The Mercury: A snake with a taste for soy latte

REX GARDNER
MERCURY
SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 12:00AM

A soldier mans a roadblock in Suva the day after Frank Bainimarama took over in a bloodless coup in 2006. Picture: AFP

SOY latte. Nice drink, but just the thought of it leaves a bad taste.

This is the preferred brew of Fiji’s true powerbroker – a lawyer, fashion-plate, cunning strategist, smooth-talking charmer who can move like a snake in the grass.

It is not Frank Bainimarama but Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, attorney-general in the military regime who ran Fiji for the past eight years, the primary brains behind the throne.

He is not exactly loved in Fiji but curiously admired by many for plotting the sometimes nasty path for Bainimarama from a military coup in 2006 to winning last week’s election.

Bainimarama, heading the Fiji First party, is now legitimately in power. Aiyaz, who was minister in charge of the election, was comfortably voted in.

But back to soy latte.

I met Aiyaz soon after arriving in Fiji in 2008 for a second stint as general manager of the 140-year-old Fiji Times.

I was sitting with a group at a tourism convention on the patio of a beachfront hotel along the Coral Coast from Suva.

The palms swayed gently in the warm night zephyr as everyone sat around in bula shirts, relaxing after a meal.

I was introduced to Aiyaz by a mutual friend and invited him for a nightcap at our table.

“Soy latte, please,” he said.

“And maybe a nightcap, too?” I inquired.

“No, just the latte, thanks. I don’t drink.”

He wanted to meet the new Fiji Times general manager, and I was keen to meet the strategist behind the military rulers.

We had an issue to get our teeth into. Just that afternoon I had refused to run a full-page government ad in the next day’s Fiji Times that had clear errors of fact in it.

He wasn’t happy and made it clear. My response was that surely, as a lawyer, he would agree that factual errors were not acceptable.

We were not off to a great start – but I did pay for the latte.

Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, left, and Frank Bainimarama during a 2008 press conference in Suva.

Over the next few months he remained firmly on the Fiji Times’ case.

The military government, and particularly the AG, seemed obsessed with the newspaper and any criticism through its columns or letters.

The paper was the only voice of reason and balance in Fiji, taking the military government to task.

Our editor, Netani Rika, a brave Fijian, infuriated the regime by referring to it as an “interim government”.

The opposition Fiji Sun was on side with the military and sweetly rewarded with a steady flow of government advertising, even though the Fiji Times had a much higher circulation and readership.

We ran letters from all sides, many critical of the military rule, high unemployment, failing economy and lucrative jobs dispensed to military mates in the public service.

Bainimarama would phone Netani, shouting abuse and invective. He was an editor under immense pressure but, if anything, this seemed to steel him.

Some months after the first soy latte, the interim AG and I agreed to meet again, at a cafe in a busy Suva side street.

Aiyaz looked sharp in a nicely tailored shirt and trousers and designer glasses. Under his arm was the official Fiji Times dossier, bulging with articles cut from the paper since the coup: letters, highlighted headlines and captions, stories that didn’t synch in with the rulers’ communications strategy.

I shouted two soy lattes as the conversation proceeded, but there was a chasm between the paper and the politician. In a country where most acquiesced in the military rule, theFiji Times was an obstacle.

Soon after, a letter appeared on our letters page from someone in Brisbane criticising a Fiji High Court decision rejecting a case brought by the deposed prime minister and validating the Bainimarama coup.

The soy latte AG struck – like a viper!

He and the Solicitor General quickly instigated court proceedings against the editor, the general manager and the paper for contempt of court, publicly calling for the High Court to jail Netani and me for running the letter which, they claimed, asserted the judge was biased and corrupt.

Former Fiji Times general manager Rex Gardner at Sydney Airport in 2009 after having been deported from Fiji.

Our lawyer advised that we should plead guilty but emphasise there was no attempt to discredit the court.

