolies’ in 21st century Fiji Islands, in part because of the behaviour of the Indo-Fijian businessmen, and the NFP politicians who preached and practised the politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’ since the 1960s.
It is not surprising, therefore, that ordinary Fijians have been brainwashed into believing that Indo-Fijians commercially own Fiji, and politically have no desire to integrate and make Fiji their home. The vast majority of Indo-Fijians tried to break free from the stereotype by voting for the FLP in the 1999 elections, and what one of the most high-profile Indo-Fijians in the Alliance Party, Dr Ahmed Ali, pointed out in 1973 still holds true in 2001: ‘The prosperity among the Indians is largely in the hands of ‘free’ migrants: the Gujarati merchants who dominate commerce. Among the non-Gujarati Indians, wealth lies in the hands of the few who own large construction firms, monopolize the transport industry or have other large business interests.’
The Royal Commission on Voting made a similar observation in 1975: ‘The ordinary men, seeing the extent to which shops and other commercial activities are in Indian hands, believe that the economic power of the Indian population as a whole is very great. In fact, it is not so significant when compared with the international companies in Fiji.’
It is time, therefore, that the NFP woke up to the truth. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the seeds of Indo-Fijian misery, which now also is affecting the Fijians and other minority groups, is the handiwork of one, and only one man- Sitiveni Rabuka. Instead of bringing him to legal books, the NFP had been strangely, shamelessly, and soundly politically sleeping with the destroyer of the country’s chequered history in multi-racialism, and was willing to be a junior partner if the 1999 elections had been won by the SVT-NFP Coalition.
As the veteran politician and columnist Sir Vijay Singh once remarked that Sitiveni Rabuka did no favour to the Indo-Fijian community by promulgating the 1997 Constitution of Fiji. He gave back to them what he had stolen in 1987 under the pretext of indigenous rights, and that the likes of Harish Sharma, a devout Hindu of public standing, was a pagan who should be converted to Christianity.
The Ghost of Koya for Sharma
It is worth reminding Harish Sharma of the events of 1986, when he as NFP secretary, along with Shardha Nand, and Navin Patel prepared the ‘Appraisal Report’ on revitalising the NFP. The Report argued that unless the NFP took drastic action the Alliance Party would win the next (1987) general election by a large party. It noted that the needs and demands of voters had changed considerably since independence and questioned whether the NFP had adapted to those changes. Among the recommendations was the change in leadership. Siddiq Koya led the NFP.
Koya, however, addressed a public meeting in Nasinu. He warned that the NFP would be crushed in the upcoming (1987) election and that the ‘Indian people’ would be ‘finished’ if they failed to unite behind the NFP. Referring to the prospect of the Alliance Party winning enough seats to change the 1970 Constitution, Koya stated that the ‘Alliance people will do legally what Mr Butadroka is trying to do now’ and referred to racist statements made in Parliament by NFP defector to the Alliance- Apisai Tora.
Koya, as the historian Michael Howard, formerly of USP points out, then launched into a series of personal attacks in which he accused members of the Fiji press and supporters of the newly formed Fiji Labour Party of diving the Indo-Fijian community (‘you are responsible for destroying’) and stated, ‘I am after your blood and I will fight you. You will be without jobs soon’. Some NFP members had to apologise to the reporters for Koya’s outbursts: ‘We did not know what he was going to talk about. If we had known we would have stopped him before he began. But we could not stop him once he had started making a public speech, as it would have led to open conflict between us. But the rest of the new NFP does not feel the same way and do not have the false fears he carries’.
The following day, the previous Fiji Sun editorial commented: ‘The drumbeat of racial politics is on the march again as Siddiq Koya tries to rally the fragmented National Federation Party. Mr Koya’s reversion to the politics of race is a sign of just how desperate he has become.’ The Sun asked whether the NFP continued to function as a viable opposition party. Harish Sharma as the new NFP leader replaced Siddiq Koya.
In a telling reminder to the NFP leaders, as Michael Howard (Race, Class and Politics in Fiji) points out, the secretary of the Navua branch of the NFP, Vijay Kumar, reminded: ‘We do not regard Labour as our opponents but as a brother party.’ According to Howard, it was sentiment that was shared by many rank-and-file members of the NFP, but not by party leaders who continued to see Fiji Labour Party as a threat. If anything, Sharma’s recent outbursts at the NFP Convention reveal that after 15 years following Koya’s Nasinu speech, the FLP and Mahendra Chaudhry still remain a threat to the NFP.
The NFP jumped into the political bed with the FLP as a junior partner in the 1987 elections, and surprisingly, Harish Sharma was appointed Dr Bavadra’s Deputy Prime Minister, the first Indo-Fijian to ever do so in independent Fiji.
But after 33 days in political office, the Bible-bashing lay preacher, obscure colonel and Fijian saviour-Sitiveni Rabuka-and his bogus, violent, and fanatical defenders of Taukeism overthrew Sharma and his government in the name of indigenous rights.
For the next twelve years the NFP shamelessly consorted with the political rapist and would have continued to do so if the voters in the 1999 elections by the FLP and Mahendra Chaudhry had not decisively rejected the SVT-NFP Coalition.
NFP and Rebuff to President
The NFP, as we have already shown, is the principal manufacturer of the plight of the Indo-Fijian community in Fiji.
It is time it owned up to its past sins.
Its most recent contribution to bad race relations was its rejection of the President Ratu Josefa Iloilo’s apology on behalf of the Fijian community for the pain and suffering that the Indo-Fijians suffered at the hands of George Speight and his thugs.
Even Chaudhry, the principal victim of Speight’s brutality, had told the nation to move on, for he held no grudge against George Speight. He left the law to take care of the hostage-taker and destroyer of Fiji.
The NFP leaders should stop trying to hold the Indo-Fijians and non-Fijians in the bottomless trapdoor in which they have been past masters before and after Fiji’s independence in 1970.
We live in the 21st century.
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In many respects, the National Federation Party (NFP) was founded in the 1960s to protect Indian interests in Fiji. Some would even argue that it was founded to protect the bourgeoisie and big Indo-Fijian mahajans (businessmen) in the country. Whatever the aims and objectives of the original founding fathers of the NFP, the Indo-Fijian community, like its Fijian counterpart, is heavily fragmented. The lines of cleavage are many. There are divisions into formal political parties; there are ethnic divisions between the descendants of ‘girmitwala’ and khula (free) ‘bombaywallah’. Indo-Fijian politics is further fragmented by immunerable clashes of personality between leading political figures. Inevitably, on each major issue facing the Indo-Fijians a united response is difficult to achieve, even in times of grave Fijian provocation, violence, and political vandalism.
Moreover, in the current political climate, there is a deep division between Indo-Fijian leaders who comfortably set in front of their TVs eating their favourite chicken curry and roti, and between their rival Indo-Fijian political counterparts who suffered for 56 days at the hands of the pseudo-Fijian nationalist George Speight and his Nazi-like storm troopers, including the mysterious ten Indo-Fijian businessmen and countless others who backed the overthrow of the Peoples Coalition Government of Mahendra Pal Chaudhry.
In view of this, the NFP’s crude attempt recently to lay the blame on Fiji’s racial, economic and political problems on the shoulders of deposed Prime Minister Chaudhry smacks of cheap, crude, mischievous, and gutter politics.
The disguised attack, tantamount to calling for the political and even personal ‘assassination’ of Chaudhry at the recent annual NFP convention, is a case in point. The former NFP leader Harish Sharma told the political gathering that the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) was a sinking boat and it would do everything possible to stay afloat. He said the FLP was telling voters that the NFP was behind Speight’s civilian coup. Sharma called on voters to think wisely about whom they wanted as their leaders after the August elections. According to the Fiji Times, Sharma called on sufferers of the political crisis to get rid of such leaders. ‘One man above can destroy a nation. If there’s a man amongst us, we should get rid of him. I won’t name him but I guess all of you know who I am referring to,’ Sharma told supporters at the party’s annual convention in Suva.
He also said the biggest problem faced by the Indo-Fijian community was the expiry of land leases and that the only way to resolve the issue was through dialogue. ‘If you are going to annoy the landowners, then what hope will leaders have to solve the problems? In their 12 months of leadership, they (FLP) were not able to give any tenant even five days lease.’ Sharma also claimed that after 30 years of independence, the country was still divided into racial compartments and the progress of the nation had been disregarded. The NFP president Joginder Singh spoke on the 1997 Constitution, saying the party was instrumental in providing leadership for the negotiations. ‘We delivered the Constitution and I believe we would have delivered a solution to the land problems to resolve the land problems,’ he said. ‘We will work with Fijian leaders to resolve the land problems after the elections’. He warned politicians to do away with racial politics, saying Fiji was home to all people, regardless of race and religion. Bauan chief and former High Court judge Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, who also spoke at the convention, supported him. Ratu Joni, however, failed to berate his hosts, the NFP leaders, for the state of racial affairs in Fiji. It is they, and their party, of all the Indo-Fijian leaders, who kept the two major races - Fijians and Indo-Fijians-apart since the 1920s.
The Wolves Among the Hawks
It is surprising that some of the cheerleaders at the NFP convention included Adi Kuin Speed of the FAP, Filipe Bole of the SVT, Tupeni Baba of the New Labour Party, former Cabinet ministers David Pickering and Meli Bogileka, former parliamentarian Ofa Duncan and former senator Dalpat Rathod.
What a motley gathering to endorse the NFP sermon on multi-racialism at a pre-dominantly Indo-Fijian political party. It was not long ago, in 1999, when Adi Kuini tried to lay claim to the Prime Ministership of Fiji over the head of Chaudhry on the grounds that the FAP was the largest Fijian political party in Parliament. Baba, on the other hand, as he made a failed bid to oust Chaudhry from the FLP leadership, told the world that Fiji was not ready for an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister and that he should lead the nation as an ethnic Taukei to reassure the rent-a-mob Fijians who had helped depose his own Peoples Coalition Government of Fiji. And still going further into the dark and violent recesses of history-1987- Bole played a leading role as a Taukei to help the Father of the Two Coups in Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka, to overthrow the Timoci Bavadra-Harish Sharma’s FLP-NFP Coalition Government of Fiji. Rabuka was aided and assisted by the leader of the New Labour Party, Ratu Meli Vesikula, the most ruthless fanatic and fearsome leader of the Taukei Movement, and now a born-again multi-racialist.
