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FIJILEAKS: Mahendra Reddy should also be charged with Ganesh Chand with abuse of office for the half-million dollar 'golden handshake'; what about Chand's co-accused Narendra Prasad; he has resigned and in NZ?

31/3/2015

Fijileaks Founder: We had founded Fijileaks to hold the high and mighty from all races to account. Let us hope Ganesh Chand is not the last one. The notorious Media Decree was brought in to ensure that the likes of Chand - Fiji First Party manifesto author - slipped through the legal net. A warning to those in power: you can run but you will not be able to hide from Fijileaks. We are here to serve the People of Fiji, VINAKA

FICAC charges former FNU VC

The former Vice Chancellor of the Fiji National University Dr Ganesh Chand has appeared in the Suva Magistrates Court charged with one count of Abuse of Office.

The charge was laid by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption.

It is alleged that Chand while being employed in the Public Service abused the authority of his office.

It is alleged he approved the payments for overseas medical treatment for the then Minister of Education and the Chairman of the FNU Council, Filipe Bole without the council’s approval.

The case has been adjourned to 22nd April when the accused will take a plea.

Chand was released on a bail bond of $500.

He has been advised by the Court not to re-offend and surrender all traveling documents to the Court Registry. Source: FBC News

From Fijileaks Archive

NOW, WHAT ABOUT DR NEIL SHARMA, FORMER HEALTH MINISTER?

“We have been discussing with the FCS on ways and means in which we as an educational institution can assist the services and particularly the inmates, on giving them appropriate skills for their after-prison life,” Ganesh Chand, February 2014

PRISON COURSEWORK: Chand with Fiji Corrections Service Commissioner Lieutenant Colonel Ifereimi Vasu. Fiji National University (FNU) and Fiji Corrections Service (FCS) have embarked on a partnership that will see collaboration between the two entities in the areas of inmate training, professional development programmes, student attachment and research. Chand said MOU has a number of very specific ingredients and one of them was aptitude test of the prisoners. He said the test would enable FNU to find out the different kinds of training that each category of inmate needed and on that basis, develop specific training programmes if necessary.

17 Comments

PERVERT TEXTS: Fijileaks will be revealing the contents of a series of lurid sexual texts a Government Minister sent to a high-profile civil servant but when she rebuffed advances, he gave her marching orders!

31/3/2015

ONE HIDING IN NEW ZEALAND AND ANOTHER HIDING FROM COURT BUT BOTH HIDING FROM JUSTICE: Where is the chairman of the Public Rental Board Narendra Prasad, MR MINISTER Parveen Kumar Bala?

30/3/2015

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HIDING IN NZ: The chairman of the PRB Narendra Prasad (circled) was missing from the ceremony in Savusavu

The Public Rental Board and its board of directors have carefully considered the design of the new 48 rental units in Savusavu to ensure that it provides social uplift to tenants. Minister for Local Government, Housing and Environment Parveen Kumar officiated at the ground breaking ceremony for the new PRB rental flats, at Naqere in Savusavu yesterday. Source: Fiji Times, 31 March 2015

rendra-prasad-cons-acting-vc-ian-rouse-to-give-him-leave-for-unlimited-time-the-man-must-be-stopped-before-he-flees-fiji-and-from-ficacs-clutches

JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED: As 85-year-old William Apted pleads guilty to causing the death of a four year old girl in Raiwaqa, another family is still WEEPING for Justice - Minister Bala is still at large for allegedly causing death by dangerous driving - WHY - for the Government could not find a magistrate to hear the case!

APTED PLEADS GUILTY: 85-year-old, William Apted who allegedly caused the death of a 4-year-old girl in a road accident in Suva in February last year has pleaded guilty to his charges in the Suva Magistrates Court.

Apted is charged with one count of dangerous driving occasioning death and two counts of dangerous driving occasioning grievous harm.

The four-year-old victim was walking with her family members after a church service along Varani Street in Raiwaqa, when a vehicle driven by Apted allegedly hit the family of four from the side of the road.

Former Vice President, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, former CEO of Fiji Rugby Union Pio Bosco Tikoisuva, businessman Iqbal Janif, and Daryl Tarte were character witnesses for Apted.

Tikoisuva said Apted cannot deliberately harm anyone as his whole family is nice and loving.

Tarte said that Apted's family comes from humble origin.

Defence lawyer Nick Barnes said that the accident has affected Apted physically and mentally as he is deeply remorseful and cannot stop thinking about the four-year-old girl who died in the accident.

Barnes told the court that Apted pleaded guilty at the earliest possible opportunity.

He has asked for a minimum suspended sentence.

He is expected to be sentenced on 8th June. Source: Fiji Times, 31 March 2015

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FNUGATE: As FICAC dithers on a raft of allegations against FNU and Ganesh Chand including the purchase of the flagship Navua Farm for $1.5m, it is rumoured that CJ Patel and Company are after the Farm

30/3/2015

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VICTOR LAL to MAHENDRA REDDY: What is your record on standing up for Indo-Fijian rights?- DISMAL B****R ALL
So stop falsely reporting certain Indo-Fijian individuals to Military Intelligence Unit as Fijileaks moles inside Fiji! YOU BLOODY JUDAS!
Tell us, Did You or Did You Not allegedly "Kama Sutra"
the Taxi Driver's Wife?
Did you backstab your guru Ganesh Chand and want to replace Aiyaz Khaiyum as Bainimarama's right-hand man? - Yes, we also have credible sources inside the Military Intelligence Unit; the Fijileaks feature on Russia's Putin was to remind mini-Putins and mini-Hitlers like YOU to never underestimate PEOPLE POWER - When we ran the Putin feature we had not run out of stories as you claimed to Intelligence Unit - JUDAS!

NAVUA Farm was once owned by Lyle Cupit. FLP had interest in purchasing it from Cupit to resettle the displaced people from Muanaweni and the farmers. SVT then came on board outwitting FLP and paid a colossal sum of over $4M on the pretext of opening a farm for the unemployed youths - Viti Corp. Guess who got the cuts? Fast forward now to Tebara Meats purchasing the same after change of several hands. Then came Ganesh Chand from FNU, paying $1.5M, purchasing it from Tebara Meats. Now, CJ Patel and Company rumoured to want the Farm!

FIJILEAKS has obtained a copy of the e-mail Singh wrote (just a day before Ganesh Chand fired him) to Maharaj and Sen, which the two are accused of passing it onto Ganesh Chand

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 7:04 PM

Hi Arvind,

Here's just a sample of my concerns regarding some of the various matters that really troubled me during my short time at the FNU, ultimately prompting my resignation on 20/8/14:

2. My concerns about the purchase of the Navua Farm by the VC from Tembara Meats without Council approval. VC has a long close and personal friendship with Tembara's MD Firoz. VC forced me to join DF attend Firoz's residence on 28 July for Eid lunch during normal FNU business hours from 2-5pm. I felt very uncomfortable with this arrangement.

http://www.fijileaks.com/home/fnugate-two-fnu-council-members-uday-sen-and-arvind-maharaj-were-fifth-column-for-ganesh-chand-maharaj-fished-for-information-from-andrew-singh-and-passed-on-to-chand-for-him-to-cover-his-tracks

MARCHING ORDERS: Anyone who dared to complain against
Ganesh Chand GOT THE SACK:

Fijileaks Editor: As promised, we will resume the revelations contained in the lengthy statement of Andrew Singh to FICAC and PMs Office against Chand, Narendra Prasad, Filipe Bole, Mahendra Reddy and many others:

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FAILURE ON CV GOLD FOR TELENI: Now, we are told the Failed Police Commissioner, Failed Ambassador will remain the chairman of National Security Review Committee as he heads to PNG for diplomatic posting

29/3/2015

2 Comments

Fijileaks: Are we short of people to give multiple appointments to a few, like some chosen Ministers? If the Defence and Security Review is a serious exercise, and not a sinecure, it needs people with a mixture of skills, not some recycled failed Police Commissioner, failed Ambassador, a person who should himself be under the scrutiny of the security forces for allegedly accepting bribe when based in China. This is once again calling the arsonist to put out a huge fire, the lighting of which he had a big role in. This Review cannot be a short exercise. It needs looking into other security forces which have similar challenges to us. It needs inputs from scholars of security as well as practitioners. Why don't we let Teleni finish one job properly, that is if he is capable of finishing any job properly, before giving him another job? Is he so indispensable? Is Teleni still broke after holding so many senior positions? Is it to make him support his family who are still in Beijing with children in school and one at the University in the United Kingdom who is not on a scholarship? Who is paying for wife and children in Beijing?

Did the '$200,000 Bribe Suspect' go through Inoke Kubuabola's so-called rigorous selection process for the diplomatic posting to PNG? Where was advertisement and when was the interview with Qiliho and Selection Committee conducted? Where are the Opposition Parliamentarians who should be keeping Fiji First Party Government accountable?

Fijileaks Editor's Note: We reproduce excerpts of the highly controversial and secretive Defence White Paper whose contents Victor Lal had exposed in the Fiji Sun shortly before the 2006 coup:

The DWP Report 2004

By VICTOR LAL
Part One
Does Fiji Need a Military?

The National Security and Defence Review (NSDR), or the DWP, was commissioned by the previous Qarase government on 2 September 2003. A three-member Committee comprising an USP professor, an independent Australian military analyst (who acted as chairman), and a taukei Fijian, prepared the DWP. It was submitted to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase on 9 February 2004.

In their introduction to the DWP titled ‘Safeguarding Peace & Security’, the Committee declared that Fiji does not face an external military threat but the principle challenge was domestic instability. In Chapter 8 of the DWP, the Committee called upon the Government to answer a number of questions in relation to the future of the RFMF. The questions were:

Does Fiji need a military for defence purposes?
If not, how will the non-military functions (navy, engineers, and youth training) be redeployed?
If it does need a military, what for?
As a backstop to assist the Fiji Police Force (FPF) maintain order?
For peacekeeping? And if so, at what level?

In early May of 2006, Qarase, as Prime Minister, had confirmed that there was a Defence White Paper (DWP), but would not disclose any details. He said when his government got back into power after the 2006 elections; it would give serious attention to the recommendations in the White Paper.
Selection and Appointment of Commander

The view was put to the NSDR Committee that the Constitutional Offices Commission, to reduce the scope of nepotism, should appoint the Commander RFMF in the same manner as the Commissioner of Police. It was claimed that this would promote a professional military ethos and potentially lesson tensions that arise within the military when it is perceived that promotion to the highest ranks is not based on merit.
This suggestion was not deemed appropriate by the Committee because of military’s direct link with the Head of State, even if only symbolic; and the salience of ministerial responsibility for exercising civilian control of the military.

By convention, the outgoing commander advises the Minister on the options for his replacement. The Minister makes his decision and conveys it to the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) for agreement. The residual strength of the Fijian social structure, the DWP observed, meant that this was not just a symbolic process. Presidents can and have influenced the choice of commander. Although appointment on merit should be the norm, the DWP stated that the selection of a military commander was the prerogative of the government of the day. The Committee considered other options for selecting a commander, like a vote of the officer corps or parts thereof, but no satisfactory alternative emerged.

The term of appointment was not mandated, although Commodore Frank Bainimarama, was appointed for 5 years and had since been granted an extension. To improve accountability, the DWP recommended that consideration should be given to shortening the term of appointment of a commander to three years with the option of one extension not exceeding 3 years.

The letter of appointment should include: a list of outcomes the government expects the commander to achieve; a list of what would constitute grounds for dismissal; and a salary package. The DWP also recommends that the Constitution should be amended to require the Minister for Home Affairs to consult the Prime Minister on the appointment of a commander before making his recommendation to the C-in-C.

Part Two
Defence Act and Home Affairs Ministry

The role of the RFMF is defined in the RFMF Act (Cap 81), which states as follows: “The Forces shall be charged with the defence of Fiji, with the maintenance of order and with such other duties as may arise from time to time be defined by the Minister’. Cap 81 does not specify the procedures for authorising military support to the civil power or military support to the civil community.” A replacement Defence Act was drafted in 1998.

In the three-member Committee’s opinion, the Draft Act needed extensive revision that should include: (a) separating the provisions relating to the establishment of military forces from the disciplinary code to form two separate bills; and (b) recasting the Defence Bill in a logical form putting the basics up front including, the authority of raising forces, the role of the forces, authority for directing their employment, and provisions for calling them out in support of the civil power or civil authority.

The Committee however felt that the size of the RFMF did not justify a separate Ministry nor did it justify the establishment of Defence Council as recommended in the 1997 Defence White Paper, which was chaired by Brigadier Ian Thorpe, a former NZ RFMF commander. It had more detail on the military but less strategic analysis of the need for the RFMF. The 2004 DWP felt that it would seem appropriate, however, to change the name of the Ministry to reflect its focus on national security issues.

The 1997 DWP recommended the establishment of formal Defence Council comprising the Home Affairs Minister, Commander, and CEO with supporting committees. This was not implemented and in the opinion of the 2004 DWP it seemed unnecessary for such a small Fijian force.

However, the DWP recommended that the Minister for Home Affairs should issue a directive that defined control and how he intended to exercise it. The directive should require the CEO to advise and assist the Minister in exercising control. It should also advise the Commander that, while his responsibilities and relationship with the Minister for Home Affairs are undiminished, it is expected that he will furnish the CEO with the information necessary to formulate advice to the Minister on those matters relating to control of the RFMF.

The DWP recommends that the control measures include approval of:
(a) defence legislation and regulations;
(b) defence instructions;
(c) defence policy;
(d) organisations and establishments; and
(e) major equipment proposals;
(f) personal policy matters, such as conditions and terms of enlistment and discharge;
(g) defence budget submissions;
(h) the selection and appointment of officers to the rank of lieutenant colonel and above;
(i) requests for foreign assistance; and
(j) defence cabinet submissions.
Furthermore, since there was virtually no structured parliamentary scrutiny of security and defence policy or the performance of the relevant agencies, the DWP recommended that Parliament redress this deficiency.

Part Three
The Defence White Paper Committee members recommended that the RFMF personnel should be slashed from the current 3,300 (in 2003) to 1600 to 1700. The cuts, except for the engineer regiment, should be made at Force headquarters, in the Infantry Force etc. The package of recommendations was designed to ensure that they provide no excuse for the RFMF to involve itself in domestic politics.

It did however very strongly recommend that the Fiji Police Force (FPF) must be reconstituted to assume full responsibility for maintaining law and internal security in the country rather than the military, which should have a secondary role of providing support to the police in times of crisis.