The litigation was well-publicised and the judge saw it very much through the government prism. Down we went.

The editor was given a three-month jail term, suspended for two years. My contempt charge was dismissed, but somehow I got a 12-month good behaviour bond. The Fiji Times company was fined $100,000.

Just days later, my work permit was revoked and I was very swiftly directed to the airport. A second Fiji Times general manager in 10 months was on his way but was quickly replaced.

The noose tightened on the Fiji Times. Censors were in the newsroom every night, and a government decree had come through eliminating foreign ownership of the media. News Limited had three months to divest itself of this very proudly held newspaper.

Fiji is a land of ironies.

On my first day back at the Times in June 2008, the phone rang and, in a deep gravelly voice, the paper’s star columnist asked to drop by to say hello.

The caller? Sitiveni Rabuka, the leader of two military coups during 1987, who closed the paper for five days during the first coup and five weeks during the second. We had a friendly chat in which even he expressed misgivings about the state of things.

And, so, with Bainimarama legitimately in power, will the Fiji Military Forces fade into the background?

Last week, for the first time in months, members of the FMF marched through the streets of Suva, in an action one observer said was to remind people they are still around.

Their leader, Mosese Tikoitoga, has assured diplomatic missions in Fiji the army will operate within the constitutional democracy.

But military coups have happened with lamentable frequency in Fiji – and while love is in the air at the moment, the balance can be tipped again.

And that would be the ultimate irony.

Rex Gardner is managing director of Davies Brothers Ltd, which publishes the Mercury and Sunday Tasmanian.

Prof Wadan Narsey: The continuing myths of “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value”

Professor Wadan Narsey
11 August 2014

Over and over, one hears claims from Bainimarama supporters that Fiji now has the most democratic electoral system ever, in which Indo-Fijians are now finally “equal” to indigenous Fijians, with “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value”.

New Zealand citizen Rajendra Prasad recently enthused (Fiji Sun, 30 July 2014) that “The 1970, 1990 and 1997 Constitution advocated ethnic voting whereas the 2013 Constitution has removed this provision and every citizen of Fiji is now on one roll. The basic precept of such provision is “one person, one vote, one value” for all.   Equality and dignity of every citizen is the rallying cry of this Constitution.”

While Rajendra Prasad’s article has many outlandish claims such as the great positive impact of Bollywood and rugby on multiracial harmony in Fiji, let me focus here on his myths about the new electoral system compared to the old.

Myth 1: That all previous electoral systems were biased against Indo-Fijians
Of course, previous electoral systems had ethnic constituencies, called Fijian, Indian and Generals (not to be confused with our current military generals) and there were some small biases, mostly in favor of the Generals.

But these ethnic constituencies were created after painful compromise between the political leaders of those times, to give emotional security to indigenous Fijians, who were afraid that the numerically superior Indo-Fijian voters would dominate elections under the common roll, as they probably would have before the Indo-Fijian emigration after 1987,

But even in those years, there were also mixed constituencies called “Cross-voting” (1970 Constitution), or Open constituencies (1997 Constitution) in which all citizens could stand, and all eligible voters could vote- effectively “common rolls”.

The electoral system under the 1970 Constitution did not stop the Indo-Fijian National Federation Party (NFP) from winning in the first 1977 election, nor the Indo-Fijian Fiji Labor Party/NFP Coalition from winning in the 1987 election.  They could hardly be called biased against Indo-Fijians, although the military coups that followed them certainly were.

Let us look at the 2006 results which Bainimarama has repeatedly claimed as “ethnically biased” against Indo-Fijians, supported by similarly wild allegations from from Australian citizen Father David Arms, here in Fiji to assist an illegal government with his electoral missionary work.

The 2006 election had both ethnic and Open (Common Roll) constituencies.

