From the Archives, 2001
MEDDLESOME METHODISTS IN POLITICS:
Our Founding Editor-in-Chief has a long history of confrontation with Fiji's Methodist Church, beginning in 1987 after Coupist Sitiveni Rabuka had used his church links to depose the Bavadra led FLP-NFP coalition government on 14 MAY 1987.
*In May 2001, Our Editor-in-Chief, in his then regular Opinion column, had suggested that the Methodist Church leaders should be sent to a day school and should be dragged 'to the altar of the Lord Jesus Christ and make them confess about their roles in the overthrow of the Chaudhry government, and the removal from office of the President Ratu Mara'.
Psalms 37:21: “The wicked borrow and do not repay.”
Police investigations took almost three years to complete. The Fiji Police Force was under-trained and under resourced, and fraud laws antiquated. The investigations were compounded because DPP’s Office, which was destroyed in the 1987 coup, was staffed with under-qualified and inexperienced lawyers. The National Bank prosecutions, led by the then Director of Public Prosecutions, later Justice Nazhat Shameem, were a test of the ability of Fiji’s criminal justice system to try the rich and the powerful.