The truth of the matter is the 1997 Constitution, which Chaudhry and others, including the international community, forced Rabuka to promulgate, was designed in such a way to ensure that the SVT-NFP Coalition was returned to power in the 1999 general elections. Rabuka was to continue as Prime Minister and the former NFP leader Jai Ram Reddy, was designated as his Deputy PM. The election result, as we all are aware of and which does not need repeating here, went the other way: to the FLP and its Coalition partners. Now, the NFP leaders who failed to win a single seat in the last Parliament are blaming Chaudhry for all the ills afflicting the nation.
Sharma toppled as Deputy PM in 1987
Can the former NFP leader Harish Sharma explain to the nation why he was overthrown by the racist pseudo Fijian supremacist Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987 as Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji? Was it because he was the ‘one man who alone was hell-bent on destroying the nation’ in 1987? Is Sharma saying that George Speight and his thugs were absolutely right to overthrow Chaudhry as PM? Why was it that the 1999 Peoples Coalition Government of Chaudhry was overthrown in 365 days, and the 1987 FLP-NFP Government of Sharma was overthrown in only 33 days? Was it because of the presence of Chaudhry as Sharma’s Minister of Finance in 1987? Or was it because Sharma was ‘a danger to Fijian culture, chiefs, land and language’ in Fiji?
It is time the likes of Sharma and the NFP parliamentarians stopped playing cheap politics with the lives of Indo-Fijians in Fiji? It is time the NFP answered some long-hard questions. It is time for the NFP to explain why after 30 years of independence Fiji is still a divided nation.
We will try and answer some of the questions. One is the opportunistic politicians in the NFP and the Fijian politicians in other parties. Another reason is that the NFP and the Alliance Party, and later the NFP’s newfound bride Sitiveni Rabuka and the SVT, manipulated race and ethnicity to perpetuate the politics of race and hate in Fiji. The NFP is, broadly speaking a racist Indo-Fijian ethno-centric party, which manipulated Indo-Fijian fears and helplessness to remain on the political scene for over 30 years until the Indo-Fijians woke up from their ‘coolie mentality’ in 1999, and drowned them in the political bathwater. Now, the NFP leaders are once again using religious forum, temples, and holy occasions in the name of multi-racialism to manipulate ethnicity and whip up the politics of fear in the Indo-Fijian community. It is time, therefore, to stop blaming Chaudhry. Its time for the NFP leaders to look into the skeletons in their own political cupboards. It is time the NFP came out of the bridal underpants of the so-called moderate Fijians, some of whom have blood on their hands and racial exclusivity feelings in their hearts.
NFP and Land Problems
It is absolutely appalling and mischievous to blame Chaudhry and the Peoples Coalition Government for the land problems. The land problem facing the Indo-Fijian community is the result of the politics of the Alliance Party and the NFP ‘ALTA Gangs’ makings. During one the parliamentary sessions in the late 1970s Ratu Mara, then Prime Minister of Fiji made a curt and pertinent remark on the behaviour of the Indo-Fijian leaders. He reminded the House that on the Opposition benches were some of the best legal brains in the country, and if they really wanted to, they could solve the land problem amicably. Instead, what we witnessed was the pathetic infighting among the NFP politicians on the land issue.
ALTO breaks NFP
In 1976, to allay Indo-Fijian fears, the Alliance government passed the Agricultural Landlords and Tenants Act (ALTA), which guaranteed Indo-Fijians 30-year leases, but, unlike the specification of the 1967 ALTO’s three 10-year periods, the 1976 Act specified an uninterrupted 20-year lease, plus 10 years. This Act split the National Federation Party (NFP): a group of NFP parliamentarians including Harish Sharma, defying their colleagues’ demands for 99-year leases, supported the Alliance which, constitutionally, needed 39 votes, including that of the Speaker, to push the Act through Parliament. Mrs Irene Jai Narayan and Karam Ramrakha, along with Messrs Hargovind Lodhia, Isikeli Nadalo, Anirudh Kuver, Sarwan Singh and Captain Atunaisa Maitoga, favoured the Bill. Siddiq Koya and his trusted lieutenants, Messrs Chirag Ali Shah, Apisai Tora, Ujagar Singh, Chandra Pillay, Ram Jati Singh and Edmund March, led the anti-ALTO movement. Koya’s main objection to the Bill was what he sincerely believed to be a dangerous rent-fixing mechanism in it.
Many Indo-Fijians rightly concluded that the passage of the Bill spelt the end of their fight for long-term security. The opposing faction charged the NFP ‘ALTO Gang’ with selling out the community while the Alliance faced similar charges from the Fijian Nationalist Party (FNP), which claimed that the extension of the leases robbed the Fijians of their land rights. And once again the land issue emerged as a source of conflict. As K.C. Ramrakha put it: ‘No matter what Mrs Jai Narayan would have said on the ALTO, Koya was determined to oppose her and the party broke into two pieces over this Bill. Please do not forget, it was not Karam Ramrakha who broke the party, it was an issue, the ALTO bill.’
‘Blood will Flow’ - Ratu Mara
Similarly, an attack by Ramrakha on the NLTB provoked the then Minister of Fijian Affairs, Ratu William Toganivalu, into stating that the Board would lease no more land to the Indo-Fijians. But it was the then Prime Minister and now President Ratu Mara’s statement on land matters that took the Indo-Fijian community by storm. On 1 March 1978, while the House of Representatives was debating a government sponsored motion to grant $1,27000 to the NLTB, Ratu Mara warned the country of the Fijians’ response if their land rights were trampled upon. In his statement to the House, claiming that he had been provoked by an Indian MP’s ‘malicious, insulting and provocative statement on the NLTB’, Ratu Mara said: ‘Why do the Fijians feel so emotional when questions of their land is discussed in this House? If people, the citizens of this nation, do not understand the deep emotional feeling of the Fijians, they should know now because if they tread on it and hurt it, blood will flow in this country’.
Others, notably Sakeasi Butadroka, saw a peaceful and bloodless solution to the land issue: the mass deportation of the people of Indian origin at the expense of the British government. The Indo-Fijians worst enemy was the NFP itself: it had divided the Hindus and Muslims into Dove and Flower Factions in 1977 as the opposing leaders fought for the control of the NFP leadership and its mango tree symbol.
Reddy’s Toilet Remark
In the 1982 general elections, the then leader of the NFP, Jai Ram Reddy, had successfully negotiated with the Western United Front (WUF), led by two western chiefs, Ratu Osea Gavidi and Ratu Napolioni Dawai, to fight the election as NFP-WUF Coalition. Reddy presented the Coalition as Fiji’s ‘first truly multi-racial coalition capable of responding to the wishes of all communities’.
But the election followed what London’s influential The Financial Times described as ‘a bitter campaign dominated by racial issues and marred by smear tactics’, and a major official inquiry opened in March 1983 into the conduct of the campaign. What was supposed to be a clean 1982 campaign characterized by promises of providing one kind of amenity or another broke all rules of the political game. The personalization and vituperation disrupted the clam of a ‘budding democracy’ and revealed all the political depravity and often-ugly competitiveness characteristic of a plural society in which restraint imposed by traditional values was ignored.
The pettiness and character assassination took an ugly turn when Reddy, with uncharacteristic rashness, told a political meeting in Labasa that Ratu Mara would even open a toilet to shake a few more Indian hands to get their votes. The Alliance Party branded Reddy ‘racist’ and claimed that this remark had insulted the Fijian people and the chiefs.
As a result, a group of villagers, led by a ‘touchy’ chief, demolished a temporary building where Reddy was holding a political meeting. In another incident, a chief banned Coalition candidate’s holding meetings in the Yasawa Islands. He later claimed that all political parties opposing the Alliance Party had been similarly banned.
NFP and Fijian cannibalism
Not to mention the introduction by the NFP-WUF into Fiji the Australian Four Corners Programme which pointed out that the Fijian leaders were descendants of cannibals ‘who ate and clubbed their way to power in these islands centuries ago’, and that ‘the democratic chief of Fiji for the past 12 years is such a descendant: a Ratu, a Chief, and a Knight too, Sir Kamisese Mara’.
The end result was the hardening of the position of the Great Council of Chiefs attitude towards the Indo-Fijian leaders, and indirectly, towards the Indo-Fijian community. Shortly after the 1982 election results, the GCC began calling for the change to the 1970 Constitution and that Fiji should be led by a Fijian Prime Minister in Fiji. Some Fijian politicians, who set the stage for Rabuka to overthrow the Bavadra-Sharma Coalition Government in 1987, thus manipulated the lingering fear and loathing of the Indo-Fijian leaders to the extreme. Captain Savenaca Draunidalo, Adi Kuni Bavadra Speed’s ex-husband who was recently dismissed for allegedly improper sexual activities in a public place, assisted Rabuka in his illegal act. Ironically, the NFP had alleged in the 1982 elections that Clive Speed (now the husband of Adi Kuini), the former Australian journalist, was ‘churning out election propaganda for the Alliance Party’.
In the 1987 elections, the Fijian nationalists, in a similar language that they deployed against Chaudhry last year, had claimed that Jai Ram Reddy was the ‘bullet’ and Bavadra, the late husband of Adi Kuini, was a ‘gun’. In other words, and despite the fact that the vast majority of important and sensitive portfolios in the Bavadra-Sharma government was held by ethnic Fijians, the Indo-Fijian leaders were secretly planning to takeover Fiji.
So, it is time the NFP stopped playing the ‘Speight Card’ in reverse to blame non-NFP leaders for the tragic and sad state of others in Fiji, notably the plight of Indo-Fijian farmers.
The Tale of Two Chiefs and Land Problem
The district of Ba has an historical anomaly. It has two tui or kings and both are called Tui Ba. One lives in the village of Nailaga and the other in Sorokoba. Rival claimants to the Tui Ba title could not claim outright victory and thus resulted the anomalous co-existence of two tui. The senior line lives in Nailaga and the new line lives in Sorokoba. The historical rivalry between the two lines persists in contemporary power struggles. The Ba district formed a political party, the Party of National Unity (PANU), and became a minor but important partner of the 1999 governing coalition.
