As the Air Pacific aircraft glided into Apia’s Faleolo International Airport, I was overjoyed with the prospect of visiting Nukualofa.
The year was 1988, in the aftermath of Sitiveni Rabuka’s coup, which put in place an interim government in Fiji.
I was an internal auditor with the Carpenter Group of Companies, which owned Morris Hedstrom (MH) stores in Fiji, Apia (Molesi) and Nukualofa. I was on an audit assignment with my colleague Chattur Singh.
However, the dream of visiting Tonga dashed when Tonga imposed a racially discriminatory rule that Indo-Fijians from Fiji cannot enter the Kingdom.
Fiji’s interim Prime Minister then was Lt Col Tevita Uluilakeba (Ului) Mara’s father Sir Kamisese Mara, who lost in the 1987 elections to Dr Timoci Bavadra and his Fiji Labour Party.
Just after a month, Rabuka overthrew Bavadra and his Government, in a deftly executed coup on May 14, 1987.
It was widely speculated that Sir Kamisese was aware of the coup and had given his blessings for the rape of democracy in favour of indigenous superiority.
He accepted the position of Fiji’s Interim Prime Minister because he could not stand by and watch his house burning.
Sir Kamisese remained silent and failed to raise any objection against this blatant racism by his cousins in Tonga against half of his subjects in Fiji.
Accusations that the Tongan Government aided and abetted the escape of Ului to Tonga by breaching Fiji waters, supposedly in a sea rescue mission should not therefore surprise anyone now.
Missing honesty
The evidence from the murky waters suggests that Ului may be less than honest about his escape. His checking into a hotel under a false name, hiding his identity, the customary protocols of fishing alone by a Chief, and the failure of respective New Zealand and Fiji navies to detect any distress signals indicate that the truth is somewhere out there.
This case also exposed New Zealand mainstream media’s blind dependency on a political blogsite, Coup Four Point Five, which hardly resembles a respectable, free and independent media.
This site has anonymous and faceless publishers and editors whose credibility has been under scrutiny by various academics and this author because of their selective, unsubstantiated and unbalanced news-postings.
This is (former Fiji Prime Minister) Laiseina Qarase’s SDL Party site, tasked with getting the racist regime back into power under the sham of democracy.
It is such questionable blogsites that our mainstream media, including the New Zealand Herald and TVNZ, have relied upon as a source.
The Indo-Fijian bashing angle has been used once again.
With Tonga’s history of racially humiliating Indo-Fijians in 1988 with ban on entry, it is no wonder that Ului had a field day in using the race card, stating that Fiji’s Attorney General Aiyaz Saiyed Khaiyum was calling the shots.
Fijians dominate
What a gullible media fails to realise is that Fiji’s military is 99.95% indigenous Fijians. There are only two Indo-Fijian Ministers in the Cabinet and just three Permanent Secretaries in a 21-strong top administration. Indigenous Fijians account for 80% of public servants.
Ului wishes us to believe that one Indo-Fijian had Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama in a trance.
He degraded and shamed his own race by saying that Khaiyum single-handedly manipulated Fiji’s administrative, political and military machinery, dominated by indigenous people. This is the biggest insult hurled on indigenous Fijians since the unceremonious flight of Ului’s’ father from Government House.
Ului’s defence of the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) and the Methodist Church as saviours of democracy is highly laughable. These two institutions have been the biggest threat to democracy, human rights and social justice in Fiji.
I remember that after the Rabuka coup in 1987, churchgoers from the Methodist Church used to guard the roadblocks put in place to persecute non-Christians.
During the 2001 elections, the Assembly of Churches, led by Methodists, took out paid advertisements urging indigenous Fijians not to vote the heathens among Indo-Fijians into the leadership of the nation.
Methodical hypocrisy
Is this the Methodist Church, now identified as the defender of democracy? The Chiefs were so immensely engrossed in politics, supporting ethno-nationalism of George Speight that the non-elected GCC lost all its credibility, respectability and neutral advisory status.
After establishing his interim Government in December 2006, Bainimarama banished the GCC, which was a British initiative and legacy. No one has felt its absence over the past five years.
Ului, now in Tonga, appears to suffer from memory loss.
In 2000, the GCC and the Methodist Church hierarchy backed George Speight in cruelly removing his esteemed father from the post of President.
In a hugely undignified manner, Sir Kamisese fled in the night, fearing for his life.
A Navy boat transported him to the safety of his home in the Lau Group, never to recover from this humiliation.
He died a very sad, bitter and lonely man.
Ului forgets that this was the unkindest act of betrayal by the Fijian Chiefs against one of their greatest Chiefs.
Today, for convenience and expediency, he has heaped insult on the memory of Sir Kamisese by embracing and praising those who had disgraced, humiliated and indirectly exterminated Fiji’s greatest political leader.
Nowhere in the New Zealand media have there been reports that other prominent businessmen, bureaucrats, civil servants and chiefs have gone through Fiji’s justice system.
There is hardly any mention of the ongoing investigations against Ului and the alleged fraud of $3 million from the Fiji Pine Commission.
New Zealand Stance
The New Zealand Government and Prime Minister John Key should take heed of this revelation. They have been warned not to bend rules to welcome Ului, who still has connections with the Military personnel in Fiji, thus further distancing and provoking Fiji.
Any such action less than six months to the Rugby World Cup, in which Fiji plays, and the general elections, are not advisable. With a sizable Indo-Fijian population, Indians, and Asians sympathetic to Fiji’s cause of self-determination, Key needs to play his cards wisely, before officiously embroiling in a domestic squabble of Pacific relations.
Thakur Ranjit Singh is a political commentator. He has had personal experience in the Rabuka and Speight coups. During the latter, he was the publisher of Fiji’s Daily Post newspaper, which has since been closed because of past government interference. He was an AUT/PIMA Pasifika Postgraduate Scholar in 2009-2010.
E-mail: thakurji@xtra.co.nz
