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BAU and LAU CHIEFS, Meaning of 'Fijian'. Two Visions, One Unresolved Constitutional Question: How inclusive civic identity from Bau and a dual framework from Lau are redefining GCC debate, and exposing fault lines

9/4/2026

FROM AN OB: “THE GREAT COUNCIL OF CHIEFS, WHERE WERE THEY, AND WHERE ARE THEY NOW?”
An old boy (OB) has written to Fijileaks (with the cartoon), reflecting with biting clarity on the shifting posture of the Great Council of Chiefs. Where were they,” he asks, “when the country was under the firm grip of military rule, when voices were silenced, institutions dismantled, and ordinary Fijians left to fend for themselves?” Today, he observes, the same chiefly establishment re-emerges, gathered, vocal, and assertive, seeking once again to reclaim a central role in shaping Fiji’s future. The question, he insists, is not merely where they are now, but where they chose to be when it mattered most, from 2006 to 2022?

*As Bau through Ratu Timoci Tavanavanua leans toward an inclusive national identity and Lau through Ratu Tevita Mara insists on a clear separation between nationality and ethnicity, Fiji’s chiefly leadership is no longer speaking with one voice. What emerges is not consensus, but a constitutional crossroads between civic equality and ethnic restoration

If a Tongan prince Enele Ma'afu could become Tui Lau and be accepted within the Fijian chiefly order, then the claim that “Fijian” has always been a closed and exclusive identity is historically unsustainable.
Today, Niko Nawaikula argues that extending “Fijian” to all citizens is a “theft” of indigenous identity. Yet, historically, outsiders like Ma‘afu were absorbed into the highest levels of that identity, and chiefly legitimacy was expanded, not policed rigidly.

Ma‘afu did not merely settle in Fiji. He acquired political authority through conquest, alliance, and recognition. He established control over parts of the Lau Group. He was formally installed as Tui Lau (paramount chief of Lau). His authority was recognised within the Fijian chiefly system, despite his Tongan origins. In effect, he became both - a Tongan aristocrat, and a Fijian paramount chief.
This is where Ma‘afu becomes highly relevant to the current debate. Ma‘afu’s elevation demonstrates that indigenous identity and chiefly status were not rigidly ethnic in the modern sense. The authority could be negotiated, conferred, and absorbed into existing structures.
*The chiefly system itself was politically constructed. The idea that there existed a single, closed, “pure” indigenous polity before colonialism is historically questionable. Fiji was fragmented into competing polities influenced by Tonga (especially Lau), shaped by warfare, alliance, and migration. Ma‘afu is living proof of that fluidity.

A Name, A Nation, And A Dangerous Confusion: GCC Debate and Identity Politics

The latest intervention by the Paramount Chief of Lau, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara, enters an already fraught constitutional debate with a tone of moderation, reflection, and apparent reconciliation. His statement On Our Common Identity: Nationality, Ethnicity & the Will of the People seeks to disentangle what he describes as a persistent confusion between nationality and ethnicity, while expressing qualified support for the submission of the Great Council of Chiefs.

At first reading, the intervention appears measured and constructive. It acknowledges diversity, affirms the place of all communities, and calls for consultation and democratic legitimacy in determining Fiji’s national identity. Yet beneath this language of balance lies a deeper tension, one that goes to the heart of Fiji’s unresolved constitutional dilemma.

Nationality vs Ethnicity: A Clear Distinction or a Strategic Reframing?

Ratu Tevita’s central proposition is deceptively simple: nationality and ethnicity are distinct and must be clearly separated. Nationality, he argues, is a shared civic identity; ethnicity is the cultural and ancestral inheritance of distinct communities.

In principle, this is uncontroversial. Indeed, it reflects a standard distinction in modern constitutional democracies. Yet the significance of his intervention lies not in the distinction itself, but in how it is deployed.

For while advocating this separation, he simultaneously supports the GCC’s position that the term ‘Fijian’ should revert to its pre-2010 ethnic meaning, referring exclusively to the iTaukei. This creates an inherent contradiction. If nationality and ethnicity are to be separated, then the use of a single term - 'Fijian’ - to denote both at different times or under different frameworks risks perpetuating precisely the confusion he seeks to resolve.

The 2013 Constitution: Imposition or Transformation?

The statement revisits a familiar critique: that the 2013 Constitution imposed a national identity without consultation, replacing the term ‘Fiji Islander’ with ‘Fijian’ for all citizens and relegating indigenous identity to ‘iTaukei’.

This critique resonates with those who view the reform as an act of erasure. Yet it must also be understood as part of a broader attempt, however imperfect, to construct a civic identity that transcends ethnic division.

The real issue, therefore, is not whether the change was consultative or imposed, though that is undoubtedly important, but whether Fiji can sustain a constitutional order in which citizenship is shared equally, without collapsing back into a hierarchy of identities.

Two Options, One Problem

Ratu Tevita proposes two options for national identity: a return to ‘Fiji Islander’ or the retention of ‘Fijian’, provided it is endorsed through genuine consultation.

On the surface, this appears pragmatic. Yet both options evade the central question.

If ‘Fijian’ is restored as an ethnic term, then a new civic label becomes necessary, reintroducing precisely the dual identity structure that has historically defined Fiji’s politics. If ‘Fijian’ is retained as a civic identity, then the GCC’s demand for its exclusive ethnic use cannot be accommodated.

In other words, the options are not merely alternative labels. They represent fundamentally different constitutional visions.

The GCC Submission: Clarity or Confusion?

Ratu Tevita expresses support for the “spirit” of the GCC’s submission, while acknowledging that it may have been articulated without sufficient clarity.

This is a significant admission. For the GCC’s position, seeking to restore ‘Fijian’ as an exclusively indigenous identity, cannot be treated as a purely symbolic request. It carries profound constitutional implications.

To reassign the term in this way is to redefine the relationship between citizen and state. It raises the question of whether Fiji’s constitutional order is to be grounded in shared civic identity or in ethnically differentiated belonging.

The Language of Protection and the Risk of Regression

The statement emphasises the need to protect indigenous identity and to ensure that no community’s heritage is erased without consent. This is a legitimate concern, and one that any constitutional framework must address.

Yet the framing of identity as something that can be “removed” or “restored” through terminology risks oversimplifying a far more complex reality. Cultural identity is not extinguished by legal definition, nor secured solely by it.

The danger lies in conflating symbolic recognition with substantive protection, and in allowing debates over naming to obscure deeper questions of governance, equality, and accountability.

The Deeper Constitutional Question

What emerges from this intervention is not a resolution, but a reflection of Fiji’s enduring constitutional tension.

On one side lies the aspiration for a unified civic identity, one in which all citizens are equal participants in the nation. On the other lies the insistence that indigenous identity must retain a distinct and, in some formulations, privileged place within the constitutional order.

These positions are not easily reconciled. Indeed, they may be fundamentally incompatible.

Conclusion: Beyond Names

The debate over the term ‘Fijian’ is often presented as a question of nomenclature. It is nothing of the sort. It is a question about the nature of the state itself.

Ratu Tevita’s intervention, for all its measured tone, ultimately illustrates the difficulty of navigating this terrain. In seeking to balance competing claims, it exposes the fragility of that balance.

Fiji must decide whether its future lies in the restoration of historical distinctions or in the consolidation of a shared civic identity. It cannot fully embrace both without contradiction.

For in the end, a nation is not defined by what it calls its people, but by how it treats them.

And on that question, no change of name, however carefully negotiated, will suffice.

THE BAU POSITION: INCLUSIVE ‘FIJIAN’ OR STRATEGIC SILENCE? A CHIEFLY VOICE IN A DIVIDED DEBATE

Into the increasingly polarised debate over the meaning of the term ‘Fijian’ has now stepped a voice from Bau, historically one of the most influential centres of chiefly power in Fiji. The Ratu Timoci Tavanavanua has taken a position that, at first glance, appears to cut across the dominant narrative emerging from the Great Council of Chiefs: that ‘Fijian’ can, and perhaps should, be a name that includes all citizens equally.

This intervention is significant, not merely for what it says, but for where it comes from. Bau has long occupied a central place in Fiji’s political and chiefly history, its leadership shaping both pre-colonial power structures and later colonial accommodation. To hear from a Bau chief a position that appears to support a civic, inclusive understanding of ‘Fijian’ suggests that the debate within the chiefly establishment itself is far from settled.

An Inclusive ‘Fijian’: A Departure from the GCC Line?

The Roko Tui Bau’s position that ‘Fijian’ can be a name that includes all equally aligns, at least superficially, with the post-2010 constitutional framework, which defines all citizens as Fijians.

This stands in marked contrast to the position advanced by sections of the GCC and its supporters, who argue that the term should revert to its exclusive ethnic meaning, referring only to indigenous iTaukei.

What is emerging, therefore, is not a unified chiefly consensus, but a divergence of views within the traditional leadership itself. On one side lies the call for restoration, anchored in historical usage and indigenous identity. On the other lies a more inclusive approach, one that accepts, or at least accommodates, the evolution of ‘Fijian’ into a civic identity.

Bau’s Historical Weight And Its Implications

The importance of this divergence cannot be overstated. Bau has historically been at the centre of Fijian political organisation, with its chiefs exercising influence far beyond their immediate domain.

In the nineteenth century, Bau’s leadership was instrumental in the consolidation of power that ultimately led to the cession of Fiji to Britain in 1874. In the colonial period, Bauan chiefs played a key role in mediating between indigenous structures and the colonial state.