Basic fact: the proportion of seats in parliament held in aggregate by the Indo-Fijian parties (FLP and NFP) was 44% and only slightly less than their share of the total votes (46%),

Basic fact: the Fijian political parties (SDL, SVT, PANU, NAP) in aggregate obtained 49% of the votes, and a slightly higher 51% of the seats.

With similar results prevailing in 1999 and 2001 under the same 1997 Electoral system, it was clearly not racially biased against Indo-Fijians at all.

Indeed, in 1999, the largest Indo-Fijian Party (the FLP) managed to win control of the Fiji Parliament, with the same Alternative Vote electoral system, until they were booted out by the military.

It is a blatant lie and sheer propaganda to keep repeating that the 1997 Electoral system was ethnically biased against Indo-Fijians.

The real unfairness of the Alternative Vote system was to smaller political parties, both Fijian (NAP, PANU, SVT) and the Indo-Fijian party (NFP) in that when they could not win more than 50% of the votes in a particular constituency, their preference votes shifted to the larger parties who benefited.

Thus the Fijian SDL had around 44% of the votes, but a much larger 52% of the seats.

Similarly, the Indo-Fijian FLP had 40% of the votes but a larger 42% of the seats.

The Bainimarama propagandists should take note that the 2013 electoral system also discriminates against smaller parties and Independents, to the benefit of the larger parties.

Myth 2: “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value” in the 2013 Electoral System
The Rajendra Prasad quote I gave earlier (also echoed by Thakur Ranjit Singh, Satendra Nandan and many others) is the rallying cry of the Bainimarama Regime.

But the 2013 Electoral system has many inequalities which negate the “1 person = 1 vote – 1 value” claim, still frequently advertised by the Elections Office.

In a strictly proportional system, each of the 50 seats in Parliament would represent roughly 2% of the votes cast, or roughly 10,000 votes.

But under the 2013 Constitution and Electoral System, successful parties and Independents MUST obtain the 5% threshold, or a massive 27,000 votes, or they will be disqualified.

Inequality 1
If any small Party or Independent does not get 5% of the vote (the threshold), these candidates will not be elected, even if their candidates get more than 2% of the total votes cast.

All their votes will be totally discarded and will be worth exactly ZERO.

Only the political parties which satisfy the 5% threshold will then share the 50 seats in proportion to their total votes, EXCLUDING the votes for small parties and independents which have been discarded.

In other words, the larger qualifying parties will get a higher proportion of seats than the votes they receive, at the expense of all the small parties and independents.

If for example the total votes received by those not reaching the threshold amount to, say, 10% of all the votes (quite a plausible result, I believe in the forthcoming elections), then the 5 seats that would have gone to them proportionately (10% of 50 seats), will go instead as bonus to the larger parties.

There are many small parties and 1 Independent contesting this 2014 Elections and I believe that most of the votes for them will be wasted and have ZERO value.

Small regional constituencies which would previously have able to elect their own Independent candidate to Parliament will no longer be able to do so, unless their candidate stands for some large party guaranteed to obtain the 5% threshold.

Inequality 2
If any Independent gets more than 5% or more of the votes (and is therefore elected), all those voters supporting this Independent will still have only 1 parliamentarian to represent them.

Had these voters voted for a large Party, this same number of voters would have elected between 2 and 3 parliamentarians to represent them.

The value of each vote for a successful Independent will therefore be worth only a third of the vote for a successful party candidate.  Hardly equal value of the propaganda.

Inequality 3
As I have explained in a previous article, once a large party gets it quota of seats, then the “successful” candidates are decided by going down the list of candidates ranked by the votes they receive.

Suppose the Leader of a successful Party gets 150,000 votes, while the remaining 49 candidates get 100,000 between them.

The Leader may be entitled to take the top 24 of his own Party, in order of votes received into Parliament.

His last successful candidate may have received only a few hundred votes, and will still be elected, while any number of candidates and Independents will be disqualified, despite getting far more votes.  In other words, totally unpopular candidates may creep into Parliament under the umbrella of their popular leaders.

