Our eroded political leaders

The military emasculation of the SDL/FLP Multi-Party Government, and more particularly, the SDL leadership is all too obvious.

When the 2006 coup took place, all the SDL and FLP Ministers, except for Qarase and Kinivuwai, disappeared over the horizon.

The Fijian political intelligentsia retreated into their “culture of silence” or “culture of acquiescence”, joining the winning military “band-wagon”. Some retaliated by secretly blogging away.

The Fiji Labour Party leaders readily joined the Military Government, throwing aside decades of moral and lawful opposition to military coups and undemocratic governments. So also did the National Alliance Party.

With serious questions being raised about millions of dollars given by India for dispossessed Fiji cane farmers ending up in Chudhry’s Australian accounts, what kind of leadership can the FLP provide to the Indo-Fijians.

Intellectually weakened by the massive emigration of professional and skilled persons, the Indo-Fijian political and social elite who remain, blindly “follow the leader” or are