That legacy continues. When a Bau chief speaks, it carries symbolic and political weight across the confederacies. The suggestion that ‘Fijian’ can be inclusive is therefore not merely an opinion. It is a signal that the foundations of the current debate are themselves contested within the highest levels of chiefly authority.

Nationality, Identity, and the Limits of Consensus

Yet the Bau position also raises a deeper question: is it a principled stance, or a strategic one?

To say that ‘Fijian’ can include all is, in one sense, a recognition of political reality. The term has, since 2010, been used in precisely that way, both domestically and internationally. It reflects a civic conception of nationhood, in which citizenship is the primary marker of belonging.

But it also avoids confronting the core issue raised by the GCC submission: whether the indigenous identity historically associated with the term should be restored as a matter of constitutional principle.

In this respect, the Bau position may be seen less as a resolution than as a deferral, a way of acknowledging inclusivity without directly addressing the claims of restoration.

A Fractured Chiefly Voice

What becomes clear is that the chiefly voice in Fiji is no longer singular. The GCC submission presents one vision, rooted in exclusivity and restoration. The Lau intervention presents another, seeking a separation of nationality and ethnicity. And now Bau introduces a third, suggesting that the term itself can accommodate all without necessarily resolving the underlying tension.

This fragmentation reflects a broader reality. Fiji’s constitutional question is no longer simply a contest between indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives. It is a contest within indigenous leadership itself, between different interpretations of history, identity, and the future of the state.

The Risk of Conceptual Drift

There is, however, a danger in this multiplicity of positions. Without clarity, the debate risks collapsing into conceptual drift where the same term, ‘Fijian’, is used to mean different things by different actors, depending on context and audience.

The Bau position, while inclusive, does not resolve this ambiguity. It affirms that the term can include all, but does not specify how this inclusivity coexists with the protection of indigenous identity, nor how it addresses the GCC’s demand for restoration.

In doing so, it leaves unanswered the central constitutional question: can a single term sustain both a civic and an ethnic meaning without generating confusion or conflict?

Bau and the Future of the Debate

The intervention of the Roko Tui Bau is a reminder that Fiji’s debate over identity is not binary. It is layered, contested, and evolving.

If the GCC represents a call for restoration, and other voices call for separation of nationality and ethnicity, Bau appears to be gesturing toward a form of coexistence, an acceptance that ‘Fijian’ can be both inclusive and meaningful.

Whether such a position can be sustained in practice remains uncertain.

For the challenge facing Fiji is not merely to choose a name, but to define the principles that underpin it. Without that clarity, the debate risks becoming one of symbolism rather than substance.

And in that space, even the most authoritative voices may find themselves speaking past one another, each invoking the same word, but meaning something entirely different.

Ratu Ului Mara's Media Statement

Employment Relations Amendment Bill: Felix Anthony brands Jon Apted a Scaremonger. To dismiss Apted as fear-monger is to ignore mechanics of law. To dismiss FTUC as ideological is to ignore the history of injustice

8/4/2026

There is a familiar rhythm to labour reform in Fiji: when workers’ rights are placed back on the legislative table, the language of crisis is never far behind. The latest clash between the Fiji Trades Union Congress and Jon Apted is not new. It is merely the latest iteration of an old struggle: rights versus reality, principle versus power, law versus lived experience.

At the heart of the dispute lies the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, presented by Government as a corrective measure, an attempt to realign Fiji with the standards of the International Labour Organization and to restore rights eroded over the past decade and a half. For the FTUC, led by Felix Anthony, the Bill is not radical; it is restorative. It is framed as a return to ‘Decent Work’, a concept embedded in international labour jurisprudence and long denied to many Fijian workers.

Yet into this narrative steps Apted, a senior law partner at Munro Leys, warning that the Bill risks “chaos” for employers. His intervention is immediately dismissed by the FTUC as “scare mongering”, a phrase heavy with political accusation. But beneath the rhetoric lies a more complex legal and structural tension.

The Rights Argument

The FTUC’s case draws its force from history. The shadow of the Essential National Industries Decree No. 25 of 2011 still looms large. That decree, introduced under the previous government, fundamentally altered the balance between labour and capital. Trade unions were weakened, collective bargaining curtailed, and employer discretion expanded.

For nearly sixteen years, the FTUC argues, workers bore the cost of “flexibility” - a euphemism for persistent insecurity, instability, and unpredictability. During that period, voices from the commercial legal establishment were notably muted. Now, as the pendulum swings back, the sudden invocation of “balance” and “level playing field” rings hollow to those who experienced the asymmetry first-hand.

In this framing, the Bill is not merely legislation; it is rectification. To oppose it is to resist not change, but correction.

The Reality Argument

Apted’s warning, however inelegantly phrased, is not without foundation. Labour law does not operate in the abstract; it functions through contracts, compliance systems, and enforcement mechanisms.

From the perspective of employers, particularly those navigating tight margins and rising costs (except when they donated millions to the FijiFirst Party coffers), the Bill presents immediate challenges:
• existing employment contracts may become non-compliant overnight
• new procedural safeguards could increase exposure to litigation
• administrative burdens will fall disproportionately on smaller enterprises
• uncertainty in interpretation will persist until courts begin to settle the law

This is what Apted likely means by “chaos”, not societal breakdown, but legal and operational disruption during transition.

It is a language of risk, not ideology.

Where the Two Sides Diverge

The FTUC speaks the language of justice. Apted speaks the language of systems.

One looks backward, to historical wrongs. The other looks forward, to practical consequences.

Neither is inherently wrong but both are incomplete.

The FTUC underestimates the friction of implementation. Apted underestimates the urgency of reform.

The Unasked Question

The real issue is not whether the Bill advances workers’ rights. It plainly does. Nor is it whether employers will face difficulty. They will.

The question is more precise, and more important: Is the legislation capable of translating principle into practice without collapsing under its own weight?

That depends on three factors:

• the clarity and coherence of the drafting
• the presence of transitional safeguards
• the institutional capacity to enforce fairly and consistently

Without these, even well-intentioned reform can falter. With them, even contentious change can stabilise.

Beyond the Rhetoric

To dismiss Apted as a fear-monger is to ignore the mechanics of law. To dismiss the FTUC as ideological is to ignore the history of injustice.

Fiji stands, once again, at a familiar crossroads.

If the Bill succeeds, it will not be because one side prevailed over the other, but because rights were implemented with realism, and reform was grounded in both principle and practicality.

If it fails, it will not be because workers were given too much but because the bridge between rights and reality was never properly built.

From Fijileaks Archives: The Employers Dug Deep into Bank Vaults

Marc Mcelrath 'Mcdonal' donated $10,000 to FFP. His mother, BEVERLeY FLORENCE, joined the 'FFP Meal Deal', donating $10,000 on 10 October 2018. There is no record of any receipt issued or who at FFP received the donation. On 14 October 2018, PATRICIA MARY FERRIER WATSON donated her $100 to FijiFIRST Party.

NAWAIKULA, 'A Rose By Any Other Name? Why the term "Fijian" Matters to GCC'. Does he mean, it matters to Deputy GCC chairman Ratu Suliano Matanitobua? The Sodelpa MPs were jailed for fiddling travel allowances

5/4/2026

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER ADDRESS? From False Declarations to the GCC When Reinvention Smells Less Than Sweet. Matanitobua-Nawaikula Duo

In FICAC v Nawaikula [2022] FJHC 192, the Court found that Nawaikula had falsely declared his place of permanent residence in order to obtain parliamentary allowances to which he was not entitled. The declaration was not treated as an innocent misunderstanding, but as a deliberate misrepresentation resulting in financial gain from public funds. The Court characterised the conduct as a serious breach of trust.
* Similarly, in FICAC v Matanitobua [2022] FJHC 514, the Court found that Ratu Suliano had falsely stated his residence as Namosi Village and had thereby obtained substantial allowances, again, funds drawn from the public purse, on the basis of that misrepresentation.
*These were not technical infractions. They were findings of dishonesty in relation to public money, made against elected representatives entrusted with legislative authority.

"The theft of the Fijian identity became obvious soon after the imposed changes to the law were made in 2010. As a member of the opposition at the time, I repeatedly reminded the Government of this problem, illustrating what I described as the “theft” through many examples."

The continued intervention by former parliamentarian Niko Nawaikula on behalf of the Great Council of Chiefs, calling for the restoration of the term ‘Fijian’ exclusively to iTaukei, is framed in the language of grievance, restoration and, most strikingly, theft. It is a powerful word. But it is also, in this context, a profoundly misleading one.

At the heart of the argument lies a claim that the 2010 legal reforms, introduced under the Bainimarama government, amounted to the appropriation of an indigenous identity, removing the term ‘Fijian’ from the iTaukei and applying it to all citizens of Fiji. This, we are told, constituted a violation not only of historical usage, but of international norms, including the consultation requirements associated with ILO Convention 169.

The argument is not new. It is, in fact, a familiar refrain in Fiji’s constitutional discourse: that identity must be anchored in exclusivity, and that the extension of a national label to all citizens somehow diminishes its original custodians. Yet it is precisely this premise that requires interrogation.

The 2010 reform did not erase iTaukei identity. It clarified the distinction between ethnicity and citizenship, a distinction that modern states routinely make. To call all citizens ‘Fijians’ was not to deny the cultural, linguistic, or historical specificity of the iTaukei. It was to establish a civic identity capable of encompassing all who belong to the state.

The term ‘iTaukei’ itself, far from being imposed as a diminution, was adopted to recognise and preserve indigenous identity in a manner that is both precise and respectful.

The invocation of ‘theft’ therefore collapses under its own weight. Identity is not a finite resource to be stolen or transferred; it is a layered construct, capable of sustaining both cultural specificity and civic inclusivity.

