From the Fiji Times Letters to the Editor Column – Vinaka Kenneth

The formation and the meeting of the National Council for Building a Better Fiji at the Raffles Tradewinds in Lami is a waste of time and taxpayers money.

It is another attempt by the interim regime to blindfold people of this country of its own wrongdoings and illegality.

The initial 45 members could not be attained and 25 were forced to join.

I say thank you to those courageous people for not joining the futile and illegal exercise whose recommendations will only end up on the shelves of the President’s Office and gather dust.

I read the opening speeches delivered at the inaugural meeting by the President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, interim Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and Archbishop Petero Mataca.

There were a lot of beautiful and colourful words used such as mutual co-operation, dialogue, progress, justice, prosperity and sustainability.

Not one of the speakers admitted that the present political leadership of this country was illegal and wrong and came to power at the barrel of a gun.

They all chose to ignore the stark fact that the interim regime is illegal, unwarranted, unjustified and morally wrong.

Not one suggested that political leadership should be given back to those democratically elected by the people of this country in 2006.

The so-called People’s Charter they are trying to formulate is premised on an illegal base. I mean they are starting off on the wrong foot.

No wonder many people in the country have rejected it. While the charter’s motives might have the noblest of ideas, it still does not make it right because the sponsors of the charter are the very people who removed a democratically-elected government with the barrel of a gun and by force.

Then they tell us that the way forward for Fiji and its people is for all to accept reality. What reality?

The only reality we have are the untold miseries we all suffer from such as unsolved murders, human rights abuse, economic decline, increasing unemployment, increase in fuel prices, increase in bus fares, increasing crime rate and international bans.

A charter will not solve these problems; it will only aggravate them.

The way forward is for Commodore Bainimarama and the military to admit to their crime of staging the coup in 2006 and await sentencing by the court just as George Speight did with his 2000 coup.

I am still awaiting a justification of the 2006 coup, if any, and I have not heard of any SDL minister going to jail for official corruption.

Subsequently, the elected government should be reinstated and if the President still feels they are incompetent then he should dissolve Parliament and call for an election.

But to go the other way and hoodwink this country with a charter the majority rejects is a recipe for disaster. A charter can only be put in place by an elected government and by a national referendum, not by an illegal regime.

The faster and quicker people who were at the Raffles Tradewinds the other day realise this, the better for them and for this country.

Kenneth Zinck
Samabula North