Jocelynne Scutt an embarrasment

Jocelynne Scutt must resign her Fijian post

Greg Barns | August 22, 2008

JOCELYNNE Scutt's decision to accept a judicial appointment from Fiji's military-backed regime is a national embarrassment and it is time she came home.

Her presence on the Fiji bench is hurting Fiji's democracy lobby and is at odds with this week's strident criticism of the regime by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The refusal of Victorian Legal Services Commissioner Victoria Marles to sanction Ms Scutt over her role in Fiji is, on every level, the wrong call.

By giving the green light to Ms Scutt, Ms Marles is sending a clear message to members of the Australian legal profession that in accepting judicial positions from undemocratic regimes around the world, they will not face sanctions from the regulators.

Ms Marles's attitude appears also to undermine the position taken by Mr Rudd, who said Fiji's military-backed regime was shredding the principles of democracy and South Pacific countries should collectively put pressure on Fiji to restore democracy.

A leading pro-democracy non-government organisation in Fiji, the Pacific Centre for Public Integrity, asked Ms Marles earlier this year to consider whether Ms Scutt's conduct in accepting a judicial post last year from the administration backed by military officer Commodore Frank Bainimarama constituted unprofessional or professional misconduct.

It is a fair question, one would have thought, in the circumstances.

But, as this newspaper reported on August 8, Ms Marles thought the complaint was lacking in substance and that in any event, in her view, Ms Scutt's acceptance of the appointment would not be, of itself, regarded as disgraceful or dishonourable by members of the legal profession.

To understand just how wrong-headed is Ms Marles's conclusion, consider this example. Let us say an Australian lawyer accepted a judicial appointment from President Robert Mugabe's brutal Zimbabwe regime.

There would be a legitimate sense of outrage in the general community that a western lawyer, who is meant to stand for the core values of liberal democracy, such as the rule of law and respect for democratic rights, would take such a position.

We would certainly question the judgment of that lawyer and might reasonably conclude that the person who took the appointment, and thus gave legitimacy to President Mugabe's repressive and undemocratic modus operandi, had acted unprofessionally.

One could imagine the average person in the street would view Ms Scutt's actions in the same poor light as the lawyer who takes a seat on a Zimbabwean court.

We can also compare Ms Scutt's conduct to that of sports stars in relation to South African apartheid.

We stopped sports people from playing against South Africa until almost 20 years ago when that country rid itself of the racist apartheid regime, and if individual sports people or teams disobeyed that ban they were dealt with harshly by the appropriate sporting authority. Cricketers who went to South Africa in the early 1980s were banned from playing test cricket for Australia.

The conduct of sports people who played in South Africa, and thus gave legitimacy to the apartheid system there, was seen to be dishonourable by the majority of Australian sports fans at the time.

Ms Scutt is in no different a position to those sports people.

What is perhaps most disturbing about Ms Marles's refusal to recognise that Ms Scutt's acceptance of the appointment was not misconduct, is that many lawyers are sanctioned by legal regulators for sins of far less gravity.

Lawyers who are rude to clients, provide poor service, or who fail to provide Ms Marles and other regulators with full explanations of their conduct when requested to do so are regularly cited for professional misconduct.

No doubt in some cases it is deserved, but none of these offences could be considered remotely akin to a lawyer accepting a job from an internationally recognised illegitimate regime.

This view is fortified by virtue of the fact that the Chief Justice of Australia, Robert French, in effect the leader of the legal profession in our nation, refused to renew his commission as a judge in Fiji after the 2006 coup.

Justice French rightly observed that accepting a commission as a judge from the military-backed regime came at too high a price.

The attitudes and actions of Ms Marles and Ms Scutt are also undermining the Australian Government's plan to pressure Fiji into restoring democracy.

As demonstrated again at this week's South Pacific Forum on the tiny island nation of Niue, Australia, along with New Zealand, is leading the push to put sustained pressure on Fiji to return to democracy.