The suggestion by Nawaikula that the greeting ‘Bula’, or the performance of a meke, somehow becomes less authentically iTaukei because the term ‘Fijian’ is used in a national sense reflects a category error. Cultural practices remain rooted in their communities of origin, regardless of how the state defines citizenship.

More fundamentally, the argument confuses symbolism with substance. The real question is not who has the right to a name, but how power is distributed within the state. The extension of the term ‘Fijian’ to all citizens did not dispossess the iTaukei of land, culture, or customary institutions. What it did challenge was a political framework in which identity and authority were closely intertwined.

It is here that the appeal to international law must be treated with caution. While consultation with indigenous communities is an important principle, the application of conventions such as ILO 169 cannot be reduced to a single legislative act or interpreted in isolation from the broader constitutional context. Fiji’s political history has been marked by repeated tensions between communal protection and civic equality. The 2010 reforms were, in part, an attempt, however imperfect, to recalibrate that balance.

The present call by the GCC to restore the exclusive use of ‘Fijian’ must therefore be understood as part of a wider project: the reassertion of a constitutional order in which indigenous identity is not merely recognised, but privileged. This is not a question of linguistic accuracy. It is a question of political direction.

It is also, one must say, a question of credibility. The language of ‘theft’ carries moral force only when used with care. For it invites scrutiny not only of the argument, but of the person advancing it. It is a matter of public record that Nawaikula himself was convicted and imprisoned for offences involving the misappropriation of public funds.

For such an individual to now invoke the language of theft in a constitutional debate is, at the very least, an irony that cannot be ignored. This is not to suggest that his arguments should be dismissed on that basis alone. But it does underscore the need for precision and restraint in the use of charged terminology. To describe a change in legal nomenclature as ‘theft’ is to elevate rhetoric above reason.

Fiji’s constitutional future will not be determined by slogans. It will depend on whether the state can reconcile the legitimate claims of its iTaukei people with the equally legitimate principle that all citizens stand equal before the law.

That reconciliation cannot be achieved by retreating into exclusivity, nor by re-labelling identity as property.

A rose, as Shakespeare reminds us, would smell as sweet by any other name. The question for Fiji is not what we call ourselves, but whether we can build a political community in which that name belongs to all.

On that question, the rhetoric of ‘theft’ offers little guidance, especially coming from Nawaikula who was convicted and sent to prison for stealing (thieving) from taxpayers.

TUI NAMOSI RATU SULIANO MATANITOBUA FOR PRESIDENT OF FIJI?

If the GCC were to succeed in its demands to reclaim the power to appoint the President and Vice-President, what safeguards would exist to ensure that those offices are insulated from the deficiencies the courts have already identified?
What prevents a system, grounded in status rather than scrutiny, from elevating individuals whose record would otherwise disqualify them in a purely democratic framework?
The prospect is not abstract. It is entirely conceivable within such a structure that those who have moved from conviction to reinstatement within chiefly authority could, in time, ascend to the highest offices of the state.
From Prison to the Presidency. From Breach of Trust to Constitutional Authority.
Roses under different names.

THE CASE OF NIKO NAWAIKULA: WHEN ‘PERMANENT RESIDENCE’ EXPOSED A BREACH OF PUBLIC TRUST

The conviction of Niko Nawaikula in Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption v Nawaikula [2022] FJHC 192 was not, as some of his supporters would later suggest, a mere technical dispute over legal interpretation. It was, in substance, a case about truth, public trust, and the integrity of elected office.

At its core lay a deceptively simple question: where did a Member of Parliament “permanently reside”? Yet as the Fiji High Court proceedings revealed, this was no trivial matter. The answer determined eligibility for parliamentary allowances, funds drawn from the public purse, and therefore carried both legal and ethical weight.

The prosecution case, brought by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption, established that Nawaikula had declared his permanent residence to be in Buca Village, Cakaudrove, while in reality maintaining a substantive residence in Suva. On the basis of that declaration, he received over $20,000 in allowances to which he was not entitled.

The Fiji High Court was required to interpret the meaning of “permanent residence” within this statutory framework. In doing so, it adopted a practical and fact-sensitive approach, defining the term as a place where a person has their settled and usual abode over a considerable period, even if they are absent from time to time.

On the evidence, the Court found that Nawaikula’s declaration did not meet this standard. The declaration was not an innocent misunderstanding, nor an ambiguous statement open to competing interpretations. It was a representation made in circumstances where its consequences were clearly understood: eligibility for financial benefit.

The conviction that followed, on charges of providing false information to a public servant and obtaining a financial advantage, reflected the Court’s conclusion that the conduct went beyond mere error. It constituted a deliberate misstatement, resulting in a tangible gain at public expense.

In sentencing, the Court emphasised the gravity of the breach. This was not a private individual misrepresenting personal circumstances. It was a Member of Parliament, entrusted with public office, exploiting that position. The Judge described it as a “high breach of trust”, noting that such conduct undermined confidence in democratic institutions.

Yet the legal significance of the case extends beyond the individual conviction. It clarifies an important principle: that statutory declarations, particularly those linked to financial entitlements, must be assessed not by subjective belief alone, but by objective reality. A person may have multiple connections to village, land, or family but when the law requires a declaration of permanent residence, it demands accuracy, not sentiment.

The subsequent attempts by Nawaikula to challenge aspects of the process, including applications for constitutional redress, have done little to alter this central finding. Courts have consistently treated such avenues as either alternative remedies or, in some instances, an abuse of process.

What emerges, therefore, is a case that is both legally straightforward and politically revealing. It demonstrates the capacity of Fiji’s judicial system to adjudicate claims involving senior public figures, and to do so on the basis of evidence rather than rhetoric. At the same time, it exposes a deeper tension within Fiji’s political culture: the tendency to recast accountability as persecution, and legal findings as political narratives.

This tension becomes particularly acute when one considers Nawaikula’s later interventions in constitutional debates, most recently his invocation of the language of “theft” in relation to the term ‘Fijian’. The irony is difficult to ignore.

For the High Court case was, in essence, about the unlawful acquisition of public funds through false representation. It was about the integrity of declarations, and the obligation of public officials to speak truthfully when the public purse is engaged.

Words matter. In law, they define rights, obligations, and consequences. But they must be used with precision. To describe a change in constitutional terminology as “theft” is to stretch the language beyond its proper meaning. To have been convicted of obtaining financial advantage through misrepresentation, and then to deploy that same language in political debate, is to invite scrutiny of a different order.

The lesson of the case is not confined to one individual. It is a reminder that the legitimacy of public institutions depends on the conduct of those who occupy them. Legal accountability is not an abstraction; it is the mechanism through which trust is maintained.

In that sense, the judgment in FICAC v Nawaikula stands as more than a criminal conviction. It is a statement, quiet but firm, that the rule of law applies equally, even where politics might prefer otherwise. And, the same law was applied to the Tui Namosi.

‘We Are All Fijians’: Kamikamica’s FB Intervention in a Fractured National DEBATE. He revives an older, unresolved question, one that has haunted FEEJEE: Is the nation to be defined by ancestry, or by shared belonging?

4/4/2026

On the Meaning of ‘Fijian’: A Civic Name, Not an Ethnic Possession

The term ‘Fijian’ ought, in any modern constitutional sense, to function no differently from labels such as ‘British’, ‘Australian’, ‘American’, ‘Indian’, or ‘Canadian’.

Each of these designations operates as a civic identity, signifying citizenship, belonging, and participation in a shared political and social order, rather than as an exclusive ethnic claim. Within those national frameworks, diversity is neither denied nor erased; it is recognised through hyphenated or descriptive sub-identities such as African-American, British-Asian, or Indo-Fijian, which acknowledge heritage without displacing the overarching national identity.

To insist that ‘Fijian’ be reserved for a single ethnic group is therefore to depart from the logic of modern nationhood and to revert to a pre-civic understanding of identity rooted in ancestry rather than citizenship.

It conflates the state with one community, rather than accommodating all communities within the state. The more coherent and globally consistent approach is to recognise ‘Fijian’ as the inclusive civic identity of all who belong to Fiji, while allowing cultural, ethnic, and historical distinctions to be expressed where necessary, and through hyphenated forms such as ‘Indo-Fijian’ or ‘iTaukei Fijian’.

In this sense, the debate is not about erasing identity, but about ordering it: placing shared national belonging at the centre, and particular identities alongside it, rather than in competition with it.

From the Fairways of Augusta: When Vijay Singh Was Simply ‘Fijian’ GOLFER

On the global stage of golf, Vijay Singh was never introduced as an ‘Indo-Fijian golfer’. He was, quite simply, ‘the Fijian’, a description used matter-of-factly in international coverage, including during his Masters triumph when he defeated Tiger Woods at the height of his powers.

In that moment, identity was neither hyphenated nor contested. It was civic, national, and unqualified. The world did not pause to dissect ancestry; it recognised the country he represented: FIJI.

The irony, of course, lies in the contrast with Fiji’s own internal debates, where the very label so effortlessly applied abroad remains fiercely disputed at home.

Vijay Singh during his induction ceremony at the World Golf Hall of Fame and he watches as his son raises his country’s flag during the same event in St Augustine, Florida in 2006. Composite: Getty Images; PGA Tour

‘We Are All Fijians’: MANOA Kamikamica’s Intervention in a Fractured National Debate

The recent remarks by Manoa Kamikamica that Indo-Fijians ‘are our brothers and sisters, and they are Fijian’ amount to more than a gesture of seasonal goodwill.