The DWP recommended that peacekeeping be the primary role of the RFMF, with a secondary role, to assist the FPF contains large-scale social unrest, terrorist incidents, search and rescue and other tasks when so authorised by the Minister. The DWP also called on the RFMF to freeze recruitment immediately.

The DWP was mindful of the potential backlash on its recommendations; for example, it might incite a revolt by the RFMF or elements of it, but was confident that the risk could be minimised by informing the RFMF of what was intended and the provision of adequate demobilisation arrangements.

As the likelihood reaction from Fijian extremists who saw the RFMF as the last bastion of Fijian rights, this risk could be minimised by a combination of public information and rapid intervention if violence erupted.

Part Four
Prime Minister Qarase should lead National Security Policy

The Defence White Paper recommended that the Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase led coordination of national security policy making and implementation. In particular, it recommended the following:

(a) Responsibility for the direction and coordination of national security policy making and implementation be elevated to the PM’s office;
(b) A departmental CEO’s committee on national security (CEOC-NS) be formed to review all policy submissions to the National Security Council (NSC) and that it subsume the functions of the Fiji Intelligence Committee (FIC), and other national security related committees;
(c) A Directorate-General of National Security (DGNS) be formed within the PM’s Office to provide a focal point for the coordination of national security policy and implementation, to provide the secretariat to the NSC and CEOC-NS, and be responsible for policy and intelligence assessment;
(d) The Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration (MHA&I) be restructured on functional lines.

On the other hand, if the status quo was to be maintained, the DWP recommended that, (a) the capacity of the MHA&I be strengthened; and (b) the secretariat of the NSC be separated from the intelligence staff wither by forming a separate office or transferring responsibility to the PM’s office.

Regardless of which option was adopted, the DWP recommended that (a) membership of the NSC be explained to include the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (MT&CA) and the ministers representing the provincial administration (currently Fijian Affairs and Rural Development), and the Minister for Women (MWSW&PA);
(b) the MHA&I give greater attention to personnel management, including education and training;
(c) the MHA&I define the national security and intelligence responsibilities of provincial administrators for inclusion in their character or contracts;
(d) the MHA&I be renamed the Ministry of National Security; and
(e) the University of South Pacific (USP) be encouraged to establish a centre for security studies or incorporate it in the Pacific Institute for Advanced Studies in Governance and Development;
(f) these recommendations take effect as soon as suitably qualified and experienced people can be found to coordinate the implementation of policy flowing from this review and ensure readiness of internationally mandated air and maritime transport security measures by mid-2004 and other deadlines.

Racial and Gender Composition
Some senior military officers expressed to the Committee a desire to redress the gross racial imbalance in the Fijian dominated military as a way of improving community acceptance. For a military with a role in internal security, the DWP noted that there was a strong desire for redressing the imbalance but it should be deferred until the policies that might flow from this review had been implemented. Thereafter, the DWP recommended, that an affirmative action would be required to breach the cultural barriers obstructing other races and ethnic groups joining the RFMF. The small size and nature of the RFMF did not leave a lot of scope to employ women but the DWP suggested the gender balance needed to be addressed on the same basis as that of racial composition.

Part Five
The RFMF: Dysfunctional Institution
In the Defence White Paper’s opinion, the RFMF was disoriented after years of policy neglect, the 2000 events and their aftermath, and withdrawal from Lebanon. Though the RFMF restored order in Fiji, it did not display cohesion throughout the events of 2000.

The Committee noted in its Report: ‘Fiji has a strategic interest in the cohesion and professionalism of the RFMF. The RFMF is widely credited with ‘saving the nation’ in 2000 but in doing so it exhibited internal strains based on provincial rather than national loyalties.’ Provincialism also undermined the unity of the RFMF in the 2000 crisis.

Several key personalities shared their time, knowledge, and experience to provide the background and information on which the review was based. The Committee also consulted the then Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes. The DWP concluded that the principal decision to be made was whether the police were to be given full responsibility for maintaining order. If so, judgements were needed as to when they would be ready to assume those responsibilities.

To recapitulate, the Government, the DWP recommended, needed to give the RFMF a clear and defined role, an external focus – peacekeeping- and cut away anything not associated with the role which might provide an excuse for the RFMF to involve itself in domestic politics.

Editor’s Note: In his conclusion, Victor Lal had added the following to the above in his 2006 expose: Commodore Frank Bainimarama, on the other hand, was still maintaining after the election that no one can remove him because he is not a civil servant but the military commander. And he refused to rule out martial law as commander of the RFMF. Let us hope that we do not provide him the opportunity to indulge in his flight of fantasy. And if he continues to make unwarranted threats, the duly elected Government of the day must be prepared to charge him with insubordination or simply sack him from his dismissable post for terrorizing the nation in peace time. The Constitution of the Republic of the Fiji Islands 27th 1998 affirms the continued existence of the RFMF and provides for the military commander to be appointed by the President, on the advice of the Minister for Home Affairs, and for the commander to exercise executive military command subject to the control of the Government Minister. It also provides for Parliament to make laws relating to the RFMF. These provisions are a firm base for civil control of the military. Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama has, for too long, been a law unto himself. He must be held accountable by the legal and constitutional bootstrap. The people of Fiji have spoken at the ballot box, and presumably his taukei Fijian foot soldiers, with them. The President, as his Commander-in-Chief, must read to him the riot act or alternatively, thrown him and those who want to follow him, out of the military barracks. No democracy is safe from a raging and erratic ‘military bull’.

Part Six
Police take control of internal security
The DWP and Fiji Police

The Defence White Paper strongly recommended that internal security should be the preserve of the police rather than the military. Likewise, domestic intelligence gathering should be the task of the police and not the military, as the latter was engaged in during the 2001 general election.

The Fiji Police Force (FPF) has statutory responsibility for law and order, including internal security and anti and counter-terrorism. However, the DWP recommended that the military role in assisting the police maintain order in times of crisis be continued, when so authorised by the Minister for Home Affairs.

It also recommended that the police and the military agree on a list of possible assistance tasks and initiate or revise appropriate contingency plans and joint training. In its introduction to the DWP, the Committee noted that the FPF had a newly appointed Commissioner of Police, Andrew Hughes, who had begun instituting reforms that will take several years to reach fruition.

To succeed, however, police reform must be accompanied by reform of the whole justice sector as outlined in the SDP. As the FPF was preparing a 5 year strategic plan for endorsement by the National Security Council (NSC), the DWP on the FPF was restricted to those law and order issues that required external coordination and clarification of responsibilities.

They included (a) the requirement for military assistance in times of crisis or emergency; (b) counter-terrorist responsibilities; (c) the division of responsibility between the RFMF Naval Division, or its successors, and the FPF; and (d) specialist skills, particularly divers and explosive experts.

Although the FPF was responsible for maintaining order and internal security, the RFMF had also been involved from time to time. If the RFMF was disbanded, the DWP suggested the police would have to maintain law and order and internal security against all corners.

If the RFMF was to be retained, as recommended previously, a decision had to be made about what police functions, if any, they might be called upon to perform and, correspondingly, what functions the police need not develop.