The Tui Ba in Sorokoba (also known as Tui Ba 1 Bulu) was the current patron of PANU and an influential member of the Fiji Labour Party/Fijian Association Party/Party of National Unity (FLP/FAP/PANU) government coalition ousted by rebels in May 2000. He is also a personal friend and supporter of the deposed Prime Minister Chaudhry. The other Tui Ba titleholder in Nailaga is a staunch member of the Soqosoqo Vakavulewa Ni Taukei (SVT), which lost power. The political significance of Ba lies in economics. The district lays in a province, which is the location of some of the largest tracts of agricultural land under sugar, Fiji’s largest export earner. It is also home to a large number of mostly Fiji-Indian (Indo-Fijian) cane farmers. The formation of PANU has had its fair share of internal dissension the cause of which can be explained in terms of the power struggle between the two chiefly lines.
A major issue fuelling this tension was the loss by political maverick Apisai Tora (PANU’s former General Secretary) at the May elections to a Labour candidate and coalition partner. Tora claimed Chaudhry had reneged on a deal which saw the two coalition partners fielding parallel candidates for the same constituency. Tora’s loss was also related to the different political affiliation of the two leading tui of Ba.
A major casualty was the Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Agreement (ALTA). From June to September this issue sparked bitter debates in the nation’s boardrooms, Parliament and media. Eventually, at PANU’s annual general meeting, Apisai Tora was removed, a move that was endorsed by the two tui, and replaced by cabinet minister Ponipate Lesaivua as party leader. Without their joint agreement, Tora’s removal would have been a slow and costly affair.
This perceptive analysis of Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano in the recent issue of the Journal of Pacific History, we think, neatly captures the recent and perennial infighting inside the Fijian leadership, and also starkly demonstrates why the Chaudhry government could not solve the issue of leased land to the Indo-Fijians. Most recently, the FLP again alleged that Tora was threatening the Indo-Fijian cane farmers over the expiry of land leases.
Fiji’s racial and political problems are complex and intricate, and the blame for the racial gulf that divides the nation lies at the doorsteps of the NFP and the Alliance Party, who had for many years been able to attract big Indo-Fijian businessmen and Gujarati merchant votes in successive general elections. The Gujaratis, particularly the big businessmen, flocked to the Alliance in order to protect their financial interests in the country. We must not forget to remind ourselves of the contribution of the Indo-Fijians in the Indian Alliance, including my late father who was for several years the President of the Tailevu North Alliance District Council.
The Indo-Fijian mahajans, money, and ‘Mother India’
Sadly, some Gujarati businessmen still behave as if they are still living in the Fiji of the 1920s, when they first arrived here, rather than living in the country in the 21st century. Even some of their own kith and kin have called for the public flogging of some who allegedly funded the overthrow of the Chaudhry government. In the eyes of the descendants of Indo-Fijian coolies, the behaviour of some of the Gujarati’s can be characterised as a tale of divided loyalties and shame as our own refugee children had been going hungry in the camps in Girmit Centre in Lautoka.
When the devastating earthquake struck the Indian city of Gujarat on 26 January of this year, it’s after shocks were felt millions of miles away in the remote islands of Fiji. The Gujarati community of Fiji suddenly woke up to share the pain and suffering of their countrymen in ‘Mother India’. It was time for communal solidarity with their kinsmen, both in prayers and monetary contributions. We are not privy to any statistics about how much money was funnelled through the Bank of Baroda, if any, to assist the earthquake victims.
But what we do know from press reports is that the Interim Government contributed $20,000 towards the rehabilitation and assistance of the victims. The question one needs to ask is whether the money reached its intended beneficiaries. Or was is swallowed by the upper caste Gujaratis and Jains who refused to move in and share even sleeping tents with the Dalits (the so-called Untouchables) in the village of Adhoi.
Our Gujarati friends, the ‘Gujis’ or Bambaiyas, have every right to be irritated with us, for after all; death and disaster is no respecter of race, class, creed, religion or caste. God’s adversity is man’s opportunity to come together in one grand wheel of humanity. Why are we even bothered to raise the issue in our column?
The answer is three fold: first, there is an old worn-out saying that ‘charity begins at home’; secondly, the Interim Government sent the money that was our taxpayers money, and thirdly, we are raising the issue because of a small but significant story that appeared in the respectable British newspaper, The Guardian, and which might have escaped the notice of our readers and the authorities, not to mention the bambaiyas of Fiji.
On Saturday 17 February 2001, the Guardian’s India correspondent, Luke Harding, filed the following story from the town of Adhoi: ‘In a dusty field in the village of Adhoi, white tents flap emptily in the wind. Near by, young boys fly kites, cows graze in the dirt and the sun beats down. In the days after the devastating earthquake that wrecked this part of western India, soldiers arrived and erected the tents as emergency shelter. But the village’s influential upper caste Patel community refused to move in. There was nothing wrong with the tents. The problem was the new neighbours 15 metres away: Adhoi’s Dalits (Untouchables) who had already set up a makeshift camp using old bed sheets and bamboo poles. As the days went by the tents the army had set up remained eerily vacant? Eventually the soldiers took most of them away. Three weeks after the quake ripped across the state of Gujarat, killing at least 30,000, it is clear that in the village at least, shared adversity has done little to break down old prejudices. From lower caste Hindus and poor Muslim families there are mounting accusations that much of the aid that has cascaded into Kutch, the worst affected district, has been withheld from them. In the hours after the tremors reduced Adhoi’s main street to rubble, burying a parade of small girls, villagers worked to retrieve more than 400 dead. But, the poor and their leaders, allege, when the first aid trucks appeared the next day members of the dominant Jain and Patel communities diverted them towards their own people.’
‘For the first three days we had nothing to eat,’ a Dalit villager, Pravin Bharward, complained to the Guardian: ‘They told the trucks to avoid us and said we were disease-ridden.’ The Jains started a relief kitchen, but only the upper castes were encouraged to eat, he said. Two days later, a swami (holy man) arrived at Adhoi with three trucks and began a separate camp for the ‘backward’ castes. ‘If it wasn’t for the swami we would have died of hunger,’ Bharward said. Though Adhoi is completely destroyed, the Guardian found that the Gujaratis refuse to live next to the Dalits. The Dalits camp is to the north. Next door are the Kolis, another ‘backward’ caste.
The Patels and the Jains have set up camp down the road, close to the village’s shattered and pigeon-infested temple. The shepherd caste is somewhere else. Gujarat was the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, who fought against the evils of caste. He gave the Dalits, the name Harijans- The Children of God.’ Gandhi also played an influential role in the ending of the Indian indentured labour system throughout the British Empire. In fact, the last Indian coolie was technically freed on 1 February 1920 in Fiji.
But three-quarters of a century later his or her descendants are still ‘coolies’ in 21st century Fiji Islands, in part because of the behaviour of the Indo-Fijian businessmen, and the NFP politicians who preached and practised the politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’ since the 1960s.
It is not surprising, therefore, that ordinary Fijians have been brainwashed into believing that Indo-Fijians commercially own Fiji, and politically have no desire to integrate and make Fiji their home. The vast majority of Indo-Fijians tried to break free from the stereotype by voting for the FLP in the 1999 elections, and what one of the most high-profile Indo-Fijians in the Alliance Party, Dr Ahmed Ali, pointed out in 1973 still holds true in 2001: ‘The prosperity among the Indians is largely in the hands of ‘free’ migrants: the Gujarati merchants who dominate commerce. Among the non-Gujarati Indians, wealth lies in the hands of the few who own large construction firms, monopolize the transport industry or have other large business interests.’
The Royal Commission on Voting made a similar observation in 1975: ‘The ordinary men, seeing the extent to which shops and other commercial activities are in Indian hands, believe that the economic power of the Indian population as a whole is very great. In fact, it is not so significant when compared with the international companies in Fiji.’
It is time, therefore, that the NFP woke up to the truth. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the seeds of Indo-Fijian misery, which now also is affecting the Fijians and other minority groups, is the handiwork of one, and only one man- Sitiveni Rabuka. Instead of bringing him to legal books, the NFP had been strangely, shamelessly, and soundly politically sleeping with the destroyer of the country’s chequered history in multi-racialism, and was willing to be a junior partner if the 1999 elections had been won by the SVT-NFP Coalition.
As the veteran politician and columnist Sir Vijay Singh once remarked that Sitiveni Rabuka did no favour to the Indo-Fijian community by promulgating the 1997 Constitution of Fiji. He gave back to them what he had stolen in 1987 under the pretext of indigenous rights, and that the likes of Harish Sharma, a devout Hindu of public standing, was a pagan who should be converted to Christianity.
The Ghost of Koya for Sharma
It is worth reminding Harish Sharma of the events of 1986, when he as NFP secretary, along with Shardha Nand, and Navin Patel prepared the ‘Appraisal Report’ on revitalising the NFP. The Report argued that unless the NFP took drastic action the Alliance Party would win the next (1987) general election by a large party. It noted that the needs and demands of voters had changed considerably since independence and questioned whether the NFP had adapted to those changes. Among the recommendations was the change in leadership. Siddiq Koya led the NFP.
Koya, however, addressed a public meeting in Nasinu. He warned that the NFP would be crushed in the upcoming (1987) election and that the ‘Indian people’ would be ‘finished’ if they failed to unite behind the NFP. Referring to the prospect of the Alliance Party winning enough seats to change the 1970 Constitution, Koya stated that the ‘Alliance people will do legally what Mr Butadroka is trying to do now’ and referred to racist statements made in Parliament by NFP defector to the Alliance- Apisai Tora.
Koya, as the historian Michael Howard, formerly of USP points out, then launched into a series of personal attacks in which he accused members of the Fiji press and supporters of the newly formed Fiji Labour Party of diving the Indo-Fijian community (‘you are responsible for destroying’) and stated, ‘I am after your blood and I will fight you. You will be without jobs soon’. Some NFP members had to apologise to the reporters for Koya’s outbursts: ‘We did not know what he was going to talk about. If we had known we would have stopped him before he began. But we could not stop him once he had started making a public speech, as it would have led to open conflict between us. But the rest of the new NFP does not feel the same way and do not have the false fears he carries’.
