What have you done for me lately?

Don’t worry “Ex-Fiji Tourist” we were also floored when we heard Mr Bainimarama’s ironic pearls of wisdom to himself quipping “let me see what else have we done?”. What a bozo. If he was so passionately into the cause, these “achievements” should have been dripping off his tongue.

If there’s an apt response to this question from many people of Fiji, it would be this: NOTHING. They have done nothing-zero-squat-e sega-nahi, to progress this country despite all their rhetoric about noble intentions.

Much of the junta’s focus is intent on getting buy-in on THEIR charter, which is shrouded under a bogus “People’s Charter” title. The first few sections lament racial divisions in this country. We agree that race is an issue however when race is used to try and over-turn the wishes of the demographic majority in this country then there is a problem.

Therein lies the bone of contention regarding democracy. This junta will continue to refute democracy as a political ideology because it’s about the numbers game. Numbers that they know they don’t have and will probably try to skew via boundaries reforms and a new census.

Equally ironic are their allegations that past governments have flouted the race-card whenever they wanted votes. To our minds it appears that the same stunts are being pulled now.

More importantly however is that race issues will never, repeat, will never, be resolved by a top-down driven political agenda. Multiculturalism is nourished in our homes and inculcated by our societal environment, with our class-rooms being one key driver. Yet the educational incubators of our next generation continue to see schools that are divisively segregated, and this core area is but mentioned briefly in the Junta’s Charter appearing as less of a priority.

Some key steps being touted by this document to progress the Junta Charter are:

• The development of independent Report on “The State of the Nation and the Economy” (SNE);
• The set up of a 40-member National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) by the President of Fiji;
• The set up of 6 national-level Task Teams (NTT) and a Technical and Support Secretariat (TASS). The 6 NTTs are supposed to look into:

1. Good Governance,
2. Growing the Economy,
3. Reforming Public Service including Service Delivery,
4. Reforming Public Financial Institutions,
5. Looking at Access to Land and Land Utilization, and
6. Social and Community Sectors.

So much fluff via acronyms, un-mandated roles/responsibilities and levels of bureaucracies yet missing two core pre-requisites—money and international support.

So how does the junta aim to counter this? Drafting the buy-in of we, the peoples. They have begun by getting buy-in from some NGO’s. We would ask these NGOs who exactly they represent and if they could take a poll. More importantly do their “members” fully understand what this document means especially as it has not yet been translated in the Hindi vernacular? It’s all about numbers and by golly if we didn't know any better it would seem that this farcical document might be soon heralded as the beginnings of the new rules of our land.

His Excellency the President is being conveniently entrenched more and more in this mess and we would even boldly suggest that his presidential seal will see him, as an individual (since the GCC has been sacked) face the courts one day soon as the primary coup-ster.

No matter. Intelligentsiya rejects this Charter. We are resolute in our stand—we want Elections and nothing but Elections ASAP. We are not going to help this junta in any way as they forcefully took over the country, “nobly” stepped up to the plate and said they would bring in better days.

So, by all means, you have the floor Junta—all by yourselves—and we do mean every single one of you, those that we can see and especially those puppeteering behind the curtains.