The 2004 Budget authorised the FPF to employ 2170 regulars and 1220 special constables giving a police population ratio of 1:266 citizens (assuming a population of 900,000), more than adequate by world standards. However, the archipelagic nature of Fiji, the poor road systems, the relatively large and dispersed rural population, and the volatile politics of Fiji, warranted the authorised manpower base and probably more.
The Police Mobile Force (PMF) was being rejuvenated and will comprise about 200 men, the DWP observes. The PMF was being modelled on the South Australian Star Force and will have responsibility for armed hold-ups, counter-terrorist incidents, search and rescue, riot control, explosive ordinance disposal (EOD), and diving.

However, according to the DWP, given the deep seated political tensions in Fiji there might be times when these resources could be overwhelmed by mass political movements or dissent. In these military assistance will be sought. The DWP noted that the FPF was rundown over the last 15 years and the RFMF usurped or was required to exercise some police functions on a routine basis. The Government had now given priority to rebuilding the FPF, including the PMF, but this will take several years. Nevertheless, the threshold at which military support is needed is rising as FPF resources and professionalism rebound.

Consequently, the DWP recommended, when police reform has produced the desired result, final decisions could be made on whether to retain a military backstop to assist the police maintain order. Meanwhile, the DWP strongly recommended, the FPF should discuss with the RFMF the sorts of tasks that they could be expected to undertake should they be called out to assist the police and develop or maintain the appropriate plans and joint training.

On counter-terrorism, the DWP stated that the Government should be aware that the FPF’s specialist assault capability, if required. Consequently, the FLP will need to develop understandings with potential suppliers of specialist assault units, particularly Australia and New Zealand, about how such operations will be conducted. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with Australia covering many of these issues but it will need to be complemented by procedures, and practice.
Regarding maritime and waterway security, the DWP recommended that the current division of responsibility for maritime patrol between the FPF and RFMF Naval Division, or its successor, be retained due to the need for close coordination between inshore and shore based security needs. However, provision will have to be made for establishing and maintaining the water police units (or private security units) in the major ports and waterways.

The DWP, like its recommendation on the RFMF, recommended that the FPF should be encouraged to maintain the racial balance and accommodate female representation to the maximum degree possible. Moreover, although the CEO Ministry for Home Affairs and Immigration had no responsibility under the 1997 Constitution for the administration for the administration or operation of the FPF but he should retain the capacity to advise the Minister for Home Affairs on major policy and resource issues.

The FPF had played a substantial role in peacekeeping and continues to do. This experience, the DWP noted, will be useful in the future regional peacekeeping missions. Nevertheless, the DWP recommended that the Government and the FPF agree to a cap on UN peacekeeping commitments.

The DWP examined Fiji’s strategic interests globally, regionally, and domestically and has identified and assessed the threats and challenges to Fiji’s security. It concluded that (a) there is no external military threat to the sovereignty of Fiji; (b) trans-national crime and unsustainable resource exploitation is a growing threat to Fiji: and (c) that the greatest threats to Fiji’s security are internal.

At the broadest level, the DWP concluded, the threat to internal security derives from the fundamental division of Fiji population into two large ethnic communities, and from the problems experienced in any cultural transition from traditional social and political life to modernity. The ‘wild cards’ most likely to challenge Fiji’s national interests, ignoring global phenomena such as pandemics, major global economic collapses, and terrorist attacks elsewhere are:
(a) governments that ignore the relentless drumbeats of progress and fail to implement the development plans effectively;
(b) systemic decay from failing to tackle domestic and international crime and institutionalised corruption; or
(c) the convergence of events that might be managed individually but in concert can overwhelm the community, for example, the convergence of economic stagnation or decline with political instability, systemic decay and natural or man-made disasters.

Part Seven
RFMF should not be involved in domestic intelligence gathering

Another area the Defence White Paper examined was the issue of intelligence. It noted that the Government and its agencies required an intelligence system that could forewarn of emerging trends and threats in time to allow considered policy responses to pre-empt or ameliorate, or take advantage of threats or challenges as opportunity allows. It asked whether Fiji needs a national intelligence agency, and should membership of the Fiji Intelligence Committee (FIC) be changed?

The failings of the national security and intelligence machinery had been well documented in a Cabinet Memorandum dated 15 January 2002. The memorandum indicated that national direction was weak or non-existent, staffing of the National Security Assessment Unit (NSAU) had been run down and had become entwined with protective security, Special Branch (SB) responses to requests have been slow, SB lacked analysts and interpreters or access to reliable translation services, the NSAU did not have access to raw data, assessments were reactive rather than strategic, and little action flowed from assessments.

In summary, while the organisations listed above existed and functioned with varying degrees of effectiveness, collective performance had been deficient for a number of reasons, including (a) inadequate support to the National Security Council; (b) lack of priority and direction from Government; (c) lack of cooperation from relevant organisations; (d) the absence of an institutional culture; (e) inadequate policy and legislation, and (f) insufficient resources.

The DWP however recommended that according to democratic practice, the RFMF should not be engaged in domestic intelligence collection unless authorised to support the civil power. Nevertheless, it had been engaged in intelligence collection and public relations as part of the post-2000 recovery process. The DWP noted that all these functions should be the responsibility of the police and the departments and agencies of government.
The RFMF, on the other hand, should be collecting strategic intelligence related to its present and prospective peacekeeping operations and the basic intelligence needed to support the police when called out in support of the civil power. It should also ensure security of military personnel, weapons, equipment, classified information and infrastructure.

Moreover, the close relationship between criminality and politically motivated violence suggested that responsibility for covert intelligence collection and law enforcement should be vested in the one body – in this case the police and the Special Branch, recommended the DWP.

There was no need to establish another intelligence agency like the Fiji Intelligence Service that was disbanded in 1999. However, measures would be needed to ensure a proper division of tasking between criminal intelligence and the tracking down of individuals and organisations that had the potential for politically motivated violence.

Also, divisional security and intelligence committees were largely inactive due to lack of direction and feedback. The district security and intelligence committees had largely fallen into disuse for much of the same reasons. What reporting had been sighted was of a petty political nature illustrating the lack of national direction.

The reorganisation of regional security structures, the DWP recommended, needed a review of regional security structures and a revised directive to ensure that the necessary functions were incorporated in the responsibilities of provincial administrators.

Corruption, the DWP noted, was also bound to increase if trans-national criminals consolidated their existing operations in and through Fiji, if Fijians continued to view unaccounted public funding as a means of redressing the wealth imbalance, and if unscrupulous investors in natural resource exploitation, in particular fishing and forestry, saw advantage for quick returns. The potential for this was high and the consequences potentially devastating.

In this strategic setting, how best could Fiji organise its structures, processes and agencies to guide it towards a democratic, peaceful, secure and prosperous future?
In view of all the above factors, the DWP strongly recommended that the Fiji police assumed full responsibility for maintaining order and internal security in the country.

Part Eight
‘Fiji Muslims potential incubator for Bin Laden’
Nadi Airport vulnerable to Islamic terrorist attacks, warned DWP

The small Muslim community in Fiji, which has historically proved conspicuously law-abiding and loyal to the country, was a potential incubator for religious zealots in the age of al-Qaeda related global terrorism, said the controversial and secretive Defence White Paper (DWP) 2004 that was prepared for the previous SDL government.

But in order to counter the influence and infiltration of the al-Qaeda in the country the Fiji Muslims, the Defence Paper recommended, should be recruited as an allay for the Fiji authorities in the war on global terrorism. The Nadi international airport was another potential terrorist target from international Islamic terrorists, warns the DWP.