The following day, the previous Fiji Sun editorial commented: ‘The drumbeat of racial politics is on the march again as Siddiq Koya tries to rally the fragmented National Federation Party. Mr Koya’s reversion to the politics of race is a sign of just how desperate he has become.’ The Sun asked whether the NFP continued to function as a viable opposition party. Harish Sharma as the new NFP leader replaced Siddiq Koya.
In a telling reminder to the NFP leaders, as Michael Howard (Race, Class and Politics in Fiji) points out, the secretary of the Navua branch of the NFP, Vijay Kumar, reminded: ‘We do not regard Labour as our opponents but as a brother party.’ According to Howard, it was sentiment that was shared by many rank-and-file members of the NFP, but not by party leaders who continued to see Fiji Labour Party as a threat. If anything, Sharma’s recent outbursts at the NFP Convention reveal that after 15 years following Koya’s Nasinu speech, the FLP and Mahendra Chaudhry still remain a threat to the NFP.
The NFP jumped into the political bed with the FLP as a junior partner in the 1987 elections, and surprisingly, Harish Sharma was appointed Dr Bavadra’s Deputy Prime Minister, the first Indo-Fijian to ever do so in independent Fiji.
But after 33 days in political office, the Bible-bashing lay preacher, obscure colonel and Fijian saviour-Sitiveni Rabuka-and his bogus, violent, and fanatical defenders of Taukeism overthrew Sharma and his government in the name of indigenous rights.
For the next twelve years the NFP shamelessly consorted with the political rapist and would have continued to do so if the voters in the 1999 elections by the FLP and Mahendra Chaudhry had not decisively rejected the SVT-NFP Coalition.
NFP and Rebuff to President
The NFP, as we have already shown, is the principal manufacturer of the plight of the Indo-Fijian community in Fiji.
It is time it owned up to its past sins.
Its most recent contribution to bad race relations was its rejection of the President Ratu Josefa Iloilo’s apology on behalf of the Fijian community for the pain and suffering that the Indo-Fijians suffered at the hands of George Speight and his thugs.
Even Chaudhry, the principal victim of Speight’s brutality, had told the nation to move on, for he held no grudge against George Speight. He left the law to take care of the hostage-taker and destroyer of Fiji.
The NFP leaders should stop trying to hold the Indo-Fijians and non-Fijians in the bottomless trapdoor in which they have been past masters before and after Fiji’s independence in 1970.
We live in the 21st century.
People's Coalition Government - Fiji Islands
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Fijileaks: FFP has gone around building seawalls - with Chinese MONEY - outside Levuka. And yet has totally ignored to safeguard the world heritage Deed of Cession signing site. For God's sake, DON'T blame it on Bainimarama's favourite money fleecing 'Climate Change'. Blame FFP!
A portion of the site where the deed of cession was signed in Levuka is slowly eroding. It is a direct consequence of the rising sea levels and recurring storm surges. FBC News visited the site and noted that more attention is needed to protect the authenticity of the world heritage site from the impact of climate change. All this put down to the ever-growing problem of climate change. Acting Tui Levuka, Ratu Jope Sigaruarua says the rising water level is not even sparing our piece of history and leaving behind a bleach-white skeleton.“The site is critical as it is listed under the UNESCO World Heritage site. With the impact of climate change, I think more funding is required to execute activities that will sustain the authentic outlook of various historical sites here in Levuka.” |
Levuka Town Council Chief Executive, Josese Rakuita says the visible scars at the site are a testament that climate change and rising waters are surely impacting small nations like Fiji.
“We really depend on Government and other NGO’s for that matter in terms of looking after this infrastructure and upgrading as well as the maintenance of the town.”
In a bid to generate sufficient funding, the Council is collaborating with relevant authorities to protect various sites such as the 199 steps for tourist attraction when borders are open
“We really depend on Government and other NGO’s for that matter in terms of looking after this infrastructure and upgrading as well as the maintenance of the town.”
In a bid to generate sufficient funding, the Council is collaborating with relevant authorities to protect various sites such as the 199 steps for tourist attraction when borders are open
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."
Alexis de Tocqueville, French political scientist and historian
"The Deed of Cession has been regarded as the charter of Fijians indigenous rights. It has been appropriated by Fijians of different political persuasions for different purposes. It is worth remembering that it was mostly the eastern chiefs who had made an unconditional cession of their islands to Great Britain. As Governor Sir Ronald Garvey noted in his Cession Day’s speech in 1957, ‘to read into the Deed more than that, to suggest, for instance, that the rights and interests of the Fijians should predominate over everything else, does not service either to the Fijian people or to their country’. The adoption of that view, Sir Ronald continued, ‘would mean complete protection and no-self-respecting individual race wants that because, ultimately, it means that those subject to it will end up as museum pieces’. VICTOR LAL
"There was nothing in the Deed of Cession to say that when England was to hand over Fiji that it was to hand it over holus-bolus to the Fijian people and to the Fijian people alone. There was nothing whatsoever written in it and as the Fijian chiefs gave Fiji unreservedly to Great Britain, my interpretation is that if Great Britain wants to give it back she gives it back in the condition which she finds it. It does not necessarily mean that she should give it back to the Fijian people."
Ratu William Toganivalu, a high chief and Cabinet Minister in Alliance Government, Fiji's House of Representatives in June 1970
Done at Levuka this tenth day of October, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy four. Cakobau R. Tui Viti and Vunivalu (Seal), Maafu (Seal), Hercules Robinson (Seal). Tui Cakau (Seal), Ratu Epeli (Seal), Vakawalitabua Tui Bua (Seal), Savenaca (Seal), Esekele (Seal), B. V. Tui Dreketi (Seal), Ritova (Seal), Kato-nivere (Seal,) Ratu Kini (Seal), Matanitobua (Seal) Nacagilevu (Seal)
By VICTOR LAL, The Daily Post, 2000
COUPS and counter-coups are not new in Fiji; it existed even before the arrival of the Indo-Fijians as indentured labourers. Its genesis can be traced as far back to the so-called ‘Bau Constitution’ of the 19th Century which vainly tried to impose constitutional solutions to Fiji’s intricate racial, tribal, and provincial problems.
Coups, counter coups and ‘Bau Constitution’ - The Cakobau Government
According to the records of the colonial government’s archivist, A. I. Diamond (reproduced below), the advent of Europeans resulted in a marked increase in the extent and ferocity of native warfare. Towards 1850, power and influence in Fiji were beginning to centre on the chiefdoms of Bau, Rewa, Somosomo, Verata, Naitasiri, Macuata, Bua and Lakeba. Of these Bau was undoubtedly the most powerful, her chiefs having extended their influence by means of warfare, intrigue, and judicious alliances over nearly one-third of Fiji. By 1850, Cakobau had achieved a position so near to paramountcy that foreigners had begun to address him as Tui Viti (King of Fiji). Cakobau’s claim to the title was not generally recognised by Fijians outside his own dominions, and it would scarcely merit mention here were it not for the fact that it brought him later into conflict with the United States government. In 1855, the latter had brought indemnity claims against him for damage and loss of property said to have been sustained by Americans at the hands of the Fijians.
Although Cakobau himself was not personally responsible with the incidents on which the claims were based, the US government insisted that as King of Fiji, he was responsible for the actions of his subjects. The claims amounted in the end to over $45,000 (dollars), a sum which Cakobau could not hope to raise by himself, and as they were pressed with the threat of warlike reprisals the Vunivalu found himself in circumstances which could lead to his downfall.To add to his difficulties, Cakobau began to find his supremacy threatened after 1855 by the rise to power of Ma’afu. The latter, a Tongan war chief, had come to Fiji with his retainers in 1848, thirty-one years before the introduction of Indian indentured labourers to Fiji. After aiding Cakobau in a campaign against the chiefs of Rewa and their allies, Ma’afu had established himself in Lau. From there he began to extend his influence into other parts of the Group until by 1865 he controlled Beqa and large parts of the western coasts of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Cakobau watched his rival’s activities with increasing alarm, seeing in them preparations for his own eventual subversion and overthrow. Harassed by these difficulties, Cakobau turned for advice to the British Consul, William Thomas Pritchard, who responded by urging him to offer Fiji to Great Britain. Though Cakobau had no authority to make such an offer, he in his extremity, agreed and a formal Deed of Cession was drawn up on 12 October 1858, offering Fiji to the British government on certain conditions, including the payment of the American claims in return for a conveyance of 200,000 acres of land to the British crown.
The offer was subsequently acknowledged, ratified and renewed by the Fijian chiefs on 14 December 1859. The Deed of Cession was taken to England for presentation by Pritchard himself who made vigorous efforts on arrival to ensure that the offer was favourably received. After some delay, the British government despatched a Colonel W.G. Smythe to Fiji to investigate and report on the expediency of annexation. Smythe’s report, however, was unfavourable, and in 1862 the Government of New South Wales in Australia was instructed by the British authorities to inform Cakobau and his supporters that the offer of cession had been declined. Shortly after this refusal Cakobau repeated the offer to the United States government. The latter, however, being engaged at the time in Civil War, sent no reply. Between 1865 and 1871 several attempts were made to introduce a measure of political stability into Fiji by means of Confederations, but for various reasons, more especially the inexperience and mutual suspicion and hostility of the leading chiefs, none of the Confederacies succeeded. In 1865 Cakobau and Ma’afu were persuaded to co-operate in the establishment of a Confederacy of the six most powerful native dominions in Fiji; these being Bau, Rewa, Lakeba, Bua, Cakaudrove, and Macuata.
The chieftains of the six, claiming to speak for the whole of Fiji, constituted themselves a General Assembly with power to legislate for a code of laws which was to be effective throughout Fiji. The members states were to retain their sovereignty, but each agreed to observe the common code of laws and to unite for the preservation of peace and order. The Confederation was inaugurated on 8 May 1865 under the Presidency of Cakobau. Much hope was entertained for the success of the venture and for the first two years it functioned well enough. But in 1867, when Ma’afu began to canvas support for himself as President of the Assembly, Cakobau and several of the leading Fijian chiefs withdrew and the Confederacy collapsed. Upon the failure of the 1865 Confederation, Ma’afu and Cakobau immediately set up institutions for the control of their own spheres of influence. Ma’afu, with the help of his European secretary, R. S. Swanston, induced the chiefs of Lau, Cakaudrove and Bua to combine under his leadership in a Confederation (the Tovata i Viti or Tovata i Lau), similar in character to the Confederation of1865. At the same time, Cakobau, urged on by the European settlers at Levuka, adopted for his own dominion the form of a European monarchy modelled on the Hawaiian Constitution.