Every vote for a large party is worth far more than a vote for a small party of Independent.

All voters remember to examine how many of the “successful” parliamentarians in the September 2014 Elections will get more than 10,000 votes, the likely average for parliament.

The Elections Office should stop the false advertising propaganda that “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value”.

The propaganda of “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value” will not stop racism

There is a ridiculous propaganda that the “1 person - 1 vote - 1 value” electoral system will end the racism against Indo-Fijians who can now live with dignity, and this is believed by many of them, helped by the massive advertising campaign calling everyone “Fijian”.

How patently unrealistic.

United States, Australia,  NZ, Germany all have had “one person=one vote=1value” electoral systems for decades, and everyone there are called Americans or Australians or New Zealanders or Germans, yet racism against non-whites (blacks, Aboriginals, Asians, Maoris,  Islanders, Arabs) is alive and well in all these four countries.

Racist attitudes in Fiji are also quite entrenched amongst all our ethnic communities, Fijian, Indo-Fijian, European, kailoma, and Chinese and they will not end because of military decrees calling everyone “Fijian” or perpetually repeating the slogans “1 person=1 vote = 1 value”.

Racism may even have worsened amongst some groups as a reaction to the dictatorial Bainimarama policies.

One would have expected Indo-Fijian leaders to keep in mind that with the continuing emigration of Indo-Fijians, the proportion of indigenous Fijian voters will keep rising above 60%, and all future parliaments under a strictly proportional electoral system, will have the majority of the parliamentarians elected by indigenous Fijian voters.

Will these elected indigenous Fijians parliamentarians be any different from the general Fijian community?

Indeed, how multi-racial are some of the members of Bainimarama’s indigenous Fijian team, which includes people like Inoke Kubuabola, Filipe Bole and Isikeli Mataitoga, some of the leaders of the coups in 1987 and 2000?

Throwing away the Multi-Party Baby with the Bathwater
One of the most unwise aspects of the 2013 Constitution, is the rejection of the 1997 Constitution’s Multi-Party provision that could have been of great value in establishing multi-racial co-operative governments.

Under this provision, any party with at least 10% of the seats (today 5 seats out of 50) would have been entitled to be invited into Cabinet.

This provision was not used wisely in 1999 by the FLP (to their cost) or the SDL in 2001.

However, it was being made to work in 2006 with the SDL/FLP multi-party government, until Bainimarama’s 2006 coup with the active support of Mahendra Chaudhry and other Indo-Fijian leaders, torpedoed it.

This provision would have allowed all minority groups (whether regional groups, such as all those from Vanua Levu, or ethnic groups such as Indo-Fijians) to be represented not just in Parliament, but far more importantly, in Cabinet.

How useful would this have been for Indo-Fijians who will live in Fiji for the foreseeable future and who still comprise 30% of the voters, decreasing further with time?

The saddest aspect of the current propaganda about the glorious equality of all races under Bainimarama, is that most of it is coming from Indo-Fijian intellectuals who have already made their decision to leave Fiji, and settle in the safety of Australia or NZ.

Rajendra Prasad’s concluding lines in his Fiji Sun article were:  “Will this election be won on deceit and lies, or will it be won on truth and understanding? Only time will tell.”

He should ask himself why the Bainimarama Government would need to spend millions of dollars on propaganda created by American PR company Qorvis, if it has truth and understanding on its side.

For certain, I can tell him that the propaganda that “1 person = 1 vote = 1 value” will not apply to the thousands of voters who wish to vote for small parties and Independents.

Prof Wadan Narsey - MIDA unaccountable while papers continue to censor

Sent to Ashwin Raj (Chairman, MIDA) and also as Open Letter to Editor
(The Fiji Times, Fiji Sun, Island Business) 
27 July 2014

Dear Mr Raj

I sent a Letter to you on the 3 July 2014, requesting your response to a number of matters concerning the development of the media industry but you responded to only one query- that you had requested the media to give you their general editorial policy.