Global terrorism had global reach, and therefore, said the DWP, threatened Fiji. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network of Islamic extremists had links to organisations in Southeast Asia such as Jemaah Islamiyah and Laskar Jihad. While such groups had more reason and opportunity to mount attacks within Southeast Asia than in the Pacific Islands, the Bali bombings in 2000, the DWP stated, showed the havoc that can be caused by a single attack on an international tourist destination. Australians, who were an increasing proportion of Fiji’s tourists, may have been a specific target in the Bali bombing. This was because of Australia’s close alliance with the United Sates of America, the DWP noted.

As regards the potential terrorist attack on international airports, especially the Nadi international airport, the DWP pointed out that such an attack could take the form of a bombing within or close to the airport terminal, the placement of a bomb on an aircraft, the hijacking of an aircraft bound either to or from Fiji, or the launching of a short-range missile by a terrorist near the perimeter of the airport against an aircraft landing or taking off.
Moreover, according to the DWP, Fiji was vulnerable not only as a target for international terrorism, but also as a transit point for terrorists organising an attack elsewhere in the region. A terrorist attack targeted against the transport our tourism industry anywhere in the region, and especially in Fiji, would have a devastating impact on the national economy of the country.

Although the DWP did not directly impute any terrorist intention to the Muslim community of Fiji, it did highlight the danger of al-Qaeda inspired infiltration of the community: ‘The small Muslim community in Fiji, mainly Sunni but with a minority of Shia adherents has historically proved to be conspicuously law-abiding and loyal to Fiji. The community is unlikely to harbour or tolerate Muslim extremists. The Muslim community should be recruited as an allay for the authorities in the war on terrorism, but the conjunction of anti-Americanism, Fijian participation in Iraq’s transition-despite being on private contract-and perceptions of discrimination at home is a potential incubator for zealots.”

In a separate but related analysis of Fiji’s participation in the Iraq conflict, the DWP however discounted any potential threat to the country’s internal security from the former soldiers and police recruited by the Global Risks Strategies (GRS) to act as guards and escorts in Iraq. The three-member Committee had also consulted the GRS in the preparation of the DWP.

There was some concern, noted the DWP, that returning GRS employees who failed to find other employment may become a security risk themselves. This may be so but the people employed have previous military or police training so this ‘industry is not adding to he potential problem of unemployed miscreants with military skills’.

Moreover, the DWP concluded, ‘they have witnessed the political power of the gun at home so will not be exposed to anything new there either’.

On 21 February 2003, the Sudanese-born Sheikh Majid was expelled from Fiji, despite being resident here for 18 years, when his work permit expired. The Fiji immigration authorities, acting on US and Australian ‘intelligence’ reports, claimed that Sheik Majid represented a security threat, despite non-disclosure of the alleged evidence. Sheik Majid was the director of the Islamic Institute of the South Pacific, based in Suva, and had worked closely with Fiji’s Muslim community.

The president of the Fiji Muslim League and former Government senator Hafiz Khan, while denying that the expulsion was a part of the anti-Muslim phenomena sweeping around the world, had however expressed regret at the manner and haste in which Sheik Majid was expelled from Fiji.

The immigration officials had found $30,000 cash in the Sheik’s home, the money said to be a gift from a wealthy Saudi benefactor to the Fiji Muslims to celebrate Ramadan. The Muslim community had claimed that it was aware of the large funds and that no money had been spent without the approval of the Fiji Muslim Council.

The former Director of Immigration, Joseph Browne, went out of his way to reassure the Fiji Muslims that they were not being specifically targeted as a special religious group. Following Sheik Majid’s expulsion, on March 3, Fiji signed an “anti-terrorism” pact with the Australian government. A year later, in 2004, the DWP once again focused on the Fiji Muslims.

Although the DWP had been with the SDL government since 2004, it was only in 2006, during the election campaign, and following the dangerous standoff between the Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, that the former admitted its existence. Prime Minister Qarase however had refused to divulge the contents or recommendations contained in the DWP.

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CONGRATULATIONS: Fiji reclaim Hong Kong Sevens title with victory over New Zealand 33-19; supporters waving Fiji flags might want to keep them as souvenirs, for soon they will disappear from sporting events!

29/3/2015

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Fiji's 2014 Voting Results - Misplaced Analysis, Faulty Conclusions by "Rex Boyd"; Rejoinder to Boyd's analysis by Professor Jon Fraenkel

27/3/2015

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'Electoral commentators sometimes like to play god. Rex Boyd says that ‘a more evenly distributed pattern of voting would ideally be more desirable’, but no specialist can or should specify what pattern of voting is or is not ‘more desirable’. Nor was the 2014 outcome, as so many claim, the product of some brilliant strategy. With 59% of the vote nationally, Fiji First would likely have won the election under any of the best known electoral systems' - Professor Jon Fraenkel

Fijileaks Editor: Someone calling himself or herself "Rex Boyd" sent us the following for publication

Fiji’s 2014 Voting Results – Misplaced Analysis, Faulty Conclusions

By "Rex Boyd"

Dear Sir,

Allow me to make some observations about the voting system and the results from the last election under the current Fiji constitution. There appears to be misplaced analysis and conclusions drawn by you from the last election. In one of your blog pieces you made the following comments in relation to the election of one of the FPP candidates where you said “he is entering Parliament under the d’Hondt Electoral System and under the coat tail of Bainimarama with a derision 895 votes only – a tenth of 8,000 plus visitors to Fijileaks website from inside Fiji everyday of the week, not to mention hundreds globally.

The leader of SODELPA Mrs Kepa expressed similar view when in response to Mr Bainimarama’s UN human rights remarks she said “there is nothing democratic about a system of voting that allows a candidate with 830 votes to enter Parliament and deny 32 others who polled more a seat in the House”.

It appears that people who are looking at the results based on the number of votes a candidate got fail to realise that Fiji’s current voting system is based on proportional representation (PR) which is different from the first-past-the-post (FPP) voting system of the past. Under the PR system the number of seats a party gets is based on the proportion of votes its gets rather than on the number of votes a candidate gets (though individual votes add up to the party’s total). Hence the higher the proportion of votes a party gets (above the 5% threshold) the more seats it will have in parliament vis a vis other parties.

Thus the Fiji First Party with 64% of the total votes cast (revised proportion after excluding the votes of parties/independents that got less than 5%) has 32 seats in parliament, SODELPA with 30% has 15 seats while NFP with 6% has 3 seats. However, if the seats were based on the FPP system where candidates with the largest number of votes would be elected to parliament then the results would be vastly different from this (if we can assume that the votes each candidate got in the last election in some way reflected this FPP system). This can be better explained using Table 1 below.

Column 1 in the table lists the main parties that took part in the last election. Column 2 shows the seats the parties hold in the current parliament. Colum 3 shows the percentage of votes each party received at the last election. Column 4 shows the seats each party would have received if results were based on the FPP system. This column is derived by first ranking all the candidates in terms of the votes they received from the highest to the lowest (based on the final results posted on the Elections Fiji website), next selecting the top 50 candidates from this list and finally allocating these candidates to the parties they belonged to. On this basis SODELPA would have got 24 seats (compared to its current 15 seats), Fiji First 21 seats (compared to 32 seats), NFP 2 seats, PDP 2 seats and One Fiji 1 seat. Column 5 shows the corresponding percentage of seats for each party based on column 4 results.

