Silences can tell you more than words
May 16, 2008
As someone who has closely watched the antics of Fiji’s bumbling regime over
the past 18 months or so I have learned a very important lesson: often
it’s not what the regime says that you should take note of. Instead, it’s
their silences on particular topics that indicate that there is something
afoot.
This is because this regime has not only sought to create a climate of
fear and mistrust, but because deep down it knows it’s illegal and that
makes it also a victim of fear and distrust. Fear and distrust of being
shown to everyone once again for what it is.
Here’s a case in point: why has it been several weeks since we heard
anything from the regime and its minions, including from the talkative
John (yap-yap) Samy himself, about the IMG (the independent monitoring
group)? Like the proverbial ship in the night, they seem to have come and
gone.
Could it be that the IMG was just a front to give the charter process a
cloak of respectability? Or, as I suspect, has something gone badly wrong?
For example, have the members of the IMG suddenly developed a bad case of
cold feet after getting up close and personal with the deadbeats on the
NCBBF? Has the IMG simply dissolved like an ice cream exposed to the hot
sun?
What strikes me as particularly strange is that we haven’t heard anything
about the IMG drawcard, Dutchman Geert Van Den Linden, who is after all
something of a VIP, and certainly of sufficient stature to give the regime a
touch of class, even by association. Linden is a former senior vice
president of the Asian development bank.
You would think that with all the pressure he’s getting from everyone from
Winston Peters to the Commonwealth Ministers Action Group and with more
and more provinces voting with their feet, Bainimarama would have by now
got Linden to strut his stuff for the cameras once again.
I ask this for a simple reason that is obvious, at least to me; when it
comes to selling the charter and keeping the Commonwealth dogs off his
heels. Linden’s prestige could do a lot for Frank’s credibility when he
needs it the most. Someone of Linden’s stature is about the only card
Frank has up his sleeve without pulling out the gun he always keeps up the
other one.
Or does the silence tell us something else? Does it tell us that Frank can
no longer use Linden because Linden is no longer available to the regime?
Does the silence about Linden and the IMG tell us that yet another name
has been added to the abandoned ship list?
Another silence that is more telling than words is the silence of the
police in relation to the two death threats received by the Australian
Ambassador,
James Batley. When the first threat was received on 8 May the police behaved
like something out of the TV series, the FBI. There were announcements and
statements that there would be a quick arrest.
Then everything fell silent. Significantly, the police maintained their
silence even after the media reported widely on the second threat on 15
May, one week after the first.
What does that silence tell us? Perhaps it’s telling us that that the
police have got nowhere in their investigations and are downright
embarrassed. Or
perhaps it’s telling us something far more sinister:
(a) that the police have a very good idea who is responsible
(b) but because the people the police believe are responsible just happen
to be who they are, no further action can be taken.
Welcome to Fiji under Frank and the Chodopu$$. Yes, we have heard lots of
words from those two (far too many of them empty and false in my opinion),
but it’s sometimes the silences that can tell you more about what is really
happening.
CORRUPTION FIGHTER
