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LoginFiji’s ‘painful process’ could lead to better democracy, says blogger academic
Professor Crosbie Walsh ... critic of Fiji's previous "corrupt" democracy. Photo: PMC
Pacific Scoop
Report – By Alex Perrottet
A former University of the South Pacific professor says Fiji could not achieve a full democracy without going through its current post-coup “painful process” under a military-backed regime.
Speaking on Radio New Zealand’s Bryan Crump Nights programme last night, Professor Crosbie Walsh said:
“There is no way you are going to produce anything approaching what you might call a democracy unless you went through the painful process that we are going through at the moment.”
Walsh, a controversial blogger over his opinions on the regime and for his criticism of Australian and New Zealand government policy, also branded the ousted former democratic government of Laisenia Qarase as “corrupt to the eyeballs”.
However, Nik Naidu, a spokesperson for the Auckland-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji, argued that the current regime was intolerable:
“They are appointed by the gun, they have no mandate. There is no acceptance internally in Fiji and externally among the international community,” he said.
The most heated discussion on the panel regarded the media censorship decree which took force last week.
Radio NZ Pacific affairs correspondent Richard Pamatatau argued that a free media was essential in moving the country forward.
‘Scared to talk’
In his own experience of reporting from Fiji, he observed that “some people were very scared to talk to me… they didn’t want their names revealed”.
Peni Moore, from Women’s Action for Change who was last week named as a member of the new Fiji Media Development Authority, said people were suspicious because what they had said in the past had been often misreported.
She blamed the Fiji Times for a culture of racist reporting since the 1987 coups.
Pamatatau defended the Fiji Times, saying the newspaper “produces sound reporting, it has all the sides of the story”.
The panel’s discussion on the media highlighted the conflicting cultural values of sacrosanct freedom of the press in Western countries, and the Fiji emphasis on “responsible reporting”.
“I am not happy about cutting down the dialogue, but I don’t think we can be measuring everything in New Zealand terms,” Walsh said.
Alex Perrottet is a postgraduate student at AUT University reporting for Pacific Media Watch.
Listen to the Radio New Zealand National panel here.
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Croz is using the old “gotta break eggs to make an omelette” argument.
But in Fiji, we aren’t seeing the emergence of any omelette – all we see is a mess of broken eggs.
And they have been lying around the place going nowhere and not getting cleaned-up for so long, they are starting to stink up the place.
@ Jean’s comments on eggs.
One could say the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq about the issue of fast-tracked democracy and “government in the box” where Australia and New Zealand have troops involved in active operations.
If their senior alliance member (U.S) was documented by Wikileaks in conducting war crimes; what are the odds that Australia and New Zealand had soldiers involved, who colluded, conspired, executed similar war crimes; or by being simply a witness to these events and did not take action or raise objections to such barbaric and inhumane acts.
Personally I thought the interview was lively and explored much of the subjects ( in a balanced way-more or less), which many Trans-Tasman media outlets does not wish to explore in much depth, covering the nuances in the complex political terrain.
As well, trying to sum up Fiji’s political history and socio-political environment in a Twitter post- tweet (140 characters or less),
As for the Fiji Times ownership question-I would like to quote H. L. Mencken: “Freedom of the Media, is limited to those who own one”.
As for investigative reporting, what exactly is the official Australian/ New Zealand media’s position on Wikileaks and I would like to pose a question of why Australia and New Zealand will inevitably will have reign in Julian Assange (Wikileaks editor) and have Assange arrested, if he ever steps on to the tarmac of any airport in their control.
So much for the free media (albeit corporate owned).
@ LF’s comments about Iraq and Afghanistan.
The similarity is that Iraq was a very costly mistake based on intelligence failures and subsequent flawed propaganda pretexting for war.
The difference is that the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan still pose a clear and present terror threat to the West – hence the real need to try to do something about them.
There is no demonstrable or evident terror threat to anyone from the alleged “racism and corruption” problems that Frank and Croz cite as the reason for their Fiji coup. Never was, and still isn’t!
There is however, a very real cost to their imposed “final solution” to these phantom conundrums. So far the Fiji economy is estimate to have lost over F$3 Billion and counting due to the 2006 coup and aftermath.
So the situation in Iraq/Afghanistan, is that some (painful and slow) progress is being made based on realistic plans constructed in a credible process against a very real threat.
Fiji’s situation is that no real progress is being made, due to bizarre plans arrived at under completely illegitimate process, and which largely address problems that are either non-existent, non-essential, or yesterday’s news.