So here lies the punchline. SODELPA with just 28% of the popular votes cast would have had 48% of the seats in parliament while Fiji First with almost 60% of the popular votes would have got just 42% of the seats in parliament. And interestingly enough One Fiji with just 1.2% of the votes cast would have got 1 seat in parliament, while FLP with twice the proportion of One Fiji votes would have got no seats in parliament. If we were to pursue the above arguments to its logical conclusion then SODELPA with the largest number of seats in parliament (under the FPP system) would most likely have been asked to form government.

Most probably it would have cobbled a coalition with the other three parties, rather than with Fiji Fist. This would have given it a total of 29 seats enabling it to form a majority government and rule for the next four years. So here you would have a situation where parties with a combined total of 41% of the total votes cast would have been allowed to form government while a party with almost 60% of the votes would have been deprived of such an opportunity. So one could ask where is the democracy in this?

It may also be important to point out from the above discussion is that SODELPA leader conveniently forgets to mention that some of her party candidates with votes lower than the votes of some candidates from other parties also got into parliament so this problem is not confined to the Fiji First Party alone. Five of SODELPA candidates with votes ranging between 3268-4532 got into parliament ahead of the 4956 votes got by one of the PDP candidate while five of its candidates with votes ranging between 2105-2523 got into parliament ahead of the 2788 votes got by one of the One Fiji Party candidate (source – Elections Fiji website). The reason why SODELPA got ahead of these candidates is because of the PR voting system which the party appears to be deriding. So much for hypocrisy !

Now getting back to the issue of the votes each individual candidate got and who ended up in parliament and who didn’t. Note as mentioned earlier the number of seats a party gets is proportional to the votes it gets and not on the vote each individual gets. Under the present PR system Fiji First with 64% of the votes is rightly entitled to 32 seats in parliament, irrespective of the fact that some of its candidates got less votes than some other candidates who got more but missed out. It may be noted that under the present system there is nothing stopping the entire votes that a party gets goes to one or just a few of its candidates rather than being more evenly spread across all its candidates. For example the entire Fiji First vote could have gone to party leader Bainimarama while all the other party candidates could have got zero votes. The party would still be entitled to 32 seats even though the remaining 31 candidates who enter parliament on behalf of the party got zero votes. If such a situation were to eventuate then this would have given you a field day where you gleefully would have pointed out to the fact that Fiji First candidates with zero votes got into parliament while some other candidates with many, many more votes did not!.

People who compare individual votes are either ignorant of how the current voting system works or are trying to be mischievous. Under the current PR voting system Fiji has chosen the open list system as opposed to the alternative closed list system. Under the open list system the voters are allowed to vote for particular candidates and not just the parties. Under the closed list system (which is practised in several European countries) the party fixes the order in which the candidates are to be elected, the voter casts a vote for the party as a whole and the winning candidates for the party (the number of which is proportional to the votes the party received) are selected in the exact order they appear on the original list. If such an alternative system were adopted in Fiji then this would save some of the winning party candidates the difficult task of defending themselves that they got into parliament with fewer votes than some other candidates from other parties with more votes. And it would also prevent some politicians, journalists, bloggers and academics making unwarranted comparisons and drawing faulty and erroneous conclusions from the results based on individual votes rather than on total votes received by the party.

Note under the PR system voting is not a popularity contest. Although a less skewed and more evenly distributed pattern of voting at the party level would ideally be more desirable there is no such requirement for this under the current PR voting system. The strategy for each party is to maximise the votes it gets which in turn determines the number of seats it gets in parliament. It appears that the Fiji First Party used this strategy to its fullest advantage and reaped its just rewards. Parties and independents that failed to utilise this strategy and failed to see the big picture cannot really blame the system or the winning party. Comparing individual votes is irrelevant.

Fraenkel

Fiji’s 2014 Voting Results – Misplaced Analysis, Faulty Conclusions: A Rejoinder

By Professor Jon Fraenkel
Victoria University of Wellington

Rex Boyd says some sensible things, but the simulation of what would have occurred under a first-past-the-post system is completely bizarre. Did he break down the results by constituency? This would be possible but difficult. We have the electoral data at the micro polling station level. One would have to somehow group the polling stations into constituencies. It would be even more difficult if one were to try to replicate the 1997 constitution's 71 constituencies, and draw boundaries around 46 communal and 25 open constituencies (indeed impossible since we dont know the ethnicity of voters). In fact, what Rex Boyd did was simply to count up the highest vote getters nationwide. That's a very poor guide to what would have happened under a first-past-the-post system. In fact, its no guide at all.

In 2014, around 40% of the nation voted directly for Frank Bainimarama. Under a FPP system, they would have been highly unlikely to do this. Nor would they have been encouraged to do so by Bainimarama himself, as they were during the 2014 campaign. The only reason why Bainimarama did this is because he knew a massive personal vote would enable loads of other FijiFirst candidates to get elected. It is highly misleading, even inflammatory, to suggest that SODELPA would have won the election under a first-past-the-post system. Making such claims does not assist the country to have a sensible discussion about alternative electoral systems, or to appreciate the impact of Fiji’s new system in September 2014.

Rex Boyd is right that under an open list PR system comparison of individual votes for candidates can be misleading. Behind-the-scenes what matters is the summing of individual votes to get party tallies. He is wrong to say 'comparing individual votes is irrelevant'. Once party entitlements have been calculated, the individual tallies are exceptionally important. They decide which candidate is elected within each party.

But Fiji's current system encourages the general public to focus on the individual candidate tallies. It has a ballot paper showing only numbers, which represent the individual candidates. In most countries with open list systems, citizens can a) either cast a party vote, or b) a party vote as well as a candidate vote, or at least c) the candidates are arranged on the ballot paper in columns ordered by political party. Fiji is (as far as I'm aware) unique globally in having a type of ballot paper with the party altogether obscured from view.

Although widely trumpeted as strategically brilliant, this choice of ballot paper format probably arose because of an ad hoc adjustment to the implications of earlier decisions. First, the Attorney-General's office decided to ditch Yash Ghai's proposal for a simpler closed list proportional representation system (where voters just endorse a party, as in South Africa), then they decided not to subdivide the country into three or four constituencies (and to have only a single nationwide constituency, without fully grasping the ramifications of this decision. Only after that did they recognise that this would entail a huge and unwieldy ballot paper with hundreds of names and party symbols. So they tried to simplify this, and came up with the very odd ‘bingo’ or ‘Sudoku’ ballot paper format with only numbers on it. This perhaps explains the protracted delays in early 2014 before the Electoral Decree was finalized and released.

The result was a ‘latent’ list system, meaning by this that the fact that party lists are central to translating candidate votes won into seats for parties is not at all obvious to the voter. That commentators focus on this is thus not at all 'mischevious', as Rex Boyd seems to think.

The electoral system, and the single national constituency, have been built into the constitution. So they cannot be changed by the political parties now in parliament even if they wish to do so. A change would require a constitutional amendment. And constitutional amendments need a three-quarters majority in a referendum.