The Government's rhetoric and actions in this regard are being undermined by the fact that an Australian citizen holds a senior judicial post in the very regime that we are condemning.

It is time for Ms Scutt to do the right thing by the people of Fiji, by resigning her commission and returning to Australia.

If she does that, she will be helping to restore democracy to Fiji and will enhance her standing in the eyes of her peers and the Australian community.

Symbol of cowardice

The single white feather is a symbol of cowardice.

Our boy Frankie Bainimarama is a disgrace to Fiji. He is a figurehead for immoral, brutish, corrupt and underhand practise and the people that subscribe to this dictatorship.

He has consistently denied and trampled on our rights as citizens and a nation and is denying our voice at the ballot box because he doesn't want to face up to responsibility. He and his team are totally without substance.

Like the thug he is, he has tried to shove the unwanted document (touted to be a substitute for our constitution) written by opportunist-has-beens down our closed gullets, and babbles about the rule of law while he totally disregards it.

To add insult to injury he travels the world in luxury while our hospitals cannot afford fuel and our children suffer because their parents have lost their jobs and cannot afford the basics. His lieutenants call us "nobodies" and "insignificants" and hide their members from justice that have killed our defenseless people - because - they have the guns and pretend they know things we don't.

With the guns they are very brave. Without, they are all cowards.

Let us send members of this regime all a white feather.

Starting with Bhaini and Shamimi at PM's office : PO Box 2353, Govt Bldgs, Suva. Don't forget Aiyass and Christopher Pryde are at Box 2213, Government Buildings, Suva . Nailatikau is at PO Box 2220, Government Buildings, Suva. And not forgetting Ganilau in charge of the biggest bunch of cowards is PO Box 2349, Government Buildings, Suva.

Send a special big tail feather to Commish Teletubby at Fiji Police Force, P.O. Box 239, Manohan Building, Suva.

Bainiramanama awarded Order of the White Feather

Rudd says Fiji's Bainimarama 'chickened out' of forum

By Kerri Ritchie in Niue

Frank Bainimarama decided not to attend the summit. (Reuters: Tim Wimborne)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has accused Fiji's self-declared interim Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, of chickening out of this year's Pacific Islands Forum being held in Niue.

Fiji's military-led Government has broken a promise to hold elections by March next year and Mr Rudd says Commodore Bainimarama made a grave error by not coming to the summit.

Mr Rudd does not believe the Commodore has any support from other Pacific countries attending the summit.

"A person of substance would have presented himself to his fellow leaders among the Pacific Island countries to account for the undertaking he gave to them," Mr Rudd said said.

"What he has done is chicken out of that and I don't think that the leaders across the region will respond to that positively."

Mr Rudd says Pacific leaders must apply pressure on Commodore Bainimarama's regime.

"The challenge for Pacific countries is to have a united front on the question of Fiji and to apply maximum political and diplomatic leverage on Bainimarama's regime," Mr Rudd said.

"I use the word 'regime' because it's not a democratically elected government and we're not accustomed not to have democratically elected governments."

Michael our Archangel of Fiji

I was thinking in the weekend about Michael the Archangel after a prayer meeting with a few hard working Nuns who look after orphaned and abused children here where we live.

How Michael involves himself closely with the Earth and its inhabitants, as do all the God-centred Angels. How he works to bring the cleansing, reforming power of Light and Truth to us earthlings in the hope that when we can see the truth for ourselves, our lives will be enriched with joy, peace, hope, compassion, tolerance, understanding and Love.

Whatever you call angels by any other name, throughout Earths history, Angels have ceaselessly offered their enlightenment to its dwellers.

The tendency of many to ignore, reject or fail to hear this offering only reinforces the darkness surrounding them.

We in Fiji have our own Angel Michael who gives us the wisdom and insight of his years of experience in his endless journey for truth .

This should be compulsory reading for all of Viti, and I would encourage you all to read Michael Field's review of "Ca Charter " Review which he posted on his website in the weekend. http://www.michaelfield.org/draft%20charter%20review%201.htm

Thank you and God Bless you Michael Field.
Loloma levu from Bubu and all Freedom loving Fijians.