The latter is of particular interest as it afterwards formed the basis of theso-called Cakobau Government of 1871. The Lau Confederation, under Ma’afu’s direction was moderately successful and held together until 1871. Ma’afu later assuming the title of Tui Lau. The Bau monarchy, however, collapsed within a year mainly as a result of internal dissension and lack of revenues. In 1869, an attempt was made to re-instate it under a revised constitution but it failed almost immediately and for the same reasons as its predecessor. The huge influx of White settlers during the cotton boom of the 1860s brought with it a corresponding increase in the need for stable and unified government. Hitherto the British, American and German consuls, supported by occasional visits from warships, had managed fairly effectively to protect and regulate the affairs of the European population and to mediate between their own nationals and the Fijians.
The competency of the Consuls, however, was limited and by 1870 it was clear that if the lives and property of the settlers and the interests of the natives themselves were to be secured a local government would have to be established with legislative authority over the whole of Fiji and coercive power sufficient to keep the peace and enforce the law.
Fiji’s first coup
Although most of the settlers were agreed in principle on the need for such a government, constant dispute between the various sections of the European population made concerted action difficult. In the end, the ‘national’ government was established by means of a coup. In the early months of 1871, a group of Levuka businessmen formed a conspiracy and approached Cakobau in secret with a proposal that he place himself at the head of a Government claiming sovereignty over the whole of Fiji. The attempt could easily have ended, like others before it, in a fiasco. This one, however, came as a complete surprise and was, moreover, well-timed. Cakobau was occupied in the successful conclusion of a campaign against the Lovoni people on the island of Ovalau. Thus not only was his prestige enhanced but that victory was turned to account by the penalty meted out to the Lovoni people.
The latter were expropriated and sold into servitude to white planters at the rate of £3 a head and a yearly hire of the same amount. The revenue from the 'hire’ of Lovoni labour was considerable and as it was placed at the disposal of the new Government the latter began, unlike its predecessors, with at least one assured source of annual income. The proclamation of the ‘Cakobau Government’, as it has come to be known, at first raised a storm of protest among the Europeans in Levuka. But opposition was greatly reduced by the publication of a ‘Gazette’ containing among other things, an undertaking by the Executive to delay the initiation of all matters other than those of urgent public necessity until a House of Representatives had been assembled. With this assurance, the majority of the settlers were content for the time being to accept the new Government as a ‘fait accompli’ and many even lent their active support to it.It was obvious to most, however, that the future of the Government depended heavily upon the reaction of Ma’afu. Ma’afu was not only the leader of a powerful alliance of chiefs, but could easily, if he chose, set himself up as the champion of the dissident elements among the Europeans.
But surprisingly enough Ma’afu offered no resistance to the coup and even agreed to co-operate with the new Government. On 22 July he visited Levuka and, in the course of discussions with Cakobau lasting two days, acknowledged him as Tui Viti, took the oath of allegiance and abandoned all territorial claims outside Lau, the seat of his power. In return he was made Viceroy of Lau with salary of £800 and was given a clear title to the islands of Moala, Matuku and Totoya. The acquiescence of Ma’afu effectively disposed of the threat of serious resistance from the native Fijians and by the end of the year all the ruling chiefs had tendered their allegiance to Cakobau.
The ‘Bau Constitution’
The first Gazette, issued by the new Government on 5 June 1871, gave notice that Cakobau, Tui Viti, had been pleased under the Bau Constitution to appoint an Executive (mostly Europeans) consisting of the following: Sydney Charles Burt, George Austin Woods, John Temple Sagar, James Cobham Smith, Gustavas Hennings, and Ratu Savenaca and Ratu Timoci. Government Gazette No.2, published on 10 June 1871, contained explanations of the main causes which had led to the appointment of the Executive.
These were three: (a) the largely increasing European population, (b)the growing want of confidence in commercial matters, and (c) the hesitation of merchants and financial interests in the colonies to deal with investments in Fiji until a form of government should be adopted. The Gazette also gave notice that delegates from all the districts in Fiji had been summoned to meet at Levuka on 1 August to discuss and amend the Constitution of 1867. The House of Delegates met under the chairmanship of J.S. Butters, the former mayor of Melbourne and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, and after two weeks deliberation, passed the Constitution Act of Fiji, 1871. This Act was signed by Cakobau on 18 August and came into force on the 1 October. The first Parliament of the Cakobau Government was opened by Cakobau on 3 November 1871. It sat until the 17 December, having passed about 20 ‘Bills’.
The Second Coup Attempt
By March 1872 there was evidence of growing distrust of, and lack of confidence in, the Government. Much jealousy was displayed over ministerial and public service appointments, and there was widespread complaint at what was described as ‘the absurd attitudes and arrogant bearing’ adopted by certain Ministers towards the public. The task of the Cakobau Government was further hampered by the effects of an economic recession resulting from the collapse of the market for ‘sea-island’ cotton. Many of the white settlers suddenly found themselves in acute financial distress and resistance to taxation increased. Revolutionary movements became active and on one occasionan armed insurrection inspired by an organisation calling itself the ‘Ku-Klux-Klan’ very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Government. The fact that the Government survived this threat largely as a result of assistance offered by a British man-of-war did little to enhance its stature in the eyes of the public. Resistance to the Government at length resolved itself into a demand for the dissolution of the Assembly, the holding of a new election, and the dismissal of the Premier, S.C. Burt. On 18 March the Cakobau government yielded and Burt resigned. Cakobau invited J.B.Thurston, a white Tavenui planter and one of the members of the Legislative Assembly for Tavenui district, to join the Government and the latter, upon accepting the invitation, acted as Premier in the absence of G.A. Woods, who was originally chosen for the post but who was away in Australia at the time.
The third and last session of the Legislative Assembly sat between 31 May and 12 June 1873. The principal business set down was the amendment of the Constitution Act of 1871, the operation of which had been found too expensive and cumbersome. Of the 28 members of the Assembly, only 14 attended, and of these only 5 were minority, the Government were defeated and the Cabinet accordingly resigned. Cakobau, however, declined to accept, and instead issued a Proclamation dissolving the Assembly. The Assembly never sat again and thereafter administration continued under Ministerial direction until the establishment of an Interim Government on 23 March 1874.
A general election was due to be held in 1873; but at a meeting of the King-in-Council held on 29 July 1873, at Nasova, Levuka, it was resolved that the arrangements for the election should be abolished. On 11 July 1873 Cakobau appointed a RoyalCommission to revise, consolidate and amend the laws. The Commission drew up the so-called ‘National Constitution and Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom of Fiji, 1873’, and though it received the assent of Cakobau it was never adopted, owing largely to the opposition of Commodore Goodenough and the British Consul, E.L. Layard. Throughout 1872 and 1873 resistance to the Cakobau Government, particularly on the part of the Europeans, increased. In Ba, the settlers staged a revolt and again the Government found itself obliged to accept the intervention of a British warship. By the middle of 1873 the administration was facing bankruptcy and it was clear even to its supporters that the regime could not last. Responsible elements among the European community began to press for cession of Fiji to Great Britain or the United States.
The Cession of Fiji to Great Britain
On 17 March 1874, the British Consul gave warning in a public notice that the Cakobau Government was bankrupt and cautioned all British subjects against allowing the Government further credit. The notice further declared that British subjects accepting or retaining official posts in the Armed Constabulary were liable to prosecution under the UK Foreign Enlistment Act. The Consul’s action practically put an end to the attempt at self-government, and the newly formed Ministry strongly advised Cakobau to reconsider the question of annexation by Great Britain. A meeting of the leading Fijian chiefs was held in March, and the 21st of that month a formal offer of cession was made to the Commissioners who communicated it to the Imperial government in London.
At the meeting, held at Levuka on 23 March 1874, attended by the Commissioners, Cakobau and other high chiefs, the foreign Consuls, the Chief Secretary Thurston and the Chief Justice (St Julian), it was resolved that an Interim Government should be established to carry on the administration of Fiji pending a decision by the Imperial government on the subject of annexation.The offer of cession made on 21 March,contained terms which proved unacceptable to the British government and as a result, Sir Hercules Robinson, then Governor of New South Wales, was despatched to Fiji in September 1874, to negotiate. On 30 September Robinson telegraphed Lord Carnarvon in London: ‘The King (Thakombau) has this day signed an unconditional cession of the country. I am leaving today on a tour to obtain the signature of Ma’afu and other ruling Chiefs’. His mission was successful and on 10 October Cakobau, Ma’afu and other principal chiefs ceded the sovereignty of Fiji to Great Britain. Upon the conclusion of the Deed of Cession, Sir Hercules Robinson established a Provisional Government to carry on administration until the arrival of the Governor and the Proclamation of the Colony.
The administration of the Provisional Government terminated on the 1 September 1875, with the proclamation of the Royal Charter erecting Fiji into a separate Colony and with the assumption of office of the first resident Governor, Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the man responsible for introducing Indian indentured labourers into Fiji in 1879. Gordon was safeguarding the Fijian population as they were still struggling to fight off an epidemic of measles in 1875 which had killed about 40,000 of the estimated population of 150,000 Fijians. The epidemic occurred after Cakobau and his two sons, who had contracted mild cases of measles during their return voyage from a visit to Sydney, were allowed to land in Fiji before they had completely recovered. Responsibility for the disaster rested with the captain and medical officer of H.M.S Dido. They failed to impress upon E.L. Layard, the British consul for Fiji and Tonga, the serious consequences that might result from failure to place the patients in quarantine.
The Deed of Cession
King Cakobau had sent Queen Victoria a basket of earth to symbolise the handing over of the land of Fiji and his oldest and favourite war club. This latter item was later returned to Fiji by King George V where, topped with a silver crown and a dove of peace, it became the mace of the Legislative Council and subsequent Parliaments of Fiji. The Deed of Cession has been regarded as the charter of Fijians indigenous rights. It has been appropriated by Fijians of different political persuasions for different purposes. It is worth remembering that it was mostly the eastern chiefs who had made an unconditional cession of their islands to Great Britain. As Governor Sir Ronald Garvey noted in his Cession Day’s speech in 1957, ‘to read into the Deed more than that, to suggest, for instance, that the rights and interests of the Fijians should predominate over everything else, does not service either to the Fijian people or to their country’.