They are a deliberate political intervention into one of Fiji’s most enduring and combustible questions: who has the right to call themselves ‘Fijian’, and on what terms.

In his statement, Kamikamica advances a straightforward but historically loaded proposition. Indo-Fijians, he argues, were brought to Fiji involuntarily, have made the country their home, and have contributed across all sectors, from sport to government. They ‘know no other place’, and therefore belong fully within the national identity.

More revealing, however, is his personal reflection. He acknowledges that in his youth, ‘to be Fijian was to be iTaukei’, a view shaped by upbringing, economic anxieties, and entrenched prejudice. His evolution over ‘35 years’ signals not merely an individual shift but an attempt to reframe a generational mindset.

A Language War Disguised as Identity

At the core of Kamikamica’s intervention lies a linguistic question with constitutional implications: should ‘Fijian’ denote an ethnic identity (iTaukei), or a civic one (all citizens)? His rhetorical question - ‘does it make a difference?’ - is itself strategic. It seeks to collapse a distinction that, in Fiji’s political history, has been fiercely guarded.

Yet this is precisely where his remarks intersect with the current constitutional and political debate. Recent submissions in favour of restoring ethnically bounded terminology, reserving ‘Fijian’ exclusively for indigenous iTaukei, have re-opened a fault line many believed had been settled, at least formally, under the 2013 constitutional order.

Kamikamica’s analogy, asking whether Christians are divided into ethnic sub-categories, attempts to elevate the debate into a moral register. It is an appeal to universality, implicitly challenging ethnically bounded nationalism.

Historical Memory and Political Anxiety

The force of Kamikamica’s statement derives from its implicit confrontation with Fiji’s historical anxieties. His reference to ‘economic dominance of Indians’ gestures towards a long-standing narrative within sections of the iTaukei community that political control must offset perceived economic imbalance.

This narrative has repeatedly shaped constitutional arrangements, from communal voting systems to the post-1987 constitutional order, and continues to animate contemporary calls for the restoration of indigenous political primacy. In that sense, Kamikamica is not merely advocating inclusion; he is challenging a foundational justification for ethnic exclusivity.

His acknowledgment that earlier attitudes were rooted ‘partly [in] insecurity’ is unusually candid for a serving political figure. It reframes the Indo-Fijian presence not as a threat but as an integral component of the national story, one that cannot be disentangled without unravelling Fiji itself.

Between Civic Nationalism and Ethno-National Revival

Placed within the present debate over constitutional reform, Kamikamica’s remarks align squarely with the civic nationalism embedded, at least formally, in the 2013 Constitution, which sought to standardise the term ‘Fijian’ for all citizens.

However, the resurgence of calls to revert to earlier constitutional frameworks, where ethnic identity structured political representation, signals a counter-movement. In that context, Kamikamica’s statement reads as both defensive and aspirational: defensive in resisting a rollback to ethnic labelling, and aspirational in imagining a genuinely shared national identity.

The difficulty, of course, lies in the gap between rhetoric and political reality. The very persistence of this debate suggests that the civic conception of ‘Fijian’ has not fully displaced its ethnic antecedent. For many, the term remains inseparable from indigenous identity, land ownership, and chiefly authority.

An Easter Message or a Political Line in the Sand?

Kamikamica frames his remarks in the language of Easter - unity, grace, and reflection.

Yet beneath this moral veneer lies a clear political positioning. By insisting that Indo-Fijians ‘belong here’ and are indistinguishable in national terms, he implicitly rejects proposals that would re-ethnicise the state.

Whether this marks a broader shift within government thinking, or merely an individual intervention, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the statement has landed at a moment when Fiji is once again negotiating the boundaries of identity, citizenship, and power.

In that sense, Kamikamica’s words revive an older, unresolved question, one that has haunted Fiji since independence: is the nation to be defined by ancestry, or by shared belonging?

His answer is unequivocal. The country, he suggests, has already moved on. The question is whether its politics will follow.

EDITOR'S NOTE: As Editor of Fijileaks, I add a personal note to this intervention. I was a close friend of his father Josevata Kamikamica (RIP) and had actively campaigned during the 1994 general election, for him (JK), not coupist Sitiveni Rabuka, to assume the office of Prime Minister. That moment, too, turned on questions of legitimacy, leadership, and the direction of the nation.

In 1994, Josevata Kamikamica formed the Fijian Association Party (FAP) to challenge Rabuka and the Great Council of Chiefs-endorsed SVT in that year’s general election. I supported him through my opinion columns in the Fiji Sun. The FAP enjoyed tacit backing from Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who had openly expressed his support for Kamikamica’s premiership at the Great Council of Chiefs meeting.

However, Mara was outvoted, partly by Rabuka’s politicised nominees on the Council. The SVT, for its part, accused Kamikamica of facilitating a return of political power to Indo-Fijians. In a strategic misstep, Kamikamica announced that he would form a coalition government with Indo-Fijian parties if he won the 1994 election, a position that played directly into the hands of SVT nationalists. He ultimately lost his own parliamentary seat, despite having campaigned on restoring integrity and dignity to Fijian leadership.

I do not know Manoa Kamikamica personally. My only direct encounter, albeit indirectly, arose after the 2022 election when he entered office under Rabuka’s leadership. At that time, Fijileaks, acting as a responsible investigative platform, made inquiries into circulating social media claims as to whether his wife had accompanied him to New Zealand at taxpayers’ expense. Rather than clarification, the response conveyed was a threat of legal action.

This is not recounted to personalise the present debate but to underscore a broader point. Public office carries with it not only the authority to speak on national unity but also the obligation to engage transparently with legitimate scrutiny. One cannot, on the one hand, call for a shared national identity grounded in mutual respect and, on the other, resist reasonable questions posed in the public interest.

That said, Manoa Kamikamica’s present remarks deserve to be assessed on their own merit. In affirming that Indo-Fijians are ‘our brothers and sisters’ and fully ‘Fijian’, he has articulated a position that, if consistently upheld in both word and conduct, would mark a meaningful departure from the exclusionary impulses that have too often defined Fiji’s political past.

14 December 1897, Governor Sir George O'Brien: 'The situation reminds one of nothing so much as story of the circus showman & his educated mule...We are able to make the Chiefs do anything we like in Colonial Fiji'

3/4/2026

WHO OWNS FIJI? GCC’s Bid To Reclaim State and Redefine Citizenship Should we allow these 'colonial mules' to takeover constitutional circus?

At its core, the GCC’s proposal forces a stark question: Is Fiji a country that belongs equally to all its citizens, or one that is owned, constitutionally and symbolically, by a single community? You cannot answer “both”.

A modern, multi-ethnic state cannot sustain itself in the fiction that equality and ethnic hierarchy can co-exist indefinitely. One will eventually consume the other. The tragedy of this moment is not that the proposal was made. It is that it reflects a persistent strain of thinking, that the future can be secured by retreating into the past.

Fiji does not need to relearn the lessons of division through another cycle of constitutional experimentation.

It needs to decide, firmly and without equivocation, whether it is a shared nation or an inherited one. Because once a state begins to redraw citizenship along ethnic lines, it is no longer merely revising its constitution. It is rewriting the terms of belonging itself."

WHO OWNS FIJI? GCC’S BID TO RECLAIM THE STATE AND REDEFINE CITIZENSHIP AND POWER TO ELECT PRESIDENT AND HIS DEPUTY

There are moments when a proposal is not merely misguided, but constitutionally dangerous. The latest call by the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) to reserve the term “Fijian” exclusively for iTaukei, and to reclaim the power to appoint the President and Vice-President, belongs firmly in that category.

It is, stripped of its cultural wrapping, a demand to re-ethnicise the state itself.

For a country that has already paid dearly through coups, constitutional upheavals, and decades of mistrust for entangling ethnicity with political power, this is not a step backward. It is a march toward the same precipice.

A Name Is Never Just A Name

The GCC’s insistence that only iTaukei be called “Fijian” is not a linguistic preference. It is a political act. Under the 2013 Constitution of Fiji, “Fijian” became a civic identity, an equalising term that, at least in law, placed all citizens on the same national footing. Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, and Others ceased to be hyphenated outsiders and became, simply, Fijians.

To now strip that away is to say: Some belong to the nation. Others merely live in it. No amount of cultural justification can disguise the constitutional insult embedded in that proposition. It redraws the boundary of belonging along ethnic lines and tells a significant portion of the population that their citizenship is, at best, conditional.

This is not cultural preservation. It is hierarchical citizenship by another name.

The Quiet Return of Ethnic Statecraft

Equally troubling is the GCC’s desire to become the appointing authority for the Head of State.

Let us be clear about what that entails.

The GCC is not an elected body. It does not derive its authority from universal suffrage. It represents, by design, a particular community, one rooted in hereditary chiefly structures and indigenous tradition.

To vest in it the power to appoint the President is to constitutionalise a simple idea: That sovereignty in Fiji does not flow equally from all its people, but disproportionately from one.

This is not a harmless nod to tradition. It is the creation of a parallel constitutional authority, one that sits above or alongside democratic institutions but is accountable to neither the electorate nor the full citizenry.

Fiji has seen this movie before. It never ends well.

History's Warning: Ignored, Again

The ghosts of the 1987 and 2000 coups are not distant relics. They are reminders of what happens when political power is justified in the language of ethnic entitlement. Each time, the argument was framed as protection of land, of identity, of indigenous rights. Each time, it resulted in:

Institutional collapse
Economic damage
Deepened ethnic division
And a legacy of distrust that still lingers

To now advance proposals that reinsert ethnicity at the apex of the state is to pretend those lessons were never learned.