Charter Hypocrisy

Thank you FIJI GIRL for this article :

The thing that p***es me off the most about the Charter is the sheer hypocrisy of it. Chodo's Charter (yes, I blame him for it!) positively reeks of double standards.

For instance take this classic misnomer of a sweeping statement:

"Beginning with our colonial legacy of "divide and rule" and the institutionalisation of communal identities, our people have tended to identify more strongly with their religions, ethnicity and by their various communities or provinces than by nationality. Racially divisive leadership has contributed to the situation that we are now a fractured and fragmented society. We have tended to focus on the differences that divide us rather than on our common shared values and interests."

** Right, well. Guess who is THE undisputed KING of racially divisive leadership? At rallies and farmers' meetings where he delivers his most putrid divisive, splittist us-against-them rants, he doesn't even have the decency to say it in English or Fijian. Yes folks, it's all in Hindi.

In an earlier post by Fiji Girl, "Same s**t, different year", the late Sir Len Usher's letters were quoted where the great man himself points the finger at Chodo for exacerbating racial tensions for his own political gain.

Here's a another sasa-broom statement in the Charter

"Our problems today are deep­rooted and complex. We, the people of Fiji, must come together, join hands, and work together, to address all our problems."

** We hate to disappoint the authors of the Charter BUT Our problems are NOT complex.

They are very simple.

We have a legitimate Constitution and Chodo's bastards are raping it, our rights and freedoms, and our children's future. If Chodo's bastards would stop fussing and hold an election, our problems today will vanish into thin are. Nothing complex about it, and its roots only go back to December 2006.

Now how about this one :

"Our common and equal citizenship underlines our desire for more inclusiveness, mutual respect, a common national identity, unity, loyalty, social cohesion, integration, confidence, and belongingness to Fiji."

** Common citizenship and a common national identity does NOT equate with the idiocy of attacking the meaning of 'Fijian' and diluting it to mean any old Tom, Dick or Harriett who is lucky enough to own a skyblue passport.

If Indians want to call their language 'Hindi', that is their problem. It doesn't mean we have to rename our language to 'Vosa Vakaviti'. My German friend is German. I don't call he Deutsch. A Frenchman is French, not francais. God help you if you call a Scot an Englishman to his face. Fijians are Fijians. Rotumans are Rotumans. IndoFijians are whatever they want to be called, as long as it ain't Fijian.

Here's another "utopian gem" :

"Our nation is in urgent need of genuine, trust­ based dialogue and peace building for which qualities of humility, compassion, honesty and openness to other views and interests are essential."

** If Chodo's style of trade unionism is anything to go by , it is the complete antithesis of trust-based dialogue. Honesty and openness don't even enter into the picture. He is an anachronism, a pimple on the bum of the international trade union movement which thrives on good faith, not the pretence of good faith which is Chodo's modus operandi.

"Our nation needs to urgently remove all unjustifiable systems, policies and programmes which are based on racial discrimination or narrow communal considerations."

** We did. It's called The Constitution.

"Our nation must have a freely and fairly elected Parliament that is representative of the people of our country to strengthen and sustain democratic governance."

** We have one. You bastards just won't let them sit down and get on with the jobs we elected them to do. (Although Mick Beddoes is doing a great job nevertheless with his consistent on-the-money comments against NCBBF and the illegal regime. Kudos also to Ro Temeimu Kepa and Mere Samisoni.)

"We strongly endorse that a holistic approach to human security be adopted by our Security Forces as the basis of the democratic state and the institutions for national security."

** We had possibly the greatest Police Commissioner in our nation's history, Andrew Hughes, who you bastards chased away. Lo and behold, crime and drugs are at an all time high.

"We must achieve the efficient and effective as well as sustainable utilisation of the nation's resources for our socio­economic development."