The adoption of that view, Sir Ronald continued, ‘would mean complete protection and no-self-respecting individual race wants that because, ultimately, it means that those subject to it will end up as museum pieces’. The late Ratu William Toganivalu, a high chief and Cabinet Minister in the Alliance Government, had argued in the House of Representatives in June 1970: ‘There was nothing in the Deed of Cession to say that when England was to hand over Fiji that it was to hand it over holus-bolus to the Fijian people and to the Fijian people alone. There was nothing whatsoever written in it and as the Fijian chiefs gave Fiji unreservedly to Great Britain, my interpretation is that if Great Britain wants to give it back she gives it back in the condition which she finds it. It does not necessarily mean that she should give it back to the Fijian people.'
The late Ratu Sir George Cakobau, on the other hand, had demanded: ‘I have nothing against independence. Let it come. But when it comes, I should like this recorded in this House-Let the British government return Fiji to Fijians in the state and same spirit with which Fijians gave Fiji to Great Britain.’
Ratu Sir George Cakobau
As the great-grandson of Ratu Seru Cakobau, the late Ratu George Cakobau was paramount chief of Fiji and the first Fijian to hold the post of Governor-General in post-independent Fiji. On 18 September 1959 he was formally invested as Vunivalu and Tui Kaba in front of more than 3000 people at Bau. The dignity and restrained emotion of the occasion emphasised its historic significance. Not for 106 years had the impressive ceremony been performed. The ceremony thus became linked with 26 July 1853, when Ratu Cakobau, later Tui Viti - Ratu George’s great grandfather- was installed. The keynote of the ceremony was set when Ratu Edward Tugi Tuivanuavou Cakobau, Ratu George’s first cousin, presented him with a tabua, pledging the Bau people’s loyalty and the loyalty of all those associated with Bau.
When the coups of 1987 made world headlines, Ratu George had been retired three years from the gubernatorial role. Efforts by followers of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s government, which had been overthrown by Sitiveni Rabuka, to solicit Ratu George’s aid in the complicated events, which split the two major races and divided families and tribes, proved unsuccessful. He however denounced Rabuka’s threats to remove his successor Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau as governor-general and impose a republic. Earlier, however, he had received Bavadra and his ministerial colleagues at the chiefly island of Bau. He indicated his support for the new inter-racial government and for the western Fijians or Melanesian Fiji and distanced himself from their traditional rivals in the Polynesian east.
This was, as Kenneth Bain wrote on Ratu Cakobau’s death, ‘the classic Fijian dynastic divide’. As Vunivalu of Fiji, Ratu George’s supremacy had never been dangerously challenged and his ancestry gave him a prime say in Fijian affairs. During the disturbances of 1959 in Suva, he warned the rioting and looting crowd who had assembled for a public meeting at Albert Park in Suva: ‘I do not want to stop your meeting. I want to speak of the damage you have done. You are not young and you know right from wrong. But whatever you do, remember the name of Fiji. The reputation of the Fijians is up to you. That is all.’
On Fiji’s independence in 1970 Ratu George was Minister for Fijian Affairs. In 1977 his statesmanship saved the political career of the first Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara on the defeat of his predominantly Alliance Party at the hands of the National Federation Party. He asked Ratu Mara to re-form a government which was to last until the latter’s second and serious defeat in 1987, prompting military intervention in Fiji’s politics. He was deeply saddened to see the severance of the links with the British Crown which he had so cherished because his great-grandfather was the architect of the cession. In March 1988, however, when Ratu Mara, without apparently consulting Cakobau beforehand, set off for London and Buckingham Palace, he was outraged. The purpose of Ratu Mara’s visit was to try to persuade the Queen to retain the title of Tui Viti - Queen of Fiji- which was passed to Queen Victoria by Ratu Seru Cakobau at cession in 1874.‘The title came back to me’, Ratu George said in Bau, ‘when Fiji became independent in 1970. I have no plans to abdicate. The title is not Ratu Mara’s to give away’.
The implications for an already fragmented and divided Fijian society was far-reaching, as played out during the recent the hostage crisis.
The Mara/Cakobau Dynasty
In recent years there has been a public split between the Mara/Cakobau political and traditional dynasty. The victory of the Fiji Labour Party, the inclusion of Ratu Mara’s daughter as a Minister in Chaudhry’s government, and Ratu Mara’s elevation as President of Fiji, drove a further wedge between the Mara-Cakobau clan in Fijian politics. It was not surprising, therefore, that Speight and others hailing from the Cakobau side of the traditional clan had been baying for Mara’s political blood shortly after seizing power. Unlike the Mara family, the Cakobau family had been badly defeated at the polls. As the Daily Post pointed out on 19 May 1999, a year to the day Speight and his hoodlums seized the Chaudhry government, the Cakobau family name was not enough to muster the support of Tailevu voters as brother, sister, and cousin lost their respective seats. Members of this chiefly Bau and Tailevu family, regarded highly throughout the country, could not hold on to their voting leads, and lost out after preferences were distributed. Ratu Epenisa Cakobau, Adi Litia Cakobau’s brother, lost the Tailevu South Lomaiviti open seat to political enthusiast and Fiji Labour Party candidate Isireli Vuivau. Ratu Epenisa was among those who had formed the Fijian Association Party. However, he withdrew his support from the party after his elder sister Adi Samanunu contested the 1994 elections for the SVT. ‘Family unity is very important to me’, he had said then.
The first to concede defeat was Adi Litia Cakobau, the daughter of the late Vunivalu. She had contested the Tailevu North/Ovalau open seat, a seat which my late father, as President of the Tailevu North Alliance District Council, had actively campaigned and helped Ratu George Cakobau to win in the 1970s. Adi Litia and Ratu Epenisa had contested the elections under the SVT electoral tickets. An emotional Adi Litia attributed their loss to what she described as the other Fijian parties determination to eliminate the SVT. ‘It is really sad that the other parties had preached that we had sold out the interest of Fijians. People, the Fijians, need to understand their Constitution. The rights of the indigenous is well protected. The question they should ask is what will happen now-will they be able to get extra or special protection as given to them by the SVT.’
She noted that her loss was as a result of ‘a divided Fijian front’. Adi Litia said that the ‘vanua no longer could dictate the people’s political preference but that is democracy’. ‘The people have chosen their representatives and that is what counts’, Adi Litia said. She had also moved Sitiveni Rabuka’s name for chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs, while Ratu Tevita Vakalalabure of Cakaudrove moved her name for vice chairman.
This clearly showed that the provinces of Tailevu and Cakaudrove wanted to control the Council, especially after the SVT lost power in the general elections to the People's Coalition of Labour, Fijian Association and PANU.
History is also repeating itself. Professor Ravuvu is asking us to wait for the birth of a new Constitution. If a Constitution emerges from such a chaotic and inexpert approach, we will have a Constitution with all the attendant problems of the ‘Bau Constitution’ of the 19th Century.
COUPS and counter-coups are not new in Fiji; it existed even before the arrival of the Indo-Fijians as indentured labourers. Its genesis can be traced as far back to the so-called ‘Bau Constitution’ of the 19th Century which vainly tried to impose constitutional solutions to Fiji’s intricate racial, tribal, and provincial problems.
Coups, counter coups and ‘Bau Constitution’ - The Cakobau Government
According to the records of the colonial government’s archivist, A. I. Diamond (reproduced below), the advent of Europeans resulted in a marked increase in the extent and ferocity of native warfare. Towards 1850, power and influence in Fiji were beginning to centre on the chiefdoms of Bau, Rewa, Somosomo, Verata, Naitasiri, Macuata, Bua and Lakeba. Of these Bau was undoubtedly the most powerful, her chiefs having extended their influence by means of warfare, intrigue, and judicious alliances over nearly one-third of Fiji. By 1850, Cakobau had achieved a position so near to paramountcy that foreigners had begun to address him as Tui Viti (King of Fiji). Cakobau’s claim to the title was not generally recognised by Fijians outside his own dominions, and it would scarcely merit mention here were it not for the fact that it brought him later into conflict with the United States government. In 1855, the latter had brought indemnity claims against him for damage and loss of property said to have been sustained by Americans at the hands of the Fijians.
Although Cakobau himself was not personally responsible with the incidents on which the claims were based, the US government insisted that as King of Fiji, he was responsible for the actions of his subjects. The claims amounted in the end to over $45,000 (dollars), a sum which Cakobau could not hope to raise by himself, and as they were pressed with the threat of warlike reprisals the Vunivalu found himself in circumstances which could lead to his downfall.To add to his difficulties, Cakobau began to find his supremacy threatened after 1855 by the rise to power of Ma’afu. The latter, a Tongan war chief, had come to Fiji with his retainers in 1848, thirty-one years before the introduction of Indian indentured labourers to Fiji. After aiding Cakobau in a campaign against the chiefs of Rewa and their allies, Ma’afu had established himself in Lau. From there he began to extend his influence into other parts of the Group until by 1865 he controlled Beqa and large parts of the western coasts of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Cakobau watched his rival’s activities with increasing alarm, seeing in them preparations for his own eventual subversion and overthrow. Harassed by these difficulties, Cakobau turned for advice to the British Consul, William Thomas Pritchard, who responded by urging him to offer Fiji to Great Britain. Though Cakobau had no authority to make such an offer, he in his extremity, agreed and a formal Deed of Cession was drawn up on 12 October 1858, offering Fiji to the British government on certain conditions, including the payment of the American claims in return for a conveyance of 200,000 acres of land to the British crown.
The offer was subsequently acknowledged, ratified and renewed by the Fijian chiefs on 14 December 1859. The Deed of Cession was taken to England for presentation by Pritchard himself who made vigorous efforts on arrival to ensure that the offer was favourably received. After some delay, the British government despatched a Colonel W.G. Smythe to Fiji to investigate and report on the expediency of annexation. Smythe’s report, however, was unfavourable, and in 1862 the Government of New South Wales in Australia was instructed by the British authorities to inform Cakobau and his supporters that the offer of cession had been declined. Shortly after this refusal Cakobau repeated the offer to the United States government. The latter, however, being engaged at the time in Civil War, sent no reply. Between 1865 and 1871 several attempts were made to introduce a measure of political stability into Fiji by means of Confederations, but for various reasons, more especially the inexperience and mutual suspicion and hostility of the leading chiefs, none of the Confederacies succeeded. In 1865 Cakobau and Ma’afu were persuaded to co-operate in the establishment of a Confederacy of the six most powerful native dominions in Fiji; these being Bau, Rewa, Lakeba, Bua, Cakaudrove, and Macuata.