The False Binary: Protection or Equality

The GCC’s position rests on an implied claim: that protecting iTaukei identity requires privileging it within the structure of the state. This is a false and dangerous binary. iTaukei land ownership is already entrenched. Customary institutions remain intact. Cultural identity is not under existential threat from a civic definition of citizenship.

What is being sought here is not protection. It is political primacy.

And once the state begins to privilege one group constitutionally, it cannot convincingly claim to belong equally to all.

A State Within A State

If these proposals were adopted, Fiji would not merely adjust its constitutional arrangements. It would transform its character. Fiji would have a democratic system in form, and an ethnically anchored authority in substance.

A President appointed not as a unifying national figure, but as the product of a particular communal structure.

And a national identity redefined in a way that excludes a large segment of the population from its very name.

That is not a republic. It is a state with an ethnic centre and peripheral citizens orbiting it.

The Real Cost

The consequences would not be theoretical. They would be felt in renewed ethnic political mobilisation, legal challenges grounded in equality and non-discrimination, investor uncertainty in a country once again flirting with instability, and, most corrosively, the quiet erosion of national cohesion. Because when a state tells some of its citizens that they are not truly part of the national identity, those citizens do not forget. They disengage, resist, or leave.

Fiji has already lived through that cycle.

Whose Fiji?

At its core, the GCC’s proposal forces a stark question: Is Fiji a country that belongs equally to all its citizens, or one that is owned, constitutionally and symbolically, by a single community? You cannot answer “both”.

A modern, multi-ethnic state cannot sustain itself on the fiction that equality and ethnic hierarchy can coexist indefinitely. One will eventually consume the other.

The tragedy of this moment is not that the proposal was made. It is that it reflects a persistent strain of thinking, that the future can be secured by retreating into the past. Fiji does not need to relearn the lessons of division through another cycle of constitutional experimentation.

It needs to decide, firmly and without equivocation, whether it is a shared nation or an inherited one.

Because once a state begins to redraw citizenship along ethnic lines, it is no longer merely revising its constitution.

It is rewriting the terms of belonging itself.

FNUGATE. Alleged Sex Assault at Tuvalu Port. FNU Maritime Student's 2024 Fiji Police Complain Still Unresolved. Her alleged attacker at FNU

2/4/2026

*The maritime cadet alleges the incident occurred during a port call in Tuvalu. According to her Fiji Police statement, the events took place while the vessel was docked in Tuvalu in March 2024

Editorial Note

Fijileaks has put a detailed series of questions to the Vice-Chancellor of Fiji National University, Professor Unaisi Nabobo-Baba, seeking clarification on the issues raised in this report, including what steps, if any, have been taken to assess and address potential safeguarding concerns.

These questions go to the heart of the University’s duty of care to its students and the handling of serious allegations within its training programmes.

At the time of publication, no response had been received.

A full report will follow upon receipt of the University’s response or the expiry of the response deadline.

She Filed a Police Report After a Tuvalu Voyage. Now Studies Within the Same System: Cadet’s Allegation Raises Questions for Fiji National University

A marine student has alleged that she was sexually assaulted during a 2024 maritime training voyage involving a port call in Tuvalu, later filed a police report upon her return to Fiji, and is now continuing her studies within the same institutional environment where the individual she accuses is said to hold a senior role, raising questions for Fiji National University (FNU) and law enforcement authorities.

According to a detailed written statement provided to Fijileaks, the cadet was attached to the container vessel Micronesian Pride in March 2024. She states that after an evening ashore in Tuvalu, she lost memory of subsequent events and later awoke in a senior officer’s cabin, undressed and disoriented, with no recollection of how she had come to be there.

The cadet further states that another officer later told her she had witnessed conduct consistent with a sexual assault while the cadet appeared unconscious.

She reports that she experienced significant physical pain the following morning and was admitted to hospital, where she underwent surgery and remained for several days. Upon returning to Fiji, the cadet states that she reported the matter to the company through which she had been engaged and subsequently filed a police report on 3 April 2024. She maintains that, to her knowledge, no action has been taken to date.

Fijileaks has not independently verified the allegation, which has not been tested in court, and no findings have been made by any judicial or investigative authority. The individual concerned is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

The matter now raises broader institutional questions.

The cadet is currently enrolled in a maritime training programme operating under Fiji National University. According to information provided to Fijileaks, the individual she accuses is said to be serving in a senior capacity within the same training environment. Fijileaks has not independently verified this information and has sought clarification.

If confirmed, the situation raises questions about safeguarding obligations within tertiary institutions, particularly where a complainant and the subject of an allegation may remain within the same academic or supervisory structure.

It also raises questions for police regarding the status of the report filed in April 2024 and whether any investigation has been undertaken.

Fijileaks has contacted Fiji National University seeking clarification on whether it is aware of the complaint and what measures, if any, have been taken to assess or manage potential risks.

At the time of publication, no response had been received.

This report does not determine the truth of the allegation. Rather, it reports the existence of a complaint, the absence of publicly known investigative progress, and the ongoing circumstances in which the complainant continues her training.

The central questions remain: What action, if any, has been taken on the police report?
What steps, if any, has the University taken to safeguard its student?

Until those questions are answered, the matter remains unresolved.

A view from Tuvalu, where a maritime cadet says events unfolded during a training voyage in March 2024. It was after crew had a few drinks at the Funafuti Lagoon Hotel, and a refreshing swim, and returned to the vessel

Meanwhile, Fijileaks has reviewed the student's full statement but is publishing selected extracts in the public interest.
“One of the female officers wanted to continue drinking, so I decided to accompany her and a few others to another location on the island. I remember opting for juice while they had beer and even took a refreshing swim before we returned to the ship. My last clear memory of that night was getting into a car with the staff to go back to the vessel. Upon waking up, I found myself in the cabin. Recognizing that I was undressed, I quickly wrapped myself in a towel and left the cabin. Another officer later told me that after putting me down on her bed, she went to do her laundry. When she returned, she saw the on top of me while I appeared to be unconscious.”

SILENCE from Vice-Chancellor Unaisi-Baba and Amelia Turagabeci

A Return to the Past, Disguised as Reform: Why NIKO NAWAIKULA's Re-Ethnicising the Constitution Risks Fragmentation And Not Unity. He even wants GCC to become Fiji's Upper Chamber to replace the old SENATE

1/4/2026

*There is also a credibility issue that cannot be ignored. Niko Nawaikula is a former Member of Parliament who served a prison sentence for abuse of parliamentary travel allowances. That record does not automatically invalidate his views, but it does invite caution when he advances proposals that concentrate power in institutions less directly accountable to voters

To the Speakers Nilesh Lal, Graham Leung & Hon Manoa Kamikamica, thank you for sharing your expert views that has truly empowered us all.

A Return to the Past, Disguised as Reform: Why Niko Nawaikula's Re-Ethnicising the Constitution Risks Fragmentation And Not Unity

Niko Nawaikula’s proposal is framed as a restoration of indigenous safeguards removed by the 2013 Constitution of Fiji. In substance, however, it seeks to reintroduce constitutional mechanisms, consent requirements, chiefly oversight, and group-based privileges that belong to an earlier era under the 1997 Constitution of Fiji and 1970 Constitution of Fiji.

That earlier framework was shaped by a specific demographic and political reality: iTaukei were not always a clear majority, and constitutional protections were justified as a buffer against marginalisation. Today, that premise has shifted. iTaukei are the majority. The question, therefore, is no longer one of protection from others, but how power is organised within that majority itself.

This is the point Nawaikula’s argument does not confront.

Reintroducing group-based constitutional privileges in a context where one group is numerically dominant does not stabilise the system; it alters the fault lines. Instead of mediating between communities, the Constitution begins to structure competition within the majority. In Fiji’s case, that means between provinces, confederacies, and chiefly networks, each with its own history, hierarchy, and claims to legitimacy.

The rhetoric already offers early warning signs. Labels such as “Natewa Vikings” or “Naitasiri hill tribes”, whatever their immediate political use, point to a deeper risk: the re-tribalisation of political identity. Once the Constitution elevates group authority, it does not stop neatly at a single category. It invites further subdivision who speaks for the group, which province carries weight, whose chiefs sit at the apex, and whose do not.

Comparative experience, particularly in parts of Africa, shows how quickly such dynamics can harden. Where constitutions or political systems privilege identity as a basis of authority, competition often shifts from national politics to intra-group rivalry - sometimes along regional or tribal lines. The result is not cohesion but fragmentation, with institutions drawn into disputes they are ill-equipped to resolve.

Fiji has already seen how perceptions of entitlement can destabilise constitutional order. The coups of 1987 and 2000 were not simply reactions to policy differences; they were triggered, in part, by a belief that political authority was shifting in ways that threatened established expectations, most notably with the election of Dr Timoci Bavadra in 1987 and Mahendra Chaudhry a decade later.

Those events illustrate a broader principle. When political power is seen as something that must be secured for a particular group, whether through constitutional design or informal expectation, any perceived loss of that power becomes a flashpoint. Reintroducing constitutional privileges now, in a majority context, risks replicating that dynamic within the iTaukei community itself.

The proposal to elevate the Great Council of Chiefs into a national reviewing authority intensifies this risk. Far from acting as a neutral “unifying” institution, it would inevitably reflect internal balances of influence: which provinces dominate, how representation is allocated, and whose voices carry decisive weight. Instead of resolving disputes, it could become the arena in which they are fought.