You have refused to respond to the other queries directed to you as Chairman of the Media Development Industry (MIDA).

Nor have you asked the media why they did not print my previous letter on the salaries for Bainimarama and Khaiyum for the years 2010 to 2013.  This question has been publicly raised by not just taxpayers and voters, but no less than Mr Mahendra Chaudhry a former elected Prime Minister of Fiji, and also Bainimarama’s own former Minister of Finance who one would expect to have a clue or two, on this particular issue.

While we wait for the media to respond to what you had asked them, I wish to ask you again to respond publicly to the following questions which all media are still interested in despite your previous refusal to respond.

As a “level playing field” is an essential part of the development of a free, fair, competitive and transparent media industry, could you please inform the public what is your position on the continuing biases in the media industry itself:

(1) tax-payers advertisement funds being channelled by the Bainimarama Government only to Fiji Sun with The Fiji Times being totally denied.

(2) outright subsidies given to FBC via government budget and government guarantees of loans from FDB, with no such subsidies given to either Fiji TV or the other radio broadcasters, Communications Fiji Ltd.

(3) the clearly intimidating renewal of the license for Fiji TV on a six monthly basis, while FBC TV suffers from no such restriction

(4) While Fiji TV’s accounts are available to the shareholders, FBC accounts are not available at all to the taxpayers who supposedly own FBC.

(4) Mai TV’s “scoop” at obtaining rights to the broadcast of FIFA World Cup (a legitimate entrepreneurial transaction admired in the business world) being forcibly shared by decree amongst the other broadcasters, on financial terms dictated by the Bainimarama Government rather than negotiated amongst themselves as a market transaction.

(5)  have  you queried Fiji TV and the owners Fijian Holdings Limited why respected senior journalist and administrator Mr Anish Chand was sacked from Fiji TV on this year’s World Press Freedom day (as was related to you during the World Press Freedom Day panel at USP).

Given that you have personally made many public pronouncements that you want MIDA to be accountable to the Fiji public, I would be grateful if

(a) you would request the media to print this Letter to the Editor,

(b) so that the public and the media can also note that these questions have been posed to you, and can wait eagerly for your usual interesting response.

Yours sincerely

Professor Wadan Narsey

Suva

Discombobulated Bubu: The Chicken or the Egg or Bainimarama

The question today ragone is which one of these really cameth first?

The yolk of the matter is this.

The lovely Makereta Waqavonovono has a simple wish. To stand up and be counted like any of us ordinary citizens. SHE WISHES TO REPRESENT HER PEOPLE IN THE ELECTIONS. She is well educated, is a great thinker and gave up many years of her life to accumulate knowledge and wisdom, but because of this it seems she is being treated like a criminal, or but wait - is it perhaps because of precisely this that she may represent the threat to Bainimarama's aspirations?

Here is her letter.

It is plain to see she is being blocked by one of Bainimarara and Kaiyum's vacuous decrees churned out to protect their first race to the polls:

http://fijilive.com/news/2014/07/defendants-want-waqavonovono-case-dismissed/58421.Fijilive 


Meanwhile back in the barn, we have the judge in this case called Chen Bun Young who JUST HAPPENS to be a former associate of the Electoral Commission Chairperson. 

The court is being asked to rule on the meaning of who/what is an "ordinary resident of Fiji" (under section 56 (2) (c) of the Constitution and section 23 (5) of the Electoral Decree 2014)



____________

UPDATE 1st August 2014
As predicted - the Decree-churners have stayed up all night and churned out another amendment to the decrees that would rule Makereta out of the Elections.

They are trying their best folks to win the race to the polls by deceipt and desperation.

However, It ain't going to happen as the WILL of the collective is far more powerful than any of Bai and Kai's decrees.

VOTE FIJI FIRST OUT NOW.