The chieftains of the six, claiming to speak for the whole of Fiji, constituted themselves a General Assembly with power to legislate for a code of laws which was to be effective throughout Fiji. The members states were to retain their sovereignty, but each agreed to observe the common code of laws and to unite for the preservation of peace and order. The Confederation was inaugurated on 8 May 1865 under the Presidency of Cakobau. Much hope was entertained for the success of the venture and for the first two years it functioned well enough. But in 1867, when Ma’afu began to canvas support for himself as President of the Assembly, Cakobau and several of the leading Fijian chiefs withdrew and the Confederacy collapsed. Upon the failure of the 1865 Confederation, Ma’afu and Cakobau immediately set up institutions for the control of their own spheres of influence. Ma’afu, with the help of his European secretary, R. S. Swanston, induced the chiefs of Lau, Cakaudrove and Bua to combine under his leadership in a Confederation (the Tovata i Viti or Tovata i Lau), similar in character to the Confederation of1865. At the same time, Cakobau, urged on by the European settlers at Levuka, adopted for his own dominion the form of a European monarchy modelled on the Hawaiian Constitution.
The latter is of particular interest as it afterwards formed the basis of theso-called Cakobau Government of 1871. The Lau Confederation, under Ma’afu’s direction was moderately successful and held together until 1871. Ma’afu later assuming the title of Tui Lau. The Bau monarchy, however, collapsed within a year mainly as a result of internal dissension and lack of revenues. In 1869, an attempt was made to re-instate it under a revised constitution but it failed almost immediately and for the same reasons as its predecessor. The huge influx of White settlers during the cotton boom of the 1860s brought with it a corresponding increase in the need for stable and unified government. Hitherto the British, American and German consuls, supported by occasional visits from warships, had managed fairly effectively to protect and regulate the affairs of the European population and to mediate between their own nationals and the Fijians.
The competency of the Consuls, however, was limited and by 1870 it was clear that if the lives and property of the settlers and the interests of the natives themselves were to be secured a local government would have to be established with legislative authority over the whole of Fiji and coercive power sufficient to keep the peace and enforce the law.
Fiji’s first coup
Although most of the settlers were agreed in principle on the need for such a government, constant dispute between the various sections of the European population made concerted action difficult. In the end, the ‘national’ government was established by means of a coup. In the early months of 1871, a group of Levuka businessmen formed a conspiracy and approached Cakobau in secret with a proposal that he place himself at the head of a Government claiming sovereignty over the whole of Fiji. The attempt could easily have ended, like others before it, in a fiasco. This one, however, came as a complete surprise and was, moreover, well-timed. Cakobau was occupied in the successful conclusion of a campaign against the Lovoni people on the island of Ovalau. Thus not only was his prestige enhanced but that victory was turned to account by the penalty meted out to the Lovoni people.
The latter were expropriated and sold into servitude to white planters at the rate of £3 a head and a yearly hire of the same amount. The revenue from the 'hire’ of Lovoni labour was considerable and as it was placed at the disposal of the new Government the latter began, unlike its predecessors, with at least one assured source of annual income. The proclamation of the ‘Cakobau Government’, as it has come to be known, at first raised a storm of protest among the Europeans in Levuka. But opposition was greatly reduced by the publication of a ‘Gazette’ containing among other things, an undertaking by the Executive to delay the initiation of all matters other than those of urgent public necessity until a House of Representatives had been assembled. With this assurance, the majority of the settlers were content for the time being to accept the new Government as a ‘fait accompli’ and many even lent their active support to it.It was obvious to most, however, that the future of the Government depended heavily upon the reaction of Ma’afu. Ma’afu was not only the leader of a powerful alliance of chiefs, but could easily, if he chose, set himself up as the champion of the dissident elements among the Europeans.
But surprisingly enough Ma’afu offered no resistance to the coup and even agreed to co-operate with the new Government. On 22 July he visited Levuka and, in the course of discussions with Cakobau lasting two days, acknowledged him as Tui Viti, took the oath of allegiance and abandoned all territorial claims outside Lau, the seat of his power. In return he was made Viceroy of Lau with salary of £800 and was given a clear title to the islands of Moala, Matuku and Totoya. The acquiescence of Ma’afu effectively disposed of the threat of serious resistance from the native Fijians and by the end of the year all the ruling chiefs had tendered their allegiance to Cakobau.
The ‘Bau Constitution’
The first Gazette, issued by the new Government on 5 June 1871, gave notice that Cakobau, Tui Viti, had been pleased under the Bau Constitution to appoint an Executive (mostly Europeans) consisting of the following: Sydney Charles Burt, George Austin Woods, John Temple Sagar, James Cobham Smith, Gustavas Hennings, and Ratu Savenaca and Ratu Timoci. Government Gazette No.2, published on 10 June 1871, contained explanations of the main causes which had led to the appointment of the Executive.
These were three: (a) the largely increasing European population, (b)the growing want of confidence in commercial matters, and (c) the hesitation of merchants and financial interests in the colonies to deal with investments in Fiji until a form of government should be adopted. The Gazette also gave notice that delegates from all the districts in Fiji had been summoned to meet at Levuka on 1 August to discuss and amend the Constitution of 1867. The House of Delegates met under the chairmanship of J.S. Butters, the former mayor of Melbourne and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, and after two weeks deliberation, passed the Constitution Act of Fiji, 1871. This Act was signed by Cakobau on 18 August and came into force on the 1 October. The first Parliament of the Cakobau Government was opened by Cakobau on 3 November 1871. It sat until the 17 December, having passed about 20 ‘Bills’.
The Second Coup Attempt
By March 1872 there was evidence of growing distrust of, and lack of confidence in, the Government. Much jealousy was displayed over ministerial and public service appointments, and there was widespread complaint at what was described as ‘the absurd attitudes and arrogant bearing’ adopted by certain Ministers towards the public. The task of the Cakobau Government was further hampered by the effects of an economic recession resulting from the collapse of the market for ‘sea-island’ cotton. Many of the white settlers suddenly found themselves in acute financial distress and resistance to taxation increased. Revolutionary movements became active and on one occasionan armed insurrection inspired by an organisation calling itself the ‘Ku-Klux-Klan’ very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Government. The fact that the Government survived this threat largely as a result of assistance offered by a British man-of-war did little to enhance its stature in the eyes of the public. Resistance to the Government at length resolved itself into a demand for the dissolution of the Assembly, the holding of a new election, and the dismissal of the Premier, S.C. Burt. On 18 March the Cakobau government yielded and Burt resigned. Cakobau invited J.B.Thurston, a white Tavenui planter and one of the members of the Legislative Assembly for Tavenui district, to join the Government and the latter, upon accepting the invitation, acted as Premier in the absence of G.A. Woods, who was originally chosen for the post but who was away in Australia at the time.
The third and last session of the Legislative Assembly sat between 31 May and 12 June 1873. The principal business set down was the amendment of the Constitution Act of 1871, the operation of which had been found too expensive and cumbersome. Of the 28 members of the Assembly, only 14 attended, and of these only 5 were minority, the Government were defeated and the Cabinet accordingly resigned. Cakobau, however, declined to accept, and instead issued a Proclamation dissolving the Assembly. The Assembly never sat again and thereafter administration continued under Ministerial direction until the establishment of an Interim Government on 23 March 1874.
A general election was due to be held in 1873; but at a meeting of the King-in-Council held on 29 July 1873, at Nasova, Levuka, it was resolved that the arrangements for the election should be abolished. On 11 July 1873 Cakobau appointed a RoyalCommission to revise, consolidate and amend the laws. The Commission drew up the so-called ‘National Constitution and Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom of Fiji, 1873’, and though it received the assent of Cakobau it was never adopted, owing largely to the opposition of Commodore Goodenough and the British Consul, E.L. Layard. Throughout 1872 and 1873 resistance to the Cakobau Government, particularly on the part of the Europeans, increased. In Ba, the settlers staged a revolt and again the Government found itself obliged to accept the intervention of a British warship. By the middle of 1873 the administration was facing bankruptcy and it was clear even to its supporters that the regime could not last. Responsible elements among the European community began to press for cession of Fiji to Great Britain or the United States.
The Cession of Fiji to Great Britain
On 17 March 1874, the British Consul gave warning in a public notice that the Cakobau Government was bankrupt and cautioned all British subjects against allowing the Government further credit. The notice further declared that British subjects accepting or retaining official posts in the Armed Constabulary were liable to prosecution under the UK Foreign Enlistment Act. The Consul’s action practically put an end to the attempt at self-government, and the newly formed Ministry strongly advised Cakobau to reconsider the question of annexation by Great Britain. A meeting of the leading Fijian chiefs was held in March, and the 21st of that month a formal offer of cession was made to the Commissioners who communicated it to the Imperial government in London.
At the meeting, held at Levuka on 23 March 1874, attended by the Commissioners, Cakobau and other high chiefs, the foreign Consuls, the Chief Secretary Thurston and the Chief Justice (St Julian), it was resolved that an Interim Government should be established to carry on the administration of Fiji pending a decision by the Imperial government on the subject of annexation.The offer of cession made on 21 March,contained terms which proved unacceptable to the British government and as a result, Sir Hercules Robinson, then Governor of New South Wales, was despatched to Fiji in September 1874, to negotiate. On 30 September Robinson telegraphed Lord Carnarvon in London: ‘The King (Thakombau) has this day signed an unconditional cession of the country. I am leaving today on a tour to obtain the signature of Ma’afu and other ruling Chiefs’. His mission was successful and on 10 October Cakobau, Ma’afu and other principal chiefs ceded the sovereignty of Fiji to Great Britain. Upon the conclusion of the Deed of Cession, Sir Hercules Robinson established a Provisional Government to carry on administration until the arrival of the Governor and the Proclamation of the Colony.