** In the words of the late Ratu Mara – Mahen, you crazy coot, don't even THINK about native land … This charter will fail. Not because the SDL may or may not talk to Methodists about it, but because it is inherently flawed. And because the people of Fiji, God bless us, are not fooled.

God bless Fiji.

Civil Servant and Police Roles Compromised

Our legitimate Opposition Leader Beddoes said today that the use of police during the consultation process of the Draft Charter is part of the ongoing intimidation tactics used since 2006.

Its bad enough that the police cannot satisfactorily perform their task of catching thieves.

“So suddenly the junta can afford to now turn them into delivery boys whose mere presence at a home will intimidate people,” he said.

“Have we forgotten what eight cops did to one escapee recently? And what of their past actions in the deaths of innocent people?”

Mr Beddoes said it was NOT the role of the police to be part of the teams that go around to promote the Charter.

“No, this is not the role of the police and neither is it the role of civil servants,” said Mr Beddoes. “All the people participating in this exercise must be taken to task and charged with breaching their work conditions with the Public Service Commission.

“And what has the PSC to say about this? Nothing I presume, because they too are compromised and are part of the junta and will have to answer for their actions when we finally clean this mess up.”

And of course yes-man PSC chairman Rishi Ram could not be reached for comment , not that anything he said would be believed anyway.
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BTW - a wonderful ray of sunshine today with this news article . Thank you Fiji Water for being a great corporate Fiji Citizen.
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Also from the Fiji Times Editorial 14 Aug, an astute observation of the reckless pressure the junta is placing on our Civil Servants:

Time for neutrality

IT should be a matter of concern that civil servants are being used to propagate the People's Charter on behalf of the interim administration.

While civil servants are employed by the Government, they are bound to have differing views on the way forward for the nation.

Those who do not support the charter are likely to make a half-hearted attempt to disseminate information about the document.

And government workers who support the charter are likely to go out of their way to preach the gospel according to the National Council for Building a Better Fiji.

In both cases, those taking the message to taxpayers will, at times, attack the Constitution to which each of them owes allegiance.

This will be an incongruous position and one which will not be easy to explain to the people of Fiji.

We realise that the interim administration has forced itself into this situation because it has no money.

The easiest option is, of course, to take civil servants out of gainful employment and transfer them to special duties.

In doing this, productivity across all government departments will be greatly reduced for several months.

If civil servants can be spared to preach propaganda to the masses, what useful purpose do they serve in the ministries or departments for which they work?

Successive governments have spoken about the downsizing of the civil service.

Perhaps the exercise will show once and for all how many workers are really needed for the administration of government policies....... it would be worthwhile finding money for a referendum which allows people to say what they feel about the People's Charter.

Unless that happens, any talk about democracy is hollow.

Public Dissent

Every morning my makabuna goes to the shop and gets our matavuvale the daily papers to read. We listen to the radio and watch the news and of late the clamour of Public dissent against the Military junta and the Charter has been deafening. I was glad to see this letter published in the Times this morning which said it for the rest of us.

"The Fiji Police Force spokeswoman has advised the general public to be careful when publicly voicing their opinion on the proposed Peoples' Charter lest they be found accused of making inciting statements, contravening the Public Order Act.

The only inciting statement is by Ema Mua in telling us, the general public, how to make our opinion known on a document that many of us did not even ask for in the first place but which we have had to pay for with our hard-earned taxes.

We are also given slightly veiled threats not to speak against the Peoples' Charter. An example of this is the arrest of Savenaca Komaisavai and Saula Telawa for allegedly making inciting comments on a Fiji One news item about the charter proposal to have a common name.

Yet, the police did not arrest Rajendra Chaudhry for the same offence where he allegedly made comments of an inciting nature on the same television channel albeit on a different program (of which the general public of Fiji has not seen as the alleged interview is allegedly in police custody). Why employ double standards for two separate offences of the same nature?"