Electoral commentators sometimes like to play god. Rex Boyd says that ‘a more evenly distributed pattern of voting would ideally be more desirable’, but no specialist can or should specify what pattern of voting is or is not ‘more desirable’. Nor was the 2014 outcome, as so many claim, the product of some brilliant strategy. With 59% of the vote nationally, Fiji First would likely have won the election under any of the best known electoral systems – whether first past the post, closed list or open list proportional representation, or a New Zealand style mixed member system or the Australian style alternative vote system. The idiosyncracies, and potential glitches, of the new system are more likely to show up at the next election if there is a split field and no one party that takes a commanding lead.

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PUTIN PRISONER OF PEOPLES POWER: His formative years as spy in East Germany saw how patriotic feeling, combined with yearning for democracy, proved so much more powerful than communist ideology

27/3/2015

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SPOOKED:

The shock that left a young KGB officer in fear of people power

Anyone who wants to understand Vladimir Putin today needs to know the story of what happened to him on a dramatic night in East Germany a quarter of a century ago.

It is 5 December 1989 in Dresden, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall has fallen. East German communism is dying on its feet, people power seems irresistible.

Crowds storm the Dresden headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who suddenly seem helpless.

Then a small group of demonstrators decides to head across the road, to a large house that is the local headquarters of the Soviet secret service, the KGB.

"The guard on the gate immediately rushed back into the house," recalls one of the group, Siegfried Dannath. But shortly afterwards "an officer emerged - quite small, agitated".

"He said to our group, 'Don't try to force your way into this property. My comrades are armed, and they're authorised to use their weapons in an emergency.'"

That persuaded the group to withdraw.

But the KGB officer knew how dangerous the situation remained. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection.

The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock.

"We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent."

That phrase, "Moscow is silent" has haunted this man ever since. Defiant yet helpless as the 1989 revolution swept over him, he has now himself become "Moscow" - the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

"I think it's the key to understanding Putin," says his German biographer, Boris Reitschuster. "We would have another Putin and another Russia without his time in East Germany."

The experience taught him lessons he has never forgotten, gave him ideas for a model society, and shaped his ambitions for a powerful network and personal wealth.

Above all, it left him with a huge anxiety about the frailty of political elites, and how easily they can be overthrown by the people.

Putin had arrived in Dresden in the mid-1980s for his first foreign posting as a KGB agent.

The German Democratic Republic or GDR - a communist state created out of the Soviet-occupied zone of post-Nazi Germany - was a highly significant outpost of Moscow's power, up close to Western Europe, full of Soviet military and spies.

Putin had wanted to join the KGB since he was a teenager, inspired by popular Soviet stories of secret service bravado in which, he recalled later, "One man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people."

Initially, though, much of his work in Dresden was humdrum.

Among documents in the Stasi archives in Dresden is a letter from Putin asking for help from the Stasi boss with the installation of an informer's phone.

And there are details too of endless Soviet-East German social gatherings Putin attended, to celebrate ties between the two countries.

But if the spy work wasn't that exciting, Putin and his young family could at least enjoy the East German good life.

Putin's then wife, Ludmila, later recalled that life in the GDR was very different from life in the USSR. "The streets were clean. They would wash their windows once a week," she said in an interview published in 2000, as part of First Person, a book of interviews with Russia's new and then little-known acting president.

The former KGB headquarters in Dresden, above
The block of flats nearby, where the Putins lived

The Putins lived in a special block of flats with KGB and Stasi families for neighbours, though Ludmila envied the fact that: "The GDR state security people got higher salaries than our guys, judging from how our German neighbours lived. Of course we tried to economise and save up enough to buy a car."
Revisiting old haunts on a visit to Dresden in 2006

East Germany enjoyed higher living standards than the Soviet Union and a former KGB colleague, Vladimir Usoltsev, describes Putin spending hours leafing through Western mail-order catalogues, to keep up with fashions and trends.

He also enjoyed the beer - securing a special weekly supply of the local brew, Radeberger - which left him looking rather less trim than he does in the bare-chested sporty images issued by Russian presidential PR today.

East Germany differed from the USSR, in another way too - it had a number of separate political parties, even though it was still firmly under communist rule, or appeared to be.

"He enjoyed very much this little paradise for him," says Boris Reitschuster. East Germany, he says, "is his model of politics especially. He rebuilt some kind of East Germany in Russia now."

But in autumn 1989 this paradise became a kind of KGB hell. On the streets of Dresden, Putin observed people power emerging in extraordinary ways.

In early October hundreds of East Germans who had claimed political asylum at the West German embassy in Prague were allowed to travel to the West in sealed trains. As they passed through Dresden, huge crowds tried to break through a security cordon to try to board the trains, and make their own escape.

Wolfgang Berghofer, Dresden's communist mayor at the time, says there was chaos as security forces began taking on almost the entire local population. Many assumed violence was inevitable.

"A Soviet tank army was stationed in our city," he says. "And its generals said to me clearly: 'If we get the order from Moscow, the tanks will roll.'"

After the Berlin Wall opened, on 9 November, the crowds became bolder everywhere - approaching the citadels of Stasi and KGB power in Dresden.

Vladimir Putin had doubtless assumed too that those senior Soviet officers - men he'd socialised with regularly - would indeed send in the tanks.

But no, Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev "was silent". The Red Army tanks would not be used. "Nobody lifted a finger to protect us."

He and his KGB colleagues frantically burned evidence of their intelligence work.

"I personally burned a huge amount of material," Putin recalled in First Person. "We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst."

Two weeks later there was more trauma for Putin as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in the city. He made a speech that left German reunification looking inevitable, and East Germany doomed.

A heavily redacted Stasi document referring to Vladimir Putin

Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response.

It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it.

The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life.

"We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila.

"My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers."

One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had help him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990.

This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home.

"Their German friends give them a 20-year-old washing machine and with this they drive back to Leningrad," says Putin biographer and critic Masha Gessen. "There's a strong sense that he was serving his country and had nothing to show for it."

He also arrived back to a country that had been transformed under Mikhail Gorbachev and was itself on the verge of collapse.

"He found himself in a country that had changed in ways that he didn't understand and didn't want to accept," as Gessen puts it.

His home city, Leningrad, was now becoming St Petersburg again. What would Putin do there?

There was talk, briefly, of taxi-driving. But soon Putin realised he had acquired a much more valuable asset than a second-hand washing machine.

In Dresden he'd been part of a network of individuals who might have lost their Soviet roles, but were well placed to prosper personally and politically in the new Russia.

In the Stasi archives in Dresden a picture survives of Putin during his Dresden years. He's in a group of senior Soviet and East German military and security figures - a relatively junior figure, off to one side, but already networking among the elite.

Prof Karen Dawisha of Miami University, author of Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, says there are people he met in Dresden "who have then gone on… to be part of his inner core".

They include Sergey Chemezov, who for years headed Russia's arms export agency and now runs a state programme supporting technology, and Nikolai Tokarev head of the state pipeline company, Transneft.

And it's not only former Russian colleagues who've stayed close to Putin.

Take Matthias Warnig - a former Stasi officer, believed to have spent time in Dresden when Putin was there - who is now managing director of Nordstream, the pipeline taking gas directly from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.

That pipeline symbolised what was seen, until recently, as Germany's new special relationship with Russia - though the Ukraine crisis has at the very least put that relationship on hold.

Putin-watchers believe events such as the uprising on Kiev's Maidan Square, have revived bad memories - above all, of that night in Dresden in December 1989.

"Now when you have crowds in Kiev in 2004, in Moscow in 2011 or in Kiev in 2013 and 2014, I think he remembers this time in Dresden," says Boris Reitschuster. "And all these old fears come up inside him."