The administration of the Provisional Government terminated on the 1 September 1875, with the proclamation of the Royal Charter erecting Fiji into a separate Colony and with the assumption of office of the first resident Governor, Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the man responsible for introducing Indian indentured labourers into Fiji in 1879. Gordon was safeguarding the Fijian population as they were still struggling to fight off an epidemic of measles in 1875 which had killed about 40,000 of the estimated population of 150,000 Fijians. The epidemic occurred after Cakobau and his two sons, who had contracted mild cases of measles during their return voyage from a visit to Sydney, were allowed to land in Fiji before they had completely recovered. Responsibility for the disaster rested with the captain and medical officer of H.M.S Dido. They failed to impress upon E.L. Layard, the British consul for Fiji and Tonga, the serious consequences that might result from failure to place the patients in quarantine.
The Deed of Cession
King Cakobau had sent Queen Victoria a basket of earth to symbolise the handing over of the land of Fiji and his oldest and favourite war club. This latter item was later returned to Fiji by King George V where, topped with a silver crown and a dove of peace, it became the mace of the Legislative Council and subsequent Parliaments of Fiji. The Deed of Cession has been regarded as the charter of Fijians indigenous rights. It has been appropriated by Fijians of different political persuasions for different purposes. It is worth remembering that it was mostly the eastern chiefs who had made an unconditional cession of their islands to Great Britain. As Governor Sir Ronald Garvey noted in his Cession Day’s speech in 1957, ‘to read into the Deed more than that, to suggest, for instance, that the rights and interests of the Fijians should predominate over everything else, does not service either to the Fijian people or to their country’.
The adoption of that view, Sir Ronald continued, ‘would mean complete protection and no-self-respecting individual race wants that because, ultimately, it means that those subject to it will end up as museum pieces’. The late Ratu William Toganivalu, a high chief and Cabinet Minister in the Alliance Government, had argued in the House of Representatives in June 1970: ‘There was nothing in the Deed of Cession to say that when England was to hand over Fiji that it was to hand it over holus-bolus to the Fijian people and to the Fijian people alone. There was nothing whatsoever written in it and as the Fijian chiefs gave Fiji unreservedly to Great Britain, my interpretation is that if Great Britain wants to give it back she gives it back in the condition which she finds it. It does not necessarily mean that she should give it back to the Fijian people.'
The late Ratu Sir George Cakobau, on the other hand, had demanded: ‘I have nothing against independence. Let it come. But when it comes, I should like this recorded in this House-Let the British government return Fiji to Fijians in the state and same spirit with which Fijians gave Fiji to Great Britain.’
Ratu Sir George Cakobau
As the great-grandson of Ratu Seru Cakobau, the late Ratu George Cakobau was paramount chief of Fiji and the first Fijian to hold the post of Governor-General in post-independent Fiji. On 18 September 1959 he was formally invested as Vunivalu and Tui Kaba in front of more than 3000 people at Bau. The dignity and restrained emotion of the occasion emphasised its historic significance. Not for 106 years had the impressive ceremony been performed. The ceremony thus became linked with 26 July 1853, when Ratu Cakobau, later Tui Viti - Ratu George’s great grandfather- was installed. The keynote of the ceremony was set when Ratu Edward Tugi Tuivanuavou Cakobau, Ratu George’s first cousin, presented him with a tabua, pledging the Bau people’s loyalty and the loyalty of all those associated with Bau.
When the coups of 1987 made world headlines, Ratu George had been retired three years from the gubernatorial role. Efforts by followers of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s government, which had been overthrown by Sitiveni Rabuka, to solicit Ratu George’s aid in the complicated events, which split the two major races and divided families and tribes, proved unsuccessful. He however denounced Rabuka’s threats to remove his successor Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau as governor-general and impose a republic. Earlier, however, he had received Bavadra and his ministerial colleagues at the chiefly island of Bau. He indicated his support for the new inter-racial government and for the western Fijians or Melanesian Fiji and distanced himself from their traditional rivals in the Polynesian east.
This was, as Kenneth Bain wrote on Ratu Cakobau’s death, ‘the classic Fijian dynastic divide’. As Vunivalu of Fiji, Ratu George’s supremacy had never been dangerously challenged and his ancestry gave him a prime say in Fijian affairs. During the disturbances of 1959 in Suva, he warned the rioting and looting crowd who had assembled for a public meeting at Albert Park in Suva: ‘I do not want to stop your meeting. I want to speak of the damage you have done. You are not young and you know right from wrong. But whatever you do, remember the name of Fiji. The reputation of the Fijians is up to you. That is all.’
On Fiji’s independence in 1970 Ratu George was Minister for Fijian Affairs. In 1977 his statesmanship saved the political career of the first Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara on the defeat of his predominantly Alliance Party at the hands of the National Federation Party. He asked Ratu Mara to re-form a government which was to last until the latter’s second and serious defeat in 1987, prompting military intervention in Fiji’s politics. He was deeply saddened to see the severance of the links with the British Crown which he had so cherished because his great-grandfather was the architect of the cession. In March 1988, however, when Ratu Mara, without apparently consulting Cakobau beforehand, set off for London and Buckingham Palace, he was outraged. The purpose of Ratu Mara’s visit was to try to persuade the Queen to retain the title of Tui Viti - Queen of Fiji- which was passed to Queen Victoria by Ratu Seru Cakobau at cession in 1874.‘The title came back to me’, Ratu George said in Bau, ‘when Fiji became independent in 1970. I have no plans to abdicate. The title is not Ratu Mara’s to give away’.
The implications for an already fragmented and divided Fijian society was far-reaching, as played out during the recent the hostage crisis.
The Mara/Cakobau Dynasty
In recent years there has been a public split between the Mara/Cakobau political and traditional dynasty. The victory of the Fiji Labour Party, the inclusion of Ratu Mara’s daughter as a Minister in Chaudhry’s government, and Ratu Mara’s elevation as President of Fiji, drove a further wedge between the Mara-Cakobau clan in Fijian politics. It was not surprising, therefore, that Speight and others hailing from the Cakobau side of the traditional clan had been baying for Mara’s political blood shortly after seizing power. Unlike the Mara family, the Cakobau family had been badly defeated at the polls. As the Daily Post pointed out on 19 May 1999, a year to the day Speight and his hoodlums seized the Chaudhry government, the Cakobau family name was not enough to muster the support of Tailevu voters as brother, sister, and cousin lost their respective seats. Members of this chiefly Bau and Tailevu family, regarded highly throughout the country, could not hold on to their voting leads, and lost out after preferences were distributed. Ratu Epenisa Cakobau, Adi Litia Cakobau’s brother, lost the Tailevu South Lomaiviti open seat to political enthusiast and Fiji Labour Party candidate Isireli Vuivau. Ratu Epenisa was among those who had formed the Fijian Association Party. However, he withdrew his support from the party after his elder sister Adi Samanunu contested the 1994 elections for the SVT. ‘Family unity is very important to me’, he had said then.
The first to concede defeat was Adi Litia Cakobau, the daughter of the late Vunivalu. She had contested the Tailevu North/Ovalau open seat, a seat which my late father, as President of the Tailevu North Alliance District Council, had actively campaigned and helped Ratu George Cakobau to win in the 1970s. Adi Litia and Ratu Epenisa had contested the elections under the SVT electoral tickets. An emotional Adi Litia attributed their loss to what she described as the other Fijian parties determination to eliminate the SVT. ‘It is really sad that the other parties had preached that we had sold out the interest of Fijians. People, the Fijians, need to understand their Constitution. The rights of the indigenous is well protected. The question they should ask is what will happen now-will they be able to get extra or special protection as given to them by the SVT.’
She noted that her loss was as a result of ‘a divided Fijian front’. Adi Litia said that the ‘vanua no longer could dictate the people’s political preference but that is democracy’. ‘The people have chosen their representatives and that is what counts’, Adi Litia said. She had also moved Sitiveni Rabuka’s name for chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs, while Ratu Tevita Vakalalabure of Cakaudrove moved her name for vice chairman.
This clearly showed that the provinces of Tailevu and Cakaudrove wanted to control the Council, especially after the SVT lost power in the general elections to the People's Coalition of Labour, Fijian Association and PANU.
History is also repeating itself. Professor Ravuvu is asking us to wait for the birth of a new Constitution. If a Constitution emerges from such a chaotic and inexpert approach, we will have a Constitution with all the attendant problems of the ‘Bau Constitution’ of the 19th Century.
Fijileaks: Our current Founding Editor-in-Chief is still considering requests from our readers to resume his own Opinion and Analysis Column. For nearly three decades he was a regular contributor in the Fijian newspapers on various topics of historical and current interests
"Rotuma has been politically affiliated with Fiji for more than a century, first as a British colony and since 1970 as part of the independent nation. Rotuma’s people who have Fiji citizenship are, however, culturally and linguistically distinct, having strong historic relationships with Tonga, Samoa, and other Polynesian islands rather than with the Fijians. In the 1840s both Roman Catholics and Wesleyans established missions on the island. Conflicts between the two groups, fuelled by previous political rivalries among the Rotuman chiefs resulted in hostilities that led the local chiefs in 1879 to ask Great Britain to annex the island group. Like Fiji, Rotuma was directly ceded to Great Britain by a separate Deed of Cession in the year 1881, on the 13th day of May. It was enjoined by the British to Fiji for administrative purposes. However, the Rotuman people never had any intention of becoming part of Fiji or a colony of Fiji, as a petition by seven Rotuman chiefs in 1970 to the then Governor-General of Fiji, Sir Robert Foster, clearly reveals on examination. In 1970 the Rotuman delegation to the London Constitutional Conference on Fiji’s independence requested, amongst other things, a seat for Rotuma in the House of Representatives for the soon to be independent Dominion of Fiji. That Rotuma is a sovereignty is not an issue. The 1881 Deed of Cession to Great Britain is testimony to that fact. In recent years, some Rotumans have even threatened to secede from Fiji because geographically and ethnically they have little to do with the Fijians. And yet the Rotumans are repeatedly portrayed as indigenous to Fiji, and who are in need of special protection, most recently in the Interim Government’s ‘Blueprint for the Protection of Fijian and Rotuman Rights and Interests, and the Advancement of their Development.'
Victor Lal, December 2000
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