PUKING AT BREAKFAST TABLE: The singing to JESUS once again made us nearly puke into our cereal bowl. In 1987, Indo-Fijian women reporters at FBC had to hide from Rabuka's marauding RAPISTS.
WAKE UP, FIJI. It is time to end the bloody TABETABE CIRCUS
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Fijileaks: 'The Essex Boy' has forgotten that Coupist Rabuka had gone into hiding after the 2006 Bainimarama coup, and only surfaced in 2018 when Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu (700 votes) arm-twisted SODELPA to make Rabuka leader of the party. The Brother's Keeper Riyaz was in control of FBC since 2009. There was not a word of protest from Rabuka who claimed he was collecting and selling bottles to survive after his pension was stopped by Coupist Bainimarama.
*Why didn't Rabuka return to his 2000 acre VALAVALA ESTATE to make a living?
*Soon the FBC and its side-kicks the Fiji Times and FijiVillage News will be challenged by Fijileaks to confront Rabuka regarding how he acquired the Valavala Estate.
*We have been working on the story for nearly FIVE YEARS.
*The draconian MEDIA DECREE was brought in after our Founding Editor-in-Chief had revealed that Bainimarama's interim Finance Minister and FLP leader MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY was hiding $2million in Australia. Since our Founding Editor-in-Chief had the tax files of Bainimarama, Aiyaz Khaiyum, and other enablers, the MEDIA had to be held down. No one took to the streets to defy the military regime.
The FBC, as a public broadcaster, should be holding the new Coalition government to account, and not prostrating on a mat asking for FORGIVENESS from a Coupist who set the stage in 1987 for COUPIST BAINIMARAMA to seize control of the public broadcaster.
*Grubsheet's GRAHAM DAVIS speaks for all of us who have always fought for freedom of the media since Fiji's independence in 1970
WHEN SOME APOLOGIES ARE APPROPRIATE AND OTHERS ARE NOT
There is something deeply unsettling for anyone who genuinely believes in media freedom to see the staff of the FBC go en masse to the new Prime Minister's home and present him with a formal apology - a matanigasau - for any offence they may have caused him in opposition.
Whatever happened when FBC was hostage to the ousted government through the former attorney general's brother, Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the blame cannot be sheeted home to the staff. The responsibility rests entirely with the ousted CEO and the former board that enabled the chronic manipulation of the national broadcaster's editorial output to the FijiFirst government's advantage.
The sight of the new board and FBC senior staff going to apologise to the new Prime Minister smacks of the pendulum effect the Fijian people are currently seeing across much of government. It is out with the old and in with the new - one lot replaced by another lot - who happen to regard a one-seat victory in the parliament as a mandate to gain control of the levers of power and wield them to their advantage rather than the advantage of the voters who put them there.
Those voters want the pendulum to stop swinging from one extreme to the other and for it to settle in the middle, with good governance and the integrity of our institutions restored.
Fijian taxpayers expect FBC as the national broadcaster to do what it should have been doing all along - act with genuine independence in the national interest, not in the interests of the government of the day. If anyone deserves an apology for the biased conduct of the organisation under FijiFirst, it isn't the new Prime Minister and his government but the Fijian people. It is they who have been ultimately betrayed by the shameless conduct of FBC under Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum of not doing its job by reporting without fear or favour.
To his credit, Sitiveni Rabuka appeared to be rather uncomfortable himself with this very public display of slavishness to the new order. He knows, or should know, that the job of those sitting in front of him isn't to pander to his sense of grievance about what his political predecessors might have done but to report freely and fairly and hold him to account on behalf of the Fijian people.
If members of the new Coalition government don't fulfil their duty to the people to rebuild the integrity of our public institutions after the corruption of the Bainimarama years, then they are no better than the people they replaced. The Fijian people want an end to the ever-swinging pendulum of political parties taking office and then imposing their will in a "winner takes all" manner until they too are replaced and the whole cycle begins again.
This pilgrimage by supposedly independent employees on the public purse to the feet of the new victor is a very bad look. And if any apology is due, it is to the Fijian people for a lapse of judgement that doesn't bode well for the independence of the FBC under the new order. We don't want "the king is dead, long live the King". We want FBC - soon to be FMC for reasons that haven't yet been explained - to simply do its job.
On the other hand, the apology by the new Attorney General, Siromi Turaga, to the Fijian media for its appalling treatment over 16 years of Bainimarama rule was entirely appropriate. But with an important proviso.
The AG will be judged not on his words but on his actions.
It is a matter of some concern that having promised to abolish the Media Decree and its draconian provisions before the election, the AG is now talking about it being "reviewed" not abolished altogether. Now that it is in government, is the Coalition finding that some of the means that its predecessor used to impose control aren't so bad after all?
This is the problem with governments the world over. Without strong independent institutions and a thriving media to hold them to account, they inevitably act in their own interests. They can say one thing to win office and do the opposite when they get their hands on the reins of power.
The Fijian people will be watching the new coalition very closely to see if its lofty pre-election sentiments about instituting genuine change are matched by its deeds. And if they aren't, any honeymoon the Rabuka government is currently enjoying could be very short lived.
There is something deeply unsettling for anyone who genuinely believes in media freedom to see the staff of the FBC go en masse to the new Prime Minister's home and present him with a formal apology - a matanigasau - for any offence they may have caused him in opposition.
Whatever happened when FBC was hostage to the ousted government through the former attorney general's brother, Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the blame cannot be sheeted home to the staff. The responsibility rests entirely with the ousted CEO and the former board that enabled the chronic manipulation of the national broadcaster's editorial output to the FijiFirst government's advantage.
The sight of the new board and FBC senior staff going to apologise to the new Prime Minister smacks of the pendulum effect the Fijian people are currently seeing across much of government. It is out with the old and in with the new - one lot replaced by another lot - who happen to regard a one-seat victory in the parliament as a mandate to gain control of the levers of power and wield them to their advantage rather than the advantage of the voters who put them there.
Those voters want the pendulum to stop swinging from one extreme to the other and for it to settle in the middle, with good governance and the integrity of our institutions restored.
Fijian taxpayers expect FBC as the national broadcaster to do what it should have been doing all along - act with genuine independence in the national interest, not in the interests of the government of the day. If anyone deserves an apology for the biased conduct of the organisation under FijiFirst, it isn't the new Prime Minister and his government but the Fijian people. It is they who have been ultimately betrayed by the shameless conduct of FBC under Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum of not doing its job by reporting without fear or favour.
To his credit, Sitiveni Rabuka appeared to be rather uncomfortable himself with this very public display of slavishness to the new order. He knows, or should know, that the job of those sitting in front of him isn't to pander to his sense of grievance about what his political predecessors might have done but to report freely and fairly and hold him to account on behalf of the Fijian people.
If members of the new Coalition government don't fulfil their duty to the people to rebuild the integrity of our public institutions after the corruption of the Bainimarama years, then they are no better than the people they replaced. The Fijian people want an end to the ever-swinging pendulum of political parties taking office and then imposing their will in a "winner takes all" manner until they too are replaced and the whole cycle begins again.
This pilgrimage by supposedly independent employees on the public purse to the feet of the new victor is a very bad look. And if any apology is due, it is to the Fijian people for a lapse of judgement that doesn't bode well for the independence of the FBC under the new order. We don't want "the king is dead, long live the King". We want FBC - soon to be FMC for reasons that haven't yet been explained - to simply do its job.
On the other hand, the apology by the new Attorney General, Siromi Turaga, to the Fijian media for its appalling treatment over 16 years of Bainimarama rule was entirely appropriate. But with an important proviso.
The AG will be judged not on his words but on his actions.
It is a matter of some concern that having promised to abolish the Media Decree and its draconian provisions before the election, the AG is now talking about it being "reviewed" not abolished altogether. Now that it is in government, is the Coalition finding that some of the means that its predecessor used to impose control aren't so bad after all?
This is the problem with governments the world over. Without strong independent institutions and a thriving media to hold them to account, they inevitably act in their own interests. They can say one thing to win office and do the opposite when they get their hands on the reins of power.
The Fijian people will be watching the new coalition very closely to see if its lofty pre-election sentiments about instituting genuine change are matched by its deeds. And if they aren't, any honeymoon the Rabuka government is currently enjoying could be very short lived.