None of this is to deny the importance of indigenous identity, land, or cultural autonomy. These are central to Fiji’s history and remain protected in law. The issue is how they are embedded within the Constitution. There is a clear difference between recognition and constitutional supremacy. The former can coexist with equal citizenship; the latter strains it.

Nawaikula’s reliance on instruments such as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO Convention 169 does not bridge that gap. These frameworks support protection and consultation. They do not mandate political structures that elevate one group, or its internal subdivisions, above the general constitutional order.

There is also the matter of judgment. Proposals of this scale require not only historical awareness but a steady appreciation of institutional consequences.

Nawaikula’s own record, including his conviction for abuse of parliamentary travel allowances, is not determinative of the argument, but it does underscore the need for caution when power is to be concentrated in less directly accountable bodies.

The deeper point is this. Fiji’s stability depends less on returning to older constitutional formulas than on managing diversity within a shared civic framework. Once the Constitution begins to organise power around identity, especially within a majority, it risks multiplying the very divisions it seeks to contain.

A durable constitutional order does not attempt to freeze history or privilege one narrative over others. It recognises identity without allowing it to become the organising principle of political authority.

Nawaikula’s proposal, for all its invocation of tradition, moves in the opposite direction. It risks turning difference into structure, and structure into division.

The above question was the primary topic of my speech during the Talanoa Session on Amending the 2013 Constitution of Fiji held last Friday at FNU, Nasinu Campus. I answered that by posing and addressing the following questions: where in the 1997 Constitution of Fiji and 1970 Constitution of Fiji can one find recognition and protection of iTaukei indigenous cultural and ethnic identity and group rights which the authors of the 2013 Constitution rejected; what is the history of recognition and protection of iTaukei cultural and group identity; why these were left out by the authors of the 2013 Constitution; whether they should be restored and the justification for their restoration under the proposed constitutional amendment; and finally, how such restoration should be reflected in the planned amendment.

On the first question—where in the 1997 and 1970 Constitutions can one find recognition and protection of iTaukei indigenous cultural and ethnic identity and group rights which the authors of the 2013 Constitution rejected—I stated that there are a total of seven provisions in the 1997 Constitution that deal with the recognition, protection, and advancement of iTaukei interests, all of which were deliberately left out of the 2013 Constitution.

First, Chapter 13, section 185 deals with group rights. This provision introduced a form of protection now consistent with instruments such as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO Convention 169, requiring consultation and prior informed consent before legislation affecting iTaukei land rights and cultural autonomy could be introduced or amended. It provided that legislation concerning the Native Lands Act, Native Land Trust Act, Fijian Affairs Act, and Fijian Development Fund Act could not be amended without approval from the majority of GCC members in the Senate. This provision was deliberately excluded from the 2013 Constitution.

Secondly, section 186 dealt with customary laws and customary rights, requiring Parliament to recognise and provide for customary law and customary dispute resolution. This too was entirely omitted from the 2013 Constitution.

Thirdly, Chapter 8, section 116 gave constitutional recognition to the Great Council of Chiefs and its role in appointing and disciplining the President. This provision did not find a place in the 2013 Constitution.

Fourthly, section 90 recognised the role of the GCC in appointing the President and Vice-President, while section 93 recognised its role in their removal. Both provisions were excluded from the 2013 Constitution.

Sixthly, section 64 recognised the GCC’s role in appointing over 43 per cent of the Senate. This too was removed.

Seventhly, Chapter 5, section 44 recognised social justice and affirmative action. This provision was used to justify policies such as scholarship allocations, employment distribution in the civil service, and commercial assistance programmes. It was also omitted from the 2013 Constitution.

I then turned to the 1970 Constitution. There are two important provisions that relate specifically to the protection of group rights through prior consent before amendments to legislation affecting indigenous Fijians. Section 66 identified key legislation relating to iTaukei land and cultural autonomy, including the iTaukei Lands Act, the iTaukei Lands Trust Act, and the iTaukei Affairs Act. It required that such legislation could not be amended unless approved by six of the eight GCC members in the Senate appointed under section 45(1). Both sections 66 and 45(1) were removed and do not appear in the 2013 Constitution.

In answer to the first question, therefore, there are two provisions in the 1970 Constitution and seven in the 1997 Constitution that deal with the recognition, protection, and advancement of iTaukei identity and group rights, all of which were rejected by the authors of the 2013 Constitution.
On the second question—what is the history of recognition and protection of iTaukei cultural and group identity—I expressed that, as an iTaukei, I am deeply saddened by the deliberate removal of these protections. The acquisition of Fiji as a colony was historically grounded in the recognition and protection of iTaukei land rights and cultural autonomy. This principle, often described as the paramountcy of iTaukei interests or native policy, is reflected in several key instruments.

The first is the Deed of Cession 1874, particularly clauses 4 and 7, which contain the Crown’s promise to protect land rights and cultural autonomy. The second is the Native Lands Ordinance of 1882 and the Native Affairs Ordinance of 1876, which formalised those commitments into law. These provided not merely recognition but enforceable legal protection of iTaukei land rights and cultural systems.

These same group rights—land rights and cultural autonomy—are now recognised under modern international frameworks such as UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169, yet they were embedded in Fiji’s legal system more than a century earlier. They were also reflected in sections 66 and 45(1) of the 1970 Constitution and in section 185 of the 1997 Constitution through the requirement of prior informed consent. These are the very protections that the 2013 Constitution has removed.

On the third question—why these protections were left out—I argued that their removal was intentional. In my parliamentary debates, I consistently maintained that the 2013 Constitution formed part of a broader policy to dilute or eliminate iTaukei identity within a framework of common and equal citizenry. Although this was never explicitly acknowledged by the former Attorney-General, the content of the Constitution and subsequent legislative measures suggest a deliberate move away from recognition of customary law, cultural autonomy, and group rights.

On the fourth question—whether these protections should be restored—I answered in the affirmative. The recognition of iTaukei identity, culture, and social structure is deeply rooted in Fiji’s history and legal development. Their removal is, in my view, unjustified and inconsistent with both historical commitments and international norms. The restoration of these provisions is therefore necessary.

Finally, on how such restoration should be reflected in a constitutional amendment, I proposed that the Constitution should include express recognition of indigenous group rights within the Bill of Rights, guided by international instruments such as UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169, while balancing these with the rights of other communities. It should restore provisions recognising customary law, reintroduce mechanisms for prior informed consent before legislation affecting iTaukei interests, and provide for social justice and affirmative action measures.

I further proposed that the GCC be reconstituted with a new national role, effectively replacing the Senate as a reviewing body. In this model, the GCC would act not only for iTaukei but as a unifying national institution, reviewing legislation and ensuring that government actions are consistent with the interests of all communities.

In conclusion, I stated that there are nine instances of constitutional recognition and protection of iTaukei identity and group rights found in the 1970 and 1997 Constitutions which were rejected in 2013. These protections were historically grounded in colonial law and policy and should now be restored through constitutional amendment. The reformed GCC, in particular, should assume a central national role, serving not only iTaukei but all who call Fiji home.
Vinaka.

PROFIT ON PAPER, LOSS IN REALITY: Inside Fiji Airways $25 million Deficit. But High Interest Rates Overseas, Fewer Holidays to Fiji? How Global Borrowing Costs Could Shape Fiji Airways's Next SIX MONTHS

31/3/2026

The $25 Million Illusion: Profit in Substance, Loss on Paper

The much-cited $25 million loss reported by Fiji Airways in 2024 was less a reflection of operational weakness than an artefact of accounting distortion.

Beneath the headline figure lay a fundamentally profitable enterprise. The airline generated record revenues of $1.85 billion and, crucially, delivered an operating profit of $23.7 million before non-cash adjustments.

Chairman, Nalin Patel

The decisive factor that tipped the accounts into loss was foreign exchange volatility: the strengthening US dollar inflated the value of Fiji Airways’ US-denominated lease obligations, producing an $83.5 million unrealised translation loss.

This was not cash leaving the business, but an accounting entry required under international financial reporting standards. Layered atop this were structural cost pressures - aircraft lease expenses, fuel volatility, and the re-entry of global competitors suppressing yields.

Yet the core indicators tell a different story: rising passenger volumes, strong cash reserves, and sustained demand across key routes.

In short, Fiji Airways did not lose $25 million in the ordinary commercial sense; it absorbed an accounting hit in a year of expansion, investment, and post-pandemic normalisation.

The distinction is not semantic. It goes to the heart of whether the national carrier is weakening or, in fact, consolidating its long-term position as the economic engine of Fiji’s tourism-dependent economy.

HIGH INTEREST RATES, FEWER HOLIDAYS? HOW GLOBAL BORROWING COSTS COULD SHAPE FIJI AIRWAYS’ NEXT SIX MONTHS

Any forward-looking assessment of Fiji Airways cannot stop at exchange rates, fuel prices, or operational performance. There is another, quieter force working its way through the system, one that does not appear directly in airline accounts but exerts a powerful influence on demand: interest rates in Fiji’s major tourist source markets.

Over the past two years, central banks in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom have raised interest rates sharply in response to inflation. While these decisions are made far from Fiji, their consequences are felt acutely in a tourism-dependent economy. The connection is straightforward, but often overlooked.

When interest rates rise, borrowing becomes more expensive. Mortgage repayments increase, credit card debt becomes costlier, and disposable income shrinks. Households, faced with higher financial commitments, begin to adjust their spending.

And among the first expenditures to be reconsidered is discretionary travel. For Fiji Airways, this matters profoundly.

The Indirect Pressure on Demand

Unlike fuel costs or exchange rates, which affect the airline directly, interest rates operate through behaviour. They shape the decisions of travellers in Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles markets that supply a large share of Fiji’s visitors.

