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Kubuabola with the Ethiopian State Minister for Political Affairs Ambassador Taye Atske-Selassie in Addis Ababa.
24 August 2000: Kubuabola attacks Victor Lal after joining post George Speight coup as Minister for Information in the interim Qarase led government:
“Victor Lal’s articles [in Fiji's Daily Post] all have a simple, indeed simplistic stance, restore [Mahendra] Chaudhry and impose democracy as defined by Lal and his friends. What he is advocating is an Indian supremacist doctrine, a new version of Hitlerian herrenvolk for Fiji. The racism lies in his desires, not those of us Fijians. His obsession to control Fiji, blinds him to his own ambitions.”
Kubuabola was responding to the London based Movement for Democracy in Fiji which had intensified its fight for deposed Chaudhry’s political rights.
The then Commodore Frank Bainimarama had claimed in his February 2001 affidavit before the Fiji Court of Appeal that he had abrogated the 1997 Constitution because he was satisfied that people engaged in the events of May 19 [2000 Speight coup] were of the perception that the document had watered down the interests of indigenous Fijians:
“Whether or not those perceptions accorded with reality was not my principal consideration. The perceptions were genuinely held by largely unsophisticated Fijians not equipped to adequately comprehend the niceties and technicalities of the Constitution.”
