"Why is the SODELPA leadership allowing their new elected political leader [Sitiveni Rabuka] to display that he has a pathetic knowledge of economics and finance and should NEVER again be given authority over taxpayers’ billions, let alone a child’s piggy bank?" - Professor Wadan Narsey
HERE is the reason why I keep urging native Fijians not be be seduced by SODELA's bogus indigenous rights howlers under Sitiveni Rabuka. The NBF loans was supposed to be an affirmative action program to advance soft loans to the disadvantaged indigenous population but became, in fact, a slush fund for the privileged. After the Rabuka coups in 1987, his paramount chiefly family - the Ganilaus - and their companies - disappeared with over $2million from the National Bank of Fiji; the Cakaudrove Provincial Council with $73,179.64; the late Fijian nationalist leader Sakeasi Butadroka with $59,393; G & S Speight $100,591; Rabuka's Attorney-General Kelemedi Bulewa $352,418; three 1987 Taukei Movement leaders Ratu Inoke Kubuabola - $198,951, Ratu Meli Vesikula - $8,000, and Apisai & Melania Tora, $194,393 (Remember their banners before the Rabuka coups: "We don't want this Indian [Bavadra] government'), and even Daniel Fatiaki with $28,000, just to name a few individuals. More names at the end of Professor Wadan Narsey's article, and more will be revealed later in the coming months including Indo-Fijians who were up there, looting the NBF with Rabuka's supporters, only to shift their 'support' to Frank Bainimarama after the 2006 coup. We may recall Rabuka's bogus chant about his coup: "It was a matter of sink or swim for native Fijians". Ironically, he sunk the NBF and he and his nationalists swam away with taxpayers money - estimated at $400,000; now he is back with
SODELPA swimming for VOTES - and harping on indigenous rights, AGAIN!
"The accomplices of thieves are their own enemies" - Proverb
 Clubbed bank to destruction |  Now, banking on WHITE LIES |  WHO needs God's prayer: If Rabuka’s financial genius is to be believed, ANY bankrupt company can separate out all the debtors the company cannot pay and get the Government and taxpayers to pay them, while he keeps all the good debtors to continue his business. |
"The SODELPA website quotes Rabuka saying: “When the issue of NBF was brought to my attention as the then Prime Minister, I responded immediately to minimise any further risk to the financial sector and to the economy as a whole, rather than sweeping the matter under the carpet”. This is a blatant lie.The Fiji public knows very well that the rot at NBF started when Rabuka sent in his soldiers with guns to remove the General Manager then, and replace him with Makrava who then proceeded to destroy the NBF from within. Far from responding “immediately” Rabuka allowed all the rot to set in because many of them were his supporters. Rabuka never instituted a full inquiry into the most costly financial disaster that Fiji had ever faced despite many public calls. In the end the taxpayers lost around $200 million to indemnify the depositors. In other words, bad borrowers ran off with at least that sum of money (I say at least because interest was frozen on bad debts). [Multiply $200 million by 2.1 if you want to convert 1996 dollar values to today’s prices, i.e. more than
$400 million in today’s money]." - Professor Wadan Narsey
Narsey calling Rabuka's LIES By PROFESSOR WADAN NARSEY
SITIVENI Rabuka, since becoming Leader of SODELPA, has made many accurate statements about the disastrous impact of the Bainimarama Government on indigenous Fijians and on Fiji (which I do not comment on here).
I have always had a soft spot for Rabuka after our (NFP/SVT) collaboration in parliament in the 1990s when we peacefully brought in the 1997 Constitution, unanimously approved by the Fiji parliament. Even though the collaboration also resulted in the total historical demise of the NFP from parliament in the 1999 election, SVT’s loss of government, and Rabuka traumatically going “from hero to zero” (in his own words to me).
Today, however, I am horrified to read Rabuka’s statements on the SODELPA website on the NBF disaster and the long-term impact, statements which can only be described as “false” or “lies” or “propaganda” easily recognized by any economics student or anyone with common sense (https://sodelpafiji.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/rabuka-tells-khaiyum-to-respond-to.html)
Rabuka’s lies
The SODELPA website quotes Rabuka saying: “When the issue of NBF was brought to my attention as the then Prime Minister, I responded immediately to minimise any further risk to the financial sector and to the economy as a whole, rather than sweeping the matter under the carpet”.
This is a blatant lie. I have previously posted on my website that there was a whistle blower working at the senior levels in the National Bank of Fiji, who wrote to Prime Minister Rabuka in 1992, detailing all the corruption and nepotism at the NBF.
https://narseyonfiji.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/fiji-not-between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea-3-may-2017/
The Fiji public knows very well that the rot at NBF started when Rabuka sent in his soldiers with guns to remove the General Manager then, and replace him with Makrava who then proceeded to destroy the NBF from within. Far from responding “immediately” Rabuka allowed all the rot to set in because many of them were his supporters.
Rabuka never instituted a full inquiry into the most costly financial disaster that Fiji had ever faced despite many public calls.
In the end the taxpayers lost around $200 million to indemnify the depositors. In other words, bad borrowers ran off with at least that sum of money (I say at least because interest was frozen on bad debts).
[Multiply $200 million by 2.1 if you want to convert 1996 dollar values to today’s prices, i.e. more than $400 million in today’s money].
Quoting Lionel Yee
Rabuka proudly quotes (and reiterates) Lionel Yee who allegedly praised Rabuka for “taking the bull by the horns and getting the job done… in the end the bank was saved… and the saved bank got bigger and better managed, and you should be happy to take the credit because it could have really collapsed… the bank was saved to become Colonial National Bank and then onto the Bank of South Pacific ! A Pacific Bank”.
Hullo. The NBF was not saved. It was destroyed.
All that happened was that the bad debts were separated out into the “Bad Bank” called the “Asset Management Bank” which was required to recover all the bad debts. It did recover a bit, but most of the bad debtors got away scot free (some running business in Australia today using their ill-gotten gains) while some were made bankrupt (a great PhD to be written here).
The few good debtors remained as the “Good Bank” and became the Colonial National Bank.
For Rabuka to twist these “extraordinary” comments by Lionel Yee (more on him below) to imply that the bankrupt NBF became a great financial success under Rabuka’s leadership is simply false and pathetic.
I remind that taxpayers had to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to cover the savings of the depositors in the NBF (thereby effectively increasing Fiji’s Public Debt).
If Rabuka’s financial genius is to be believed, ANY bankrupt company can separate out all the debtors the company cannot pay and get the Government and taxpayers to pay them, while he keeps all the good debtors to continue his business. Would not life be hunky dory for all bankrupt businesses?
Why on earth would the sensible people in SODELPA allow their leader to put such outrageous statements on their website, showing clearly that he should never be trusted with taxpayers’ money. I suspect that this would not happen under the leadership of the humble and sensible Ro Teimumu Kepa.
Some websites (like Fijileaks) have already listed Rabuka’s other shady dealings while Prime Minister costing Fiji taxpayers even more millions.
Unfortunately there are other websites which are publishing (and hence propagating) Rabuka’s false statements without any qualification or challenge.
SITIVENI Rabuka, since becoming Leader of SODELPA, has made many accurate statements about the disastrous impact of the Bainimarama Government on indigenous Fijians and on Fiji (which I do not comment on here).
I have always had a soft spot for Rabuka after our (NFP/SVT) collaboration in parliament in the 1990s when we peacefully brought in the 1997 Constitution, unanimously approved by the Fiji parliament. Even though the collaboration also resulted in the total historical demise of the NFP from parliament in the 1999 election, SVT’s loss of government, and Rabuka traumatically going “from hero to zero” (in his own words to me).
Today, however, I am horrified to read Rabuka’s statements on the SODELPA website on the NBF disaster and the long-term impact, statements which can only be described as “false” or “lies” or “propaganda” easily recognized by any economics student or anyone with common sense (https://sodelpafiji.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/rabuka-tells-khaiyum-to-respond-to.html)
Rabuka’s lies
The SODELPA website quotes Rabuka saying: “When the issue of NBF was brought to my attention as the then Prime Minister, I responded immediately to minimise any further risk to the financial sector and to the economy as a whole, rather than sweeping the matter under the carpet”.
This is a blatant lie. I have previously posted on my website that there was a whistle blower working at the senior levels in the National Bank of Fiji, who wrote to Prime Minister Rabuka in 1992, detailing all the corruption and nepotism at the NBF.
https://narseyonfiji.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/fiji-not-between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea-3-may-2017/
The Fiji public knows very well that the rot at NBF started when Rabuka sent in his soldiers with guns to remove the General Manager then, and replace him with Makrava who then proceeded to destroy the NBF from within. Far from responding “immediately” Rabuka allowed all the rot to set in because many of them were his supporters.
Rabuka never instituted a full inquiry into the most costly financial disaster that Fiji had ever faced despite many public calls.
In the end the taxpayers lost around $200 million to indemnify the depositors. In other words, bad borrowers ran off with at least that sum of money (I say at least because interest was frozen on bad debts).
[Multiply $200 million by 2.1 if you want to convert 1996 dollar values to today’s prices, i.e. more than $400 million in today’s money].
Quoting Lionel Yee
Rabuka proudly quotes (and reiterates) Lionel Yee who allegedly praised Rabuka for “taking the bull by the horns and getting the job done… in the end the bank was saved… and the saved bank got bigger and better managed, and you should be happy to take the credit because it could have really collapsed… the bank was saved to become Colonial National Bank and then onto the Bank of South Pacific ! A Pacific Bank”.
Hullo. The NBF was not saved. It was destroyed.
All that happened was that the bad debts were separated out into the “Bad Bank” called the “Asset Management Bank” which was required to recover all the bad debts. It did recover a bit, but most of the bad debtors got away scot free (some running business in Australia today using their ill-gotten gains) while some were made bankrupt (a great PhD to be written here).
The few good debtors remained as the “Good Bank” and became the Colonial National Bank.
For Rabuka to twist these “extraordinary” comments by Lionel Yee (more on him below) to imply that the bankrupt NBF became a great financial success under Rabuka’s leadership is simply false and pathetic.
I remind that taxpayers had to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to cover the savings of the depositors in the NBF (thereby effectively increasing Fiji’s Public Debt).
If Rabuka’s financial genius is to be believed, ANY bankrupt company can separate out all the debtors the company cannot pay and get the Government and taxpayers to pay them, while he keeps all the good debtors to continue his business. Would not life be hunky dory for all bankrupt businesses?
Why on earth would the sensible people in SODELPA allow their leader to put such outrageous statements on their website, showing clearly that he should never be trusted with taxpayers’ money. I suspect that this would not happen under the leadership of the humble and sensible Ro Teimumu Kepa.
Some websites (like Fijileaks) have already listed Rabuka’s other shady dealings while Prime Minister costing Fiji taxpayers even more millions.
Unfortunately there are other websites which are publishing (and hence propagating) Rabuka’s false statements without any qualification or challenge.
Lionel Yee Lionel Yee’s Strange Comments (if accurately quoted by Rabuka)
Who knows why Lionel Yee would have made those outrageous statements probably made before the 1999 Elections. Who knows what powerful people expected had the SVT and Rabuka won.
But let us also remember that Lionel Yee was the CEO of FNPF when around 1998 it tendered the massive inflated price of $253 million (at least $100 million in excess) for government shares in the super monopolistic ATH (which then proceeded to rip-off customers over the next two decades to recoup that huge investment).
With only 2 tenders (the other was by Cable and Wireless amounting to less than $160 million) Lionel Yee worked “closely” with Finance Minister James Ah Koy in what was a “managed” sale between FNPF and the SVT Minister of Finance) so that the NBF disaster could be paid for by the SVT Government and taxpayers.
Lionel Yee was also the CEO of FNPF when pension rate changes were being brought in around 1998, when in Parliament I had argued that the rates should be brought down immediately from the existing 25% to 15%, not gradually by 1 percentage point per year- as the Board controlled by the SVT government decided.
Then in 2011 when the Bainimarama Government attacked the FNPF pension rates breaking all contracts with pensioners, Lionel Yee remained publicly quiet, leaving the struggles to poor pensioners like the late David Burness, Ross Macdonald, lawyer Shaista Shameem and a certain economist who spent months preparing the pensioners’ case (without any payment) while on his sabbatical in Japan, only to be questioned by the CID for “sedition” when he returned to Fiji.
One pensioner, Rick Rickman still has the file for Case HBC 183 of 2011 in which he was the applicant and the respondents were FNPF Board, The Republic of Fiji, and the Attorney General of Fiji.. Bainimarama’s Decree 51 ensured the case was never heard although it still must be “in the system”.
Why did Lionel Yee remain quiet when the FNPF was being raided by the Bainimarama Government? I suspect that with the accelerated FNPF payments for senior FNPF managers, Yee would have had a phenomenal sum in his own personal FNPF account when he retired, and after more than ten years of pensions, would have received his entire final balance two or three times over. The reduction of pension rates would not have been important for him any more.
Note that Lionel Yee was one of the few board members of ATH companies who managed to continue their board membership even after the 2006 Bainimarama coup.
Why does SODELPA allow this?
There is no need to ask why Rabuka is making these false statements on the SODELPA website since it is clear that he is simply trying to go from “zero to hero” again.
But why is the rest of the SODELPA leadership allowing their current leader to falsify the history of the disastrous impact of the old SVT Party on Fiji? SODELPA is not SVT is it?
Why is the SODELPA leadership allowing their new elected political leader to display that he has a pathetic knowledge of economics and finance and should NEVER again be given authority over taxpayers’ billions, let along a child’s piggy bank?
How on earth can Rabuka claim on the SODELPA website that under his leadership SODELPA will “practice sound economic management to free Fiji from the current unsustainable debt level” – which Rabuka himself helped to grow unnecessarily by more than $200 million dollars twenty years ago?
Sadly, even ordinary voters opposed to the Bainimarama Government will understand that Rabuka’s criticisms of Bainimarama and Khaiyum is “the pot calling the kettles black”, however black (or blacker) the kettles may be!
Post-script for the 2018 Elections
For sure, voters, candidates and political parties in the 2018 Elections will have no lack of material in pointing out which histories are being rewritten by current and former Prime Ministers, all for sordid political gain.
VICTOR LAL: We must not overlook the role of Rabuka's comrade-in-chaoots Army chief Paul Manueli in the NBF saga, and also the role of Ratu Jone Kubuabola, the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of Fiji
Who knows why Lionel Yee would have made those outrageous statements probably made before the 1999 Elections. Who knows what powerful people expected had the SVT and Rabuka won.
But let us also remember that Lionel Yee was the CEO of FNPF when around 1998 it tendered the massive inflated price of $253 million (at least $100 million in excess) for government shares in the super monopolistic ATH (which then proceeded to rip-off customers over the next two decades to recoup that huge investment).
With only 2 tenders (the other was by Cable and Wireless amounting to less than $160 million) Lionel Yee worked “closely” with Finance Minister James Ah Koy in what was a “managed” sale between FNPF and the SVT Minister of Finance) so that the NBF disaster could be paid for by the SVT Government and taxpayers.
Lionel Yee was also the CEO of FNPF when pension rate changes were being brought in around 1998, when in Parliament I had argued that the rates should be brought down immediately from the existing 25% to 15%, not gradually by 1 percentage point per year- as the Board controlled by the SVT government decided.
Then in 2011 when the Bainimarama Government attacked the FNPF pension rates breaking all contracts with pensioners, Lionel Yee remained publicly quiet, leaving the struggles to poor pensioners like the late David Burness, Ross Macdonald, lawyer Shaista Shameem and a certain economist who spent months preparing the pensioners’ case (without any payment) while on his sabbatical in Japan, only to be questioned by the CID for “sedition” when he returned to Fiji.
One pensioner, Rick Rickman still has the file for Case HBC 183 of 2011 in which he was the applicant and the respondents were FNPF Board, The Republic of Fiji, and the Attorney General of Fiji.. Bainimarama’s Decree 51 ensured the case was never heard although it still must be “in the system”.
Why did Lionel Yee remain quiet when the FNPF was being raided by the Bainimarama Government? I suspect that with the accelerated FNPF payments for senior FNPF managers, Yee would have had a phenomenal sum in his own personal FNPF account when he retired, and after more than ten years of pensions, would have received his entire final balance two or three times over. The reduction of pension rates would not have been important for him any more.
Note that Lionel Yee was one of the few board members of ATH companies who managed to continue their board membership even after the 2006 Bainimarama coup.
Why does SODELPA allow this?
There is no need to ask why Rabuka is making these false statements on the SODELPA website since it is clear that he is simply trying to go from “zero to hero” again.
But why is the rest of the SODELPA leadership allowing their current leader to falsify the history of the disastrous impact of the old SVT Party on Fiji? SODELPA is not SVT is it?
Why is the SODELPA leadership allowing their new elected political leader to display that he has a pathetic knowledge of economics and finance and should NEVER again be given authority over taxpayers’ billions, let along a child’s piggy bank?
How on earth can Rabuka claim on the SODELPA website that under his leadership SODELPA will “practice sound economic management to free Fiji from the current unsustainable debt level” – which Rabuka himself helped to grow unnecessarily by more than $200 million dollars twenty years ago?
Sadly, even ordinary voters opposed to the Bainimarama Government will understand that Rabuka’s criticisms of Bainimarama and Khaiyum is “the pot calling the kettles black”, however black (or blacker) the kettles may be!
Post-script for the 2018 Elections
For sure, voters, candidates and political parties in the 2018 Elections will have no lack of material in pointing out which histories are being rewritten by current and former Prime Ministers, all for sordid political gain.
VICTOR LAL: We must not overlook the role of Rabuka's comrade-in-chaoots Army chief Paul Manueli in the NBF saga, and also the role of Ratu Jone Kubuabola, the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of Fiji
"Rabuka had appointed Visanti Makrava in December 1987, at the point of a gun. Makrava entered the NBF headquarters in Suva with a group of soldiers saying he had been appointed by the Brigadier, as Rabuka was then. At the time Makrava was manager of the NBF's Samabula branch where the army did its banking...The other link Rabuka had with the bank was through his friend and former army commander, Paul Manueli, who had become NBF chairman in January 1988. He was to stay in that position until June 1992 when he left to become Rabuka's Minister of Finance...Makrava certainly did Rabuka no favours when he was reported to have said, "If I open my mouth, half the Government goes, including the leader."
      |      |
As Nazhat Shameem, who was charged with the uphill task of prosecuting the NBF loans scam once remarked, what was supposed to be an affirmative action program to advance soft loans to the disadvantaged indigenous population was in fact a slush fund for the privileged, many of whom were not even indigenous? How true; the Koya estate definitely falls in the last category.
The Koyas’ were not alone, for other non-Fijians also borrowed from collapsed NBF besides the elite as well as chiefly Fijians, resulting in a loss of $372million to the taxpayers.
Vijaya Parmanandam
Siddiq Koya’s side-kick, the lawyer, NFP parliamentarian and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, the late Vijaya Parmanandam, owed the NBF $40,770.31.
The Koyas’ were not alone, for other non-Fijians also borrowed from collapsed NBF besides the elite as well as chiefly Fijians, resulting in a loss of $372million to the taxpayers.
Vijaya Parmanandam
Siddiq Koya’s side-kick, the lawyer, NFP parliamentarian and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, the late Vijaya Parmanandam, owed the NBF $40,770.31.
SVT'S party secretary EMA DRUAVESI, 7 May 1999:
RABUKA IS NO AUGUSTO PINOCHET:
"By no means can Prime Minister [Sitiveni Rabuka] be compared to the brutal dictator Pinochet, nor can we compare the 1987 coups to the coups in Chile in 1973 and what happened there...With the exception of Victor Lal, I do not think any Fijian or Indian overseas will want to waste his or her time and money trying to take Rabuka to court"; a day before Victor Lal had outlined two possible charges against Rabuka, one of treason and another of torture and kidnapping, based on the arrest of the Chilean military dictator Pinochet in London.
 The self-confessed racist Rabuka unashamedly telling native Fijians on 19 May 1987: "I did it my way" "I DESTROYED THE NATIONAL BANK OF FIJI - MY WAY"  COUPIST TURNED BANK ROBBER? |   |