When interest rates are high, households delay or shorten holidays, travellers downgrade from premium to economy, advance bookings become more cautious, and price sensitivity increases. The effect is not immediate collapse, but gradual softening. Flights may still be full but yields decline.

The Timing Effect. Why Six Months Matters

Interest rate impacts are rarely instantaneous. They work with a lag. Many travellers book holidays months in advance. Savings buffers and pent-up demand, especially following the COVID-19 period, have so far cushioned the effect of higher borrowing costs. This explains why tourism has remained relatively strong despite rising rates.

But over a six-month horizon, that buffer begins to thin. Fixed-rate mortgages reset at higher levels, savings accumulated during earlier periods are drawn down, and households adjust to a new financial reality. It is at this point that travel decisions become more constrained.

What This Means for Fiji Airways

For Fiji Airways, rising interest rates in source markets translate into three key risks:

1. Softer Demand Growth

Passenger numbers may remain stable, but growth slows. The rapid rebound seen in recent years may not be sustained.

2. Downward Pressure on Fares

Travellers become more price-sensitive, forcing airlines to offer competitive fares. This reduces revenue per seat, even if planes remain full.

3. Shift in Travel Patterns

There might be fewer long-haul trips, shorter stays, and increased reliance on promotions and discounts.

The Interaction With Other Risks

Interest rates do not operate in isolation. They intersect with the other pressures already facing Fiji Airways:

A strong US dollar increases financial liabilities
High fuel prices compress margins
Competition limits pricing power

When combined with weaker consumer spending abroad, these pressures reinforce one another. A full aircraft, under these conditions, does not necessarily translate into strong profitability.

A Structrual Reality For Fiji

For Fiji, the implications extend beyond the airline. Tourism is not simply one sector among many. It is a central pillar of the economy. When interest rate rises in foreign markets, it reduces travel demand, the effects ripple through hotels and resorts, transport services, retail and hospitality, and ultimately government revenue,

Fiji Airways, as the gateway carrier, sits at the front line of this exposure.

The story of Fiji Airways over the next six months will not be written solely in its financial statements. It will be written in mortgage repayments in Sydney, credit card balances in Auckland, and consumer confidence in Los Angeles.

Because in a tourism-dependent economy, the price of money abroad shapes the flow of visitors at home.

Fiji Airways may control its routes and operations but the decision to travel lies with households overseas, and those decisions are now being made in an era of higher interest rates, not to remind us all of the war in the Middle East.

Fiji Airways 2024 Annual Report

GEORGE SPEIGHT. From Coup to Clean & Jerk: The Architect of 2000’s Chaos Now Flexes His ‘Strength’ in Weightlifting Gym. What about Truth and Reconciliation Commission - When will He Lift Up The Veil on 2000?

30/3/2026

There are moments in Fiji’s public life that defy belief, not because they are unfamiliar, but because they expose, yet again, the country’s uneasy relationship with memory, accountability, and consequence.

Here is a man whose name is indelibly tied to the trauma of the 2000 coup, a rupture that left deaths, deep ethnic division, and institutional damage in its wake, and now recast in a scene of physical exertion, hoisting weights as if history itself were something that could be lifted, shrugged off, and quietly set aside.

His defenders will be quick to insist that he has ‘served his time’, that the ledger of justice has been settled and the past should be left where it belongs. That may be legally correct. But law and memory are not the same currency. A prison sentence may satisfy the formal demands of justice; it does not extinguish the historical weight of what occurred, nor the continuing moral questions that linger in its aftermath.

For many Fijians, the images jar. They sit uneasily against the unresolved legacy of that period: the hostages, the mutiny, the loss of life, and the long shadow cast over constitutional governance. Strength, in this context, is no longer a neutral display of muscle and discipline.

It invites a harder question: what does it mean for a society when those associated with its darkest chapters appear to move on, publicly, almost casually, while the moral and political reckoning remains incomplete?

This is not about fitness. It is about memory. And in Fiji, memory has a stubborn way of resurfacing - no matter how heavy the weights, or how rehearsed the performance of moving on.

2000: Tarakinikini and Speight

If Not the Gym, Then the Truth Commission, Speight?

When George Speight resurfaces in public life, the question is no longer about punishment served, but about truth still withheld. For a figure so central to the 2000 coup, the issue is not whether he has lifted enough weights but whether he has lifted the veil.

Should he be before a truth and reconciliation commission? In any serious post-conflict framework, the answer would lean heavily toward yes.

Such bodies are not courts; they exist to establish a full historical record, to hear victims, and to compel, morally if not legally, those responsible to account for their actions in their own words.

If Fiji is to move beyond selective memory, then reconciliation cannot be one-sided. It requires participation from those who shaped the crisis, not just those who suffered it.

RFMF Barracks, 2 November 2024: Shane Stevens, the key figure in the mutiny

EDITORIAL NOTE: Shane Stevens' statement was passed to us while he was still serving his sentence, for inclusion in our book on Bloodbath at the Barracks

CAPTAIN Shane Stevens account of reasons behind the mutiny and his views on Bainimarama's conduct in 2000:

When GS (George Speight) and the CRW (Counter Revolutionary Warfare) conducted the coup on 19th May, 2000, the CRW unit was led by Lt Penaia Baleinamau who after a few days and under the direct orders of Cmdr. Voreqe Bainimarama, supplied logistical support for all CRW security operations inside the parliament complex, including those around the detained MPs.

For example, daily reports were relayed to CL JB in operations; all hot rations were delivered directly from QEB at meal times into parliament for the CRW and the other FMF soldiers there. Extra arms and ordinances were transported in under Police escort from QEB. All soldiers were transported in on shift rotation and all pays carried on unhindered. Insofar as everyone was concerned, Cmdr. VB and his command were always in daily contact with GS and aware of the situation in the parliament complex. At times, GS was transported to brief Cmdr. VB and officers up at QEB officers mess on the progress and direction of the coup and VB even directed officers to support the coup.

This continued until the events of 29th May, 2000 when without the knowledge of GS, the President, Ratu Mara was forcefully removed by a group of senior ex and serving military personnel, including Cmdr. Bainimarama at Dakuibeqa. Cmdr. Bainimarama then proceeded to abrogate the constitution, pronounce himself head of state and duly appointed Ratu Epeli Nailatikau as his PM. That evening a military delegation of acting CMD CL Tuatoka, Lt Cl Etueni Caucau and led by Cl Filipo Tarakinikini entered the parliament complex to present to GS and his group a kamunaga from Cmdr. VB. They conveyed what he had done at Dakuibeqa and specifically that he was in agreement with the coup objectives of GS and later in the speech requested that GS hand over control of the coup to him (VB). He gave his assurances to GS that the objectives of the coup would be fulfilled and the I taukei will be happy.

GS and his group were shocked at the treachery which took place at Dakuibeqa and immediately rejected the kamunaga with the demand that Cmdr. VB and his PM resign immediately and hand power back to the President RT Mara. The delegation returned to camp to convey the message to VB and his “Think Tank” who were not at all happy.

Voreqe refused to step down and consequently it took 56 days for the GS group to force him to relinquish executive power and agree to the terms of the Muanikau Accord. What followed next was another act of treachery by VB and the rest is now history.

During the 56 day conflict between the GS group and VB, the CRW in parliament were led by Maj Ilisoni Ligairi and supported by Lt Baleinamau based up at the CRW complex in QEB. Lt SS sided with VB against the CRW “GS group” and he was not pleased with Baleinamau’s continued support for the operations in parliament. Upon Lt SS’s insistence, Cmdr VB duly promoted him to Cpt and gave him total command of the CRW complex at QEB. LT Baleinamau was stood down, sent home and placed under surveillance. Then on behalf of Cmdr VB, CPT SS proceeded to capture a cache of CRW arms stored at a secret location at Bilo. This caused a fracture in relationships between the CRW and CPT SS who was now being threatened from within.

Towards the end of the 56 days, Lt SS was directly in control of two caches of CRW arms (those in the CRW complex at QEB and the other in the bush at Bilo). However, the third cache of arms was used in parliament under the control of Maj Ligairi. After the signing of the Muanikau Accord and the release of the detained MP’s, Lt CL FT and CPT SS were also given specific orders by Cmdr VB to enter parliament and oversee the return of these arms to the CRW armoury at QEB as per MAccord. Immediately after that, everyone in parliament then dispersed and returned to their homes however a large group was convinced by the QV Takiveikata, to go to Kalabu and await the “qusi ni loaloa” ceremony. QV kept stalling this event to the suspicion of GS and others at the school.

It would become known at this time that when the arms from parliament had entered the gates at QEB, CL JB intercepted them by force and ordered that they be redirected to the main armoury. Later that day, when the CRW soldiers who were at parliament tried to return to the CRW complex to resume their duties as per MA, they were refused entry into the camp. After numerous attempts by Maj Ligairi and GS to speak to Lt JB and Cmdr VB over the phone, there was no response.

After observing that Cmdr VB was directly violating the MA, CPT SS, who was still in possession of the last cache of arms at a secret location in Bilo, refused to return these arms until he had personal guarantees from Cmdr VB that he would honour the conditions of the MA, where specifically all CRW would return to barracks and resume their duties as per normal. After receiving these assurances from Cmdr VB, CPT SS returned the remaining Bilo arms to QEB which was again forcefully commandeered by CL JB to the main armoury. All these sinister acts were viewed with unease by the GS group and MAJ Ligairi with those CRW at Kalabu and served to be an ominous sign of treachery against the MA.

