The Change Rhetoric We Simply Can’t Believe In

While democracy’s away, the vultures will play. Or as Wall Street evidently puts it “when there’s blood on the streets, buy land”.

That’s the crux of the message I got while reading the illegal Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum’s “thank you for playing with us” statement to Bob Lowres the front-man for the new land grab while you can at Naisoso Island.

It could even be argued that the recent devaluation was almost too opportune a moment to finally seal the deal. Even the Fiji Labour Party had vehement protestations about the absurdity of the devaluation stunt contrary however to the views of the Fiji Sugar Corporation.

Similarly the recent Fiji Water saga of sending 100 employees packing tints them with the same predator paintbrush who love to play with Bainimarama. After successfully overturning Chaudhry’s taking them to task on tax issues, they greased Bainimarama’s palms with his still-to-be-reported-on-disaster-management-kitty and have since been given full treasonous approval to play their water games to their hearts content.

We hope Fiji Water understands just how vulnerable strong brands can be from attacks. Especially brand attacks from the resource owners themselves.

Try as Khaiyum might to be as compelling as Obama, his call to other vultures to become an agent for change for Fiji falls flat. Through his speech he delicately ticks off those commercial entities that don’t rightfully want to play with an illegal regime.

Khaiyum has himself undergone many changes via his vocal chords. Not too long ago he was adamant that the constitution would continue to remain as the legal cornerstone of our country. Today, as any lying Treasoner would, he lauds the assassination attempt on the constitution as it paves the way for electoral reforms. Even with the illegal decree dangling the carrot of dual citizenship it will be a hard-sell for the required 100,000 citizens to give up the good life abroad, invest in Fiji and risk life and limb to help skew electoral reform results against the majority while they’re here.

Almost as if on cue, the chief shapeshifting change agent himself Bainimarama grants himself a medal along with Driti (possibly in appeasement to a whispered tantrum recently) and Mohammed Aziz. To legitimize the process they haul Iloilo in to do the cheap honours. Unsurprisingly all 3 have control over key military roles and under the guise of “humanity” participate in a cheap ploy to defend themselves soon against allegations of crimes against the humanity of Fiji.

Bainimarama’s captain of his cheerleading squad Kevin Barr is very recently tasked with a public relations exercise targeting Tonga. Barr is himself a former catholic priest cum social-worker and now apparently moonlights as a political analyst. Snort, Cough, Cough, Hack.

Other new state players eager to sink their fangs into Bainimarama's playgroup include the Sri Lankans and the Egyptians. Mahendra Chaudhry during his brief play-time with Bainimarama was also mighty nervous about interests from Dubai perhaps preferring the “strategic interests” to be those closely aligned to his point of view. American Samoa lends their featherweight hand and tries to find favour with Bainimarama if only to up the notches to the Obama administration on their regional credibility and in the process wiggle their way to a status seat at the PIF table which can never happen as they're a US territory.

Obviously right now China is the least of Australia and Aotearoa’s worries.

Anyway here’s some change Bainimarama et al better believe in. They will be out of power sooner than they think. We have the Samoan PM Tuilaepa cheering us on from Apia in that regard.