Inside him too may be a memory of how change can be shaped not only by force, or by weakness - but also by emotion. In 1989 he saw in Dresden how patriotic feeling, combined with a yearning for democracy, proved so much more powerful than communist ideology.

So when wondering what Vladimir Putin will do next, it's well worth remembering what he's lived through already.

One thing seems sure. While Vladimir Putin holds power in the Kremlin, Moscow is unlikely to be silent. Source: Chris Bowlby's BBC documentary The Moment that Made Putin

From Fijileaks Archive:

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MASSIVE VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH ONLINE: Indian Supreme Court strikes down a provision in the Indian cyber law which provides power to arrest a person for posting allegedly "offensive" content on websites!

26/3/2015

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In a landmark judgment, the Indian Supreme Court decided upon a constitutional challenge to three provisions of the Information Technology Act: Sections 66A, 69A and 79. All these provisions had attained a unique degree of notoriety in recent times, for their effect on suppressing online freedom of speech and expression. Section 66A criminalized online communication that is "grossly offensive", has a "menacing character", or causes "inconvenience or annoyance". Section 69A authorised the Indian government to block websites, and through a set of rules, lay out the procedure for doing so. And Section 79 dealt with the situations where online "intermediaries" (ie, search engines, social media platforms etc.) must "take down" illegal speech that internet users might have posted, and were being hosted by their platforms. The Indian Supreme Court held that Section 66A violated the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, and was therefore void. It upheld Section 69A and the blocking rules. And it upheld Section 79, but limited its scope by "reading it down". Each of these decisions will have widespread effects, not merely upon online speech, but upon censorship and the freedom of speech and expression across Indian media.

NEW HEROES: JusticeS Nariman and Chelameswar

The Supreme Court judgement borrowed a a page from Shakespeare's immortal classic Julius Caesar to make the point that "freedom of speech and expression" were concepts that must be clearly understood and respected. There are three steps in this process, the judgement said. The first is discussion, the second is advocacy and the third is incitement. It is only when the third incites or engenders violence that attract Article 19 (2) of the Constitution could kick in as a state of mutiny may not be far behind. "A good example of the difference between advocacy and incitement is Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s immortal classic Julius Caesar. Mark Antony begins cautiously," the court said.

Brutus is chastised for calling Julius Caesar ambitious and is repeatedly said to be an “honourable man”. He then shows the crowd Caesar’s mantle and describes who struck Caesar where. It is at this point, after the interjection of two citizens from the crowd, that Antony says:

“Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honourable:
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him:
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar that should move

Quoting Shakespeare the judgement says, "It is at this stage that a law may be made curtailing the speech or expression that leads inexorably to or tends to cause public disorder or tends to cause or tends to affect the sovereignty & integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, etc. Why it is important to have these three concepts in mind is because most of the arguments of both petitioners and respondents tended to veer around the expression “public order”.

In fact, two English judgments (Director of Public Prosecutions v. Collins, (2006) 1 WLR 2223; Chambers v. Director of Public Prosecutions, [2013] 1 W.L.R. 1833, the Queen’s Bench),cited by the learned Additional Solicitor General would demonstrate how vague the words used in Section 66A are. If judicially trained minds can come to diametrically opposite conclusions on the same set of facts it is obvious that expressions such as “grossly offensive” or “menacing” are so vague that there is no manageable standard by which a person can be said to have committed an offence or not to have committed an offence. Quite obviously, a prospective offender of Section 66A and the authorities who are to enforce Section 66A have absolutely no manageable standard by which to book a person for an offence under Section 66A. This being the case, having regard also to the two English precedents cited by the learned Additional Solicitor General, it is clear that Section 66A is unconstitutionally vague.

"Our government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a very conscious decision that we don't support the stand of the previous government. We respect the freedom of speech and expression. We respect communication of ideas on social media and we are not in favour of curtailing communication of honest dissent, opinion, disapproval or criticism on social media," Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Indian Supreme Court strikes down Facebook defamation arrest laws

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THE BEGGING QUESTION: Poverty Minister Akbar v Beggar Krishna Kumari - Akbar says don't give money but Kumari saves $19,000 from 'Begging Money' to buy two-bedroom home - what message to others?

26/3/2015

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Krishna Kumari is all smiles beside the Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama in her new two-bedroom at the Lagilagi Housing flats during its official opening in Suva

Key to new home

Fiji Times
Thursday, March 26, 2015

A 60-YEAR-OLD beggar received the key to her fully-paid house at Lagilagi Housing at Jittu Estate in Suva yesterday.

After many years of begging, Krishna Kumari was excited to be given the key to her home by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

Ms Kumari was able to pay for her house with the assistance of the Government and People's Community Network (PCN).

PCN national director Semiti Qalowasa said Ms Kumari was the oldest recipient of the 44 new homeowners.

"When she came in she said 'I want a house'. I said how can you afford it? She said I can afford it," Mr Qalowasa said.

He said Ms Kumari had explained to them that she banked all the money she received from begging.

"When we looked at her bank deposit slip, it goes back to the late 1970s."

He said there was $19,000 in her bank account and they had to take $17,000 to pay for her two-bedroom home while PCN paid for the rest.

"The surprising thing was that if she can save that much, it is sending a good lesson to everyone to save."

Asked how she felt about her new home, she shyly said: "I'm happy."

The Lagilagi Housing has a total of 77 units with the construction of the second phase of 76 units already underway.

Mr Qalowasa said the three-bedroom units cost about $60,000 and $40,000 for a two-bedroom unit.

He said owners should pay half of the cost within 12 years and the remaining amount was subsidised by the Government and PCN collectively.

Interested homeowners, he said, should showcase to PCN that they would pay back and the only way they could gauge was for them to see some sort of saving scheme.

Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Rosy Akbar said the ministry would provide Ms Kumari her basic necessities such as bed to start off with in her new home.

The 1970s: One took to the street and one to the sea - four decades later, one is still on the street and the other turned treasonsit coupist to Prime Minister; one honestly declared she had $19,000 in her bank while the other claimed that he was owed $184,000 in back pay - going back to 1970s - VOTE FOR A BEGGAR OR VOTE FOR A SWINDLER?

Refrain from giving money to beggars - Akbar

The Minister of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation is calling on the public to refrain from giving money to the street beggars.

Rosy Akbar who is leading the National Taskforce on Beggars along with Fiji Police and the Municipal Councils says during a recent profiling exercise some beggars confessed that they are able to earn quite a lot more on the streets.

She added there are plans in place to look after the welfare of these beggars and they appeal to the public to cooperate with them.

Akbar Stressed they are closely monitoring the streets to ensure that children who are seen begging are taken off the streets and placed into residential care.

She highlights some people have been pushed out of their homes while others are used by their families to get money on the streets.

Akbar further added that the Minor Offences Act 10 of 1971 states that begging is illegal and the Taskforce is concerned about the welfare of the beggars who are sickly, elderly and disabled.

She highlights that some of these beggars are used by their families and they are dropped and picked up at the end of the day.

She added their objective is to make every effort to help these people and not to victimize them at any stage of this process. Source: Fijivillage News, 16 January 2005

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Refrain from giving money to beggars - Akbar

editor@fijileaks.com

MARCHING ORDERS: Anyone who dared to complain against
Ganesh Chand GOT THE SACK: