Yuku free message boards

Humility is always nice, but unfortunately there are too many jealous folks out there trying to drag the smart ones down, so one reaction is to ignore them. As for succession, Ratu Mara had that problem too. He certainly could have picked a better military leader than his two son's in law or Voreqe, but he was focused on people he could control, and he perhaps did not count on a nobody like Franko getting all that power and using it to overthrow rather than support him.

As far as smart folks go, I like JN's style. By the way, he, Siti, and Sharon were all here at Harvard at the same time in 2006 and came home for a feed. To bad to have Fiji's intelligentia working at cross purposes and playing right into Mahen's hands. I hate to think that Fiji is now becoming known for goons rather than brilliant people. One way or another, Frank has made the whole race look hopless, by chopping the legs of the good ones and promoting the hopeless ones. Now it is a nation of mediocrity and 19th century mentality.

I think of all the hopes and dreams, training, counterparts, and localization that took place in thez 70's. All that planning and effort and then to have it taken over by school dropouts, pompous chiefs who do not even know how to groom their own children, and bribing businessmen and scammers.

Too much too fast and the idiots thought it was a permanent gravy train. Now everything comes crashing down because one fool has a vision that he is supposed to lead.

Jack did you get your legal education during the SVT, FLP, or SDL days? You must include, of course, the good relations which existed during most of the period with Australia and New Zealand, who funded most of the scholarships.
Franko is like a desperate politician running for election. Making promises right left and center to stave off the criticism and gain support from the blind to lead the blind.
But the bottom line is he has had 2.5 years of authoritarian rule where he could have done anything he wanted to make Fiji a better, more productive, and less corrupt place, and what has he achieved? As I said at the beginning, new pigs at the same trough, but delivering nothing and stifling the rights and initiatives of the People. Has anyone learned anything? Talk about a $1 billion dollar course in Econ 101 for Voreqe, and I don't think he will pass in spite of the expense. Who pays?

As far as ethno-nationalism is concerned, it is a good thing, if not taken to extreme. Fijians and Pacific Islanders generally are at a cultural disadvantage in the commercial world. Affirmative action is to level the playing field, an attempt to equalize opportunities and outcomes, recognizing the reality of cultural factors. It is accepted by the civilized nations of the world as essential to a healthy society. Frank's strategy of kicking ass and starving people to submission is not working and will never work. The focus should be on getting the economy working overall and institution policies and structures to enable everyone to participate equally, not conducting a witch hunt for "ethno-nationalists" and "corrupt officials". Corruption obviously needs attention, but a prerequisite is a clean police and court system. Where there is no transparency or accountability, this will not happen. Franko should have used his "emergency powers" to establish institutional structures that would enable the system to operate on its own under a democratic government. Instead he has created a highly centralized control structure which depends on having a benevolent and intelligent dictator, forever. But it places too much control under one person, and power corrupts, so there you have it.

One thing you forgot to mention about the "Marxist" governments is that there is always, without exception, a weathy authoritarian elite a the top, creaming off the spoils. The idea of empowering labour is bullshyt. Look at that Marxist BS artist thiefsamy. Is his salary the same as a labourer on the street? Where is the great panacea in communism? Communal living and dependency is what you have in the village. How many people are thriving in the village? What happens to people who work hard and people who are slackers? The hard workers end up supporting the slackers, so after that the hard workers don't work so hard. So you cultivate a nation of losers and slackers, and some of the biggest losers end up leading the nation.

I can see that you have a specific notion of "ethno-nationalism" in you mind and is generally bad.
Let us not extrapolate that to the badness of all affirmative action, which is what Franko has done. There such a thing as helping out groups who need help, educationally, professionally, politically, whatever.
Unfortunately Franko has bought into the Indian myth about Fijian nationalism and would like to take a few undesirable experiences and use it to rubbish anything and everthing that has to do with Fijians. Some people would just like to see some respect for their race and culture. It does not mean they are trying to deny a bone to others.

No one said you had a debt to keep your mouth shut about NZ. That is Franko thinking level of thinking. Every modern governmental system needs criticism in order to survive. From that criticism positive changes can be made. The fact that Franko tries to stifle criticism means quite simply that he is not interested in positive changes and that is to the detriment of Fiji.