The following day, 13 July, 2000 and after accounting for all of the arms from Bilo, the military proceeded with the arrest of the GS group including the armed raid on the Kalabu district school where Maj Ligairi and other CRW soldiers were arrested, badly assaulted and detained at Nukulau, QEB and the Nabua /CPS police stations. CPT SS viewed this act by Cmdr VB as the ultimate treachery against him but was still in two minds after it was announced that GS group had violated the MA with the revelation of missing arms. However, Maj Ligairi and his group disputed this because they were adamant that with the help and verification of CPT SS and Lt CL FT, all arms from parliament were returned and others (personal arms) were accounted for. The CRW parliament group had kept an immaculate and highly accurate record of all arms used within the complex during the 56 days including their return to QEB.

To validate the “missing arms” claims of Cmdr VB, CPT SS set about with the collaboration of Sgt Morris, the chief armourer at the time to inspect and record the details of all the ‘CRW parliament arms” in the main armoury. He discovered that the chief armourer was well aware that the “missing arms” claims were lies and that all arms were indeed returned and even accounted for. He would later learn from casual remarks by Cmdr VB and senior officers like CL JB that it was a fabricated story for the purpose of dishonouring the Muanikau Accord and they had already set in place a plan to arrest GS and all those in his group once all the arms were returned and accounted for. This was the final act of treachery and was the catalyst for the Nov 1 mutiny.

I have in my possession, the signed and original Chief Armourers report on the audit of all weapons that were returned from the parliament complex at the time. The report concludes that all weapons had been returned and others accounted for and that the so called, “13 missing weapons” were old SLR’s that were never in parliament at any time but kept in the main armoury.

CAPT SS’s account as to the real reason of the mutiny was not to kill Bainimarama but to replace him as he was seen as unfit for duty. At no time during the court martial was CAPT SS allowed to divulge the above information because of how the evidence was presented before the court.

The above statement is a true account by CPT SS and it highlights the fact that Cmdr VB has a history of carrying out treacherous acts so that he can progress his own personal interests and agenda for power. He has no qualms about deceiving people and even those who assume that they are close to him because of their long standing social and working relationships.

FROM CANE FIELDS to CORPORATE FIELDS: Displaced 40 Seaqaqa and Labasa Cane Farmers, an Indo-Fijian leader lecturing Diaspora FEST in India, and Chinese prisoner-turned partner in Fiji's Unequal Land Game

28/3/2026

FROM CANE FIELDS TO CORPORATE FIELDS: Displaced Farmers and Unequal Land Game

In Fiji today, three narratives are unfolding along the same fault line. They do not arise from a single transaction, nor do they share a common lineage. Yet, when read together, they illuminate a deeper and more troubling pattern in the governance of land, the country’s most sensitive and politically charged resource. At one end stand the displaced cane farmers of the north; at the other, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister engaged in global Indian diaspora discourse on “inclusive growth”; and threading through both, a corporate relationship between an iTaukei Minister and a convict that began not in a boardroom, but in a prison.

In the cane belts of Labasa and Seaqaqa, some forty farming families have been left without land following the non-renewal of their agricultural leases. These are not recent arrivals or speculative tenants. They are, in many cases, descendants of indentured Indian labourers whose families have cultivated the same plots for generations.

Their lives were built on the fragile but enduring expectation that, so long as they met their obligations, renewal would follow. They planted, harvested, paid rent, and sustained not only their own households but a substantial part of Fiji’s sugar economy. Yet when the leases expired, the system offered them neither continuity nor credible transition. Applications failed, processes stalled, and the land was no longer available. What remained was displacement, economic, social, and, for many, deeply personal.

At precisely the same moment, Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Chand Prasad, was in Bengaluru, India, addressing the Indiaspora Conference. There he spoke of shared values, global partnerships, and the promise of inclusive growth. There is nothing inherently objectionable in such engagement. Indeed, the cultivation of diaspora networks is often prudent statecraft. But the geography of the moment cannot be ignored.

For this crisis is unfolding not in some distant or politically marginal district, but in Labasa, the very region from which Prasad’s own political journey began. The cane fields of the north were not incidental to his rise; they were foundational. They shaped his constituency, informed his public voice, and underwrote his passage into Parliament.

The contrast is therefore not merely political; it is biographical. While the former minister speaks abroad of inclusion, exclusion unfolds at home, on the very ground that once sustained his political credibility. There has been no sustained public reckoning with the lease non-renewals, no clear articulation of how the language of “inclusive growth” accommodates the sudden landlessness of long-settled farming communities. Silence, in this context, does not operate as neutrality. It becomes part of the structure through which these outcomes are normalised.

Running parallel to this is a third narrative, one that would strain credulity were it not so plainly recorded in the corporate register. Ifereimi Vasu, now Minister for iTaukei Affairs, was formerly Commissioner of Prisons. During his tenure, a Chinese national, Jason Zhong, was convicted and imprisoned in Fiji for serious offences involving drugs and sex trafficking. It was within that custodial setting that the two men became acquainted. Ordinarily, such a connection would end at the prison gate, bounded by the institutional logic of punishment and release. In this instance, it did not.

Following Zhong’s release, the relationship transitioned into commerce. Through Qera Mai Lagi Pte Ltd, the former prisoner and his former jailor became business partners in a land-linked enterprise, with Zhong holding a majority share and Vasu a significant minority, both serving as directors.

Over time, the structure evolved. Directors resigned, family members assumed positions, and an additional corporate layer was introduced through a related properties entity. Yet the essential association, the movement from incarceration to partnership, remained the central fact.

None of this, taken in isolation, necessarily breaches the letter of the law. A person who has served a sentence is entitled to reintegrate into society. Corporate partnerships, even between unlikely actors, are not per se unlawful. Lease non-renewal, under Fiji’s land tenure framework, is legally permissible. But legality, in such circumstances, is an incomplete measure. What matters is the pattern of outcomes the system produces.

Set side by side, these three narratives reveal a stark asymmetry. A man who entered Fiji’s prison system for trafficking offences emerges and participates in a land-based enterprise alongside a politically exposed figure. An Indo-Fijian leader from Labasa articulates a vision of inclusion and development on the international stage. Meanwhile, families whose connection to the land is measured not in years but in generations find themselves displaced, their livelihoods extinguished, their future uncertain.

This is not irony in the literary sense; it is inversion in the structural sense. The pathways that one might expect to be difficult - reintegration into economic life after serious criminal conviction - appear navigable when accompanied by proximity to power.

The pathways one might expect to be secure, continued occupation of land long cultivated and productively used, prove precarious, even untenable, in the absence of such proximity.

What emerges, then, is not a single scandal but a dual reality. In one Fiji, land is scarce, leases are fragile, and livelihoods are contingent upon decisions taken elsewhere. In another, land is accessible through corporate structuring, relationships, and the quiet reconfiguration of ownership and control. Both realities operate within the same legal framework. Only one of them consistently produces stability and opportunity.

The question that follows is unavoidable. How did Fiji arrive at a point where a former prisoner could find a pathway into land-based enterprise, an Indo-Fijian political leader could speak of inclusive growth abroad, and the very farmers who sustained that land for generations could be left without it?

Until that question is answered, not with rhetoric, but with structural reform, the language of inclusion will remain precisely that: language. For the farmers of Labasa, it will offer neither land, nor livelihood, nor the security that has now been taken from them.

CHINESE WELCOME: After the 1987 racially motivated coups, Sitiveni Rabuka was happy to welcome Chinese farmers and businessmen into Fiji to replace the Indo-Fijians. They were to come from mainland China and Hong Kong.
'The Chinese would be the best substitute. They are hard workers and have no political ambitions,' he said. What about the Indo-Fijians?
'As far as I am concerned Indians (Indo-Fijians) are welcome to stay and make as much money as they like.'

From Fijileaks Archives

Statement by the Leader of the Opposition – Hon. Inia Seruiratu

I am deeply concerned by reports brought to my Office that more than 40 families in the Labasa and Seaqaqa areas are facing the non-renewal of their land leases by the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB). The majority of those affected are hardworking farmers who have, for years, contributed meaningfully to the economic life of Vanua Levu.

These tenants are not idle occupants of land, they are the very individuals who cultivate it, who ensure productivity, who sustain supply chains and who support livelihoods not only for their own families but for the wider community. Their continued presence on the land is integral to food security, rural stability and economic development in the North.

It is therefore troubling that so many of these tenants now face uncertainty and possible displacement. Of equal concern are reports that many are being asked to pay premiums ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 as a condition for lease renewal. For ordinary farming families, such sums are simply beyond reach and risk effectively excluding them from continued access to the land they have long developed and depended upon.

I am particularly disappointed that the Government has not taken proactive steps to address this issue. There appears to be a clear lack of coordination between the Government and TLTB, as well as insufficient engagement with landowners to ensure that lease renewals are managed in a manner that is fair, transparent and beneficial to all parties.

Landowners must, of course, receive a fair return from their land. However, this must be balanced against the broader national interest of keeping productive land in use and supporting those who have demonstrated commitment to its development. Allowing leases to lapse without viable renewal pathways, or imposing prohibitive financial demands, undermines both economic stability and social cohesion.

I call on the Government to urgently intervene and work collaboratively with TLTB and landowners to find practical, equitable solutions. This includes reviewing the imposition of excessive premiums, improving coordination mechanisms, and ensuring that genuine, longstanding tenants are given a fair opportunity to continue their farming activities. The future of Vanua Levu’s agricultural sector depends on decisions made today. We cannot afford policies or practices that drive farmers off the land and leave productive areas idle.

My Office will continue to monitor this situation closely and advocate for the affected families.

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