Meli Maivusaroko
Lami

Pavlov's bell effect in Fiji

Unbelievable eh? I thought of the famous Russian Ivan P. Pavlov, behaviourist when I read this article .

In a famous study, Pavlov rang a bell each time he gave a dog some food. The dog's mouth would water when the animal smelled the food.

After Pavlov repeated the procedure many times, the dog's saliva began to flow whenever the animal heard the bell, even if no food appeared.

This experiment demonstrated that a reflex (saliva) can become associated with a totally different stimulus other than the one that first produced it (in this case, the sound of a bell instead of the smell of food)

The learning process by which a response becomes associated with a new stimulus is called conditioning. From this experiment behaviourists realized that human behaviour could also be changed by conditioning.

In fact, some believed they could produce almost any response by controlling an individual's environment.

Here in Fiji after the coup, the media started out ringing the bell and predictably Teleni and Bhaini et al would run up panting looking for "incitful" comments. Tring tring tingaling.

Then other people started ringing their bells - saying what they thought - expressing their opinions. Tring tring tingaling ... same same response now to any other opinion other than what the Military stooges think.

John Samy, head scribe of Ca Charter has proclaimed that he is and his committee will be seeking views on Ca Charter.

Really why should we bother since we know they have shown from the beginning that these people don't value our opinions anyway.

Tring tring tingaling... watch what happens .... predictable eh ?

Ca Charta

Thank you Sai Lealea (Letters to the Editor Fiji Times 10th Aug) for so succinctly placing this glaring truth where it belongs - topmost of our consciousness and out in the worldwide arena - such that people all over the world can understand the absolute veracity of our current situation in Fiji, and the inherent problem with this document called "The People's Charter".


For our friends that don't understand the Fijian language, in case you are wondering if there is a typo in the heading of this blog post, the "C" in the Fijian language is pronounced "TH" (as in "the") in English. So the word "CA" is pronounced "THE" but more meaningfully in this case "CA" means BAD.

End of story.

Junta junketing - Wonton Extravagance

Travelling abroad for flimsy reasons should not be entertained.

What do we have our ambassadors and High Commissioners for ?

Like a kid in a candy store going crazy, witness Bhaini going crazy .. jetsetting to Rome, India, , Dubai, Middle East, Singapore, Tonga and now China ... whitwhew .... but at least with kids they outgrow the habit.

Soon we will be no different from those African leaders who are accustomed to expensive lifestyles and travel extravaganzas with the accompanying -to-hell-with-their-people- attitude.

As major economic doom sweeps our nation, we the taxpayers must demand that the junta who have their fingers in our money-pie, exercise extreme sensitivity to the our country's problems as they plan any their foreign trip.

I also do not believe Parmass is telling the truth about the expenses it has cost us so far to have Bhaini and his cronies go cavorting across the world with their hangers-on.

I challenge anyone to tell me that this criticism is not justified.

Is the military junta in Fiji affording themselves lavish lifestyles, or simply making necessary trips in order to encourage investment?

How will Bahini's trip to China possibly bring us any more benefit ? He can't even speak ... let alone speak the language.

Its another junket - plain to see.


If and when trips have to be made, delegations should be kept to the absolute minimum and based on a very clear balance sheet . If the expenditure is higher than the expected outcome, then all these guys should stay at home. Just because a government invites you to an occasion doesn't mean you have to accept it . It merely becomes an excuse.

It is morally wrong for any of these guys to travel with their wives and concubines, bodyguards and scribes in the name of the state, and especially when they have put themselves illegally there by the barrel of the gun with absolutely no mandate from the people.

Real Leaders Do NOT Waste a struggling Nation’s Resources.

Indeed let us be clear here, Bhaini and his regime coup-conspiraters are not our nation's leaders.

In fact in reality they are an armed terrorist group which has used the threat of violence & terror to forcefully gain political power in Fiji .... no different to the HAMAS - in Gaza and West Bank HIZB'ALLAH in Lebanon, and the SUNNIS of the SUNNI TRIANGLE in Iraq to name but a few.