A WELL-PLACED  People's Democratic Party source has revealed that the former party spokesman Nirmal Singh was fired from his role on Monday 20 January 2014 by the Executive Board following a highly acrimonious showdown in Suva when the Board members confronted him over his several unauthorized statements to the media lavishing praise on the regime's Budget and other ill-informed statements (see right-hand column)

The Board confronted him on Monday morning, about why he defied party directives, policies and principles. The "One-Man Showman" flew into frenzied rage, screaming and shouting at his party inquisitors, and said that he was leaving the party for good.

It is understood that he then went to the Fiji Sun saying that he would be deciding his future with the party next weekend. This appeared in the Wednesday 29 January 2014 Fiji Sun.  

The source accused Singh of misleading the SUN: "It seems he ran to the media to make out to the people of Fiji that he was quitting the party because of trade unionsists Felix Anthony and Daniel Urai."

The truth, the source claims, is that Singh is no longer party spokesman. He had harboured ambitions to lead the party instead of party president Adi Sivia Qoro.

The source says Singh even deployed "scare tactic" by disclosing that he was recently approached by the regime's self-appointed Attorney-General and Minister for Elections Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum to join Frank Bainimarama's proposed new party.
 
Nirmal Singh has not responded to questions e-mailed to him.


It is widely believed that Singh will cross-over to Bainimarama's party in the coming months.

By VICTOR LAL

The Fiji Rugby Union has been forced to lay off five employees – including popular national 15s coach Inoke Male – as the International Rugby Board’s $3.3m financial sanctions over the military-dominated administration’s woeful running of the national game start to bite.

The unlucky five including a Rugby House kitman and a janitor were called in one by one to the office of acting CEO Dr Berlin Kafoa to receive their enveloped termination letters as the FRU struggles to balance the books after the IRB confirmed they would be withholding the annual development grant of £1m, almost three years after the Bainimarama government took control of the FRU by forcing fresh board elections using funding for the 2011 Rugby World Cup as an inducement.

The IRB has so little faith in the running of the FRU – led for two years from 2011 by the Land Force commander Colonel Mosese Tikoitoga as chairman, and now by permanent secretary Finance Filimone Waqabaca – that they wanted to appoint their own hand-picked director to safeguard the IRB funding.

As if the sackings were not bad enough, word from Las Vegas is that Ben Ryan has still not been paid a penny of the $300,000 salary promised by the Fiji National Sports Commission, run by one of Bainimarama’s daughters. It’s understood the FNSC is holding up all FRU payments until they are satisfied with the paperwork and acquittals provided by the FRU for the three-Test tour of Europe late last year which was partly-financed by Commission.

That process of financial reconciliation could now take even longer as Male was coach of the Europe tour, and another of the sacked employees, Semi Rogoyawa was the tour’s logistics manager.

And to top off all the drama and intrigue, mystery still surrounds the outcome of the biggest and potentially most controversial sponsorship deal in the country’s history, even though the key Fiji Rugby Union board member in charge of sponsorship has returned after an invigorating detox programme that involved daily bowel cleansing, male on male full-body massages and spiritual readings and lessons.

Supermarket tycoon Baljeet Singh, who has successfully whipped up the fevered competition between Vodafone and Digicel, was an inpatient at the Rakiraki-based Masada Practice run by Dr Epeli Nailatikau.

It’s understood that Singh and the rest of the FRU board were stunned by Digicel’s decision to match the $5-6m per annum offer from a Vodafone-led consortium, as was their right under Digicel’s just-expired FRU sponsorship agreement.

And the board are not really certain how to proceed without risking the ire of prime minister Frank Bainimarama.

A press conference to unveil regime-friendly Vodafone as the new lead sponsor, along with Fiji Airways, C J Patel, Merchant Finance and Fijian Holdings, was scheduled by the FRU for January 17 and then cancelled at the last minute – but so late in the day that the Fiji Airways CEO had already left Nadi for Suva.

In between all of the sackings, the FRU board have now asked for two separate outside counsel to test what flexibility there is to proceed with Vodafone in spite of Digicel’s offer.

By Wadan Narsey

Since independence in 1970, this last seven years have probably been the most earth-shaking for indigenous Fijians as a community, yet Fijian intellectuals seem to be in public hibernation.

A military dictatorship, with unknown advisers, is bringing about major changes to Fijian institutions: the Great Council of Chiefs has been supposedly  abolished; provincial governance structures reorganized; the laws of management of communally owned Fijian land and marine resources (some with serious environmental impacts); flagship Fijian companies such as Fijian Holdings Limited have been reorganized; controls have been placed on Fijian churches and villages; Fijian cultural symbols are being changed by decree, without their consent.

Massive changes in economic policy are affecting not just Fijians but all Fiji citizens in: taxation and expenditure of tax-payer funds, privatization and sale of public assets, restructuring of pension funds, controversial approval for new industries such as casinos and mines, a huge increase in public debt that must be paid for by future generations which will be increasingly indigenous Fijian, and much more.

The views of the Bainimarama Regime leaders are prominent every day on radio, television and in the newspapers, with extremely limited coverage given to opposing political leaders.

It is dismaying therefore that there is a deafening silence from Fijian intellectuals  from the universities and the private sector-  with the exception of a few rare individuals such as Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi or young youth leaders like Peter Waqavonovono.

One may well ask, where are the Rusiate Nayacakalaus, Jo Kamikamicas, Savenaca Siwatibaus, Amelia Rokotuivunas and Sir Kamisese Maras, of today?

Hibernating intellectuals?

It is natural that ordinary indigenous Fijians look to indigenous Fijian intellectuals at the universities, corporate entities and non-government organizations for guidance and debate on their major societal issues. Yet indigenous Fijian academics, corporate types and the plethora of legal professionals appear to be lying low.

In a pattern repeated from the seventies, senior Fijian academics at USP (and now FNU) happily allow themselves to be promoted into sterile administrative work, or export themselves to universities abroad. Also largely absent are the voices of Fijian senior corporate types from the private and public sectors, currently working in Fiji or abroad, or retired.

Even prominent Fijian intellectual political leaders (of whom the electorates expected better), disappeared out of sight (leaving Qarase to cop the flack alone) or joined the bandwagon. Are these intellectual leaders (Missing in Action) secretly discussing these issues amongst their communities? Or are they waiting to see who are going to be the winners, before they jump on the winning band-wagon?

The curse of entertainment and blogging

Is it a coincidence that most of our media organizations (television, radio and newspapers), are diverting the largest part of public discourse into entertainment- sports (rugby sevens), Bollywood and Hollywood, singing competitions, and religious frenzy.

Policy debates are raised quite rarely, and even then in totally innocuous fashion, without the attention they deserve. One phenomenon of our times, with mixed blessings, is the massive rise of anonymous blogging (by all ethnic groups), where the calm rational voices are totally outnumbered by nasty posts, often racist and violent in nature.

Is the ability to blog anonymously dissipating the energies of Fijian intellectuals, thereby ensuring that they make little attempt to engage in honest public debates using their own names? The real misfortune is that the anonymous blogs are usually read largely by the “converted” and not those whose minds have not been made up, but are daily being influenced by the media which is currently dominated by Regime propaganda.

I suspect also that even the rational educative blogger is ineffective, since anonymity robs the views of their full effectiveness.

Who will dispute that a public statement  by Savenaca Siwatibau or any other respected Fijian leader, would have a far greater impact than an anonymous Letter to the Editor or a similar but anonymous blog posting?

Of course, having views unpopular with those in power, must come at some personal cost, as it does everywhere in the world.

_ But are indigenous Fijian intellectuals as a group choosing a totally wrong balance between active transparent social responsibility and self-seeking self-preserving “culture” of silence?


Silence is not golden

Elections will be held within the next eight months and political candidates of all persuasions will be expressing their views in trying to influence the outcome of the elections.

It would be of great help to indigenous Fijian voters (and others) if politically neutral Fijian intellectuals from the universities, private and NGO sectors,  were to actively express their views on national policy matters which will become election issues, whichever political side their views happen to fall.

Silence from our Fijian intellectuals at this critical juncture in Fiji’s history, is not going to be golden. It certainly has not helped the Fijian community so far.

http://narseyonfiji.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/the-hibernation-of-fijian-intellectuals-22-january-2014-2/