Fiji First General Secretary and Attorney- General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has drowned politics of integrity, honesty and transparency in a cesspool with by his cowardly and gutless attack on the National Federation Party and its leadership.
His attempts to camouflage the real issues and concerns facing our people by his despicable attempt to malign me will be in vain. The hospitals are in a state of decay. Health and medical service delivery is deteriorating by the day.
The cost of living is at all time high making many things unaffordable. Unemployment is rife and creation of decent jobs paying meaningful wages and salaries is non-existent.
Intermittent cuts to power supply, lack of or no regular supply of water in the taps, pot-holed filled roads and a sugar industry struggling to survive are problems that people need resolved through practical and sensible solutions.
But Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum will not talk about it. And we all know why. Instead he tried to ridicule me and the NFP for working with the People’s Alliance and its leader Sitiveni Rabuka.
Sayed-Khaiyum has deliberately twisted my statement made in 2014 of not working with coup leaders by nit-picking and not making public in entirety what I meant when I said it before the 2014 elections.
Eight years ago, the NFP had made its position clear that it was not supporting a leadership born out of the barrel of the gun following the December 2006 military coup because it had torn to shreds the rule of law by abrogating the 1997 Constitution and trashing the Fiji Court of Appeal judgment of April 2009.
And it meant not working with Voreqe Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum who had even usurped even the constitutional process initiated through Decrees 57 and 58 by burning the Yash Ghai draft constitution, rendering political parties inoperable by requiring them to re-register under new draconian rules and then formulating the draft 2013 Constitution, imposing it later through a Decree in September 2013.
If this wasn’t blatant disregard and absolute defiance of the rule of law even formulated by them, then what was?
On the contrary, Sitiveni Rabuka executed the military coups in May and September 1987. Mr Rabuka has known NFP’s position on coups. We have condemned every coup and political upheaval in the country and 1987 coups are not an exception.
The NFP has never supported, joined nor benefited directly or indirectly from any coup.
However, 10 years later in 1997, Mr Rabuka worked closely with the then NFP and Leader of the Opposition, Jai Ram Reddy to give Fiji the internationally acclaimed 1997 Constitution. This was the Constitution that Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum started undermining by firstly forming the NCBBF – National Council for Building a Better Fiji – and abrogating it, together with trashing of the Court of Appeal judgment on 10th April, 2009.
Sayed-Khaiyum doesn’t understand transparency, accountability, ethical and good governance and working for the people at all times instead of the other way around.
So, naturally, he tries to shamelessly undermine the post-elections People’s Alliance-NFP Coalition government, that will be based on a firm foundation of principles contained in the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Leaders of both parties on 8th April, 2022.
And the MOU has been well publicised in an act of transparency so that the people of Fiji know well in advance their new government will always work for them and show care and compassion at all times, not only in an election year like Fiji First.
Professor Biman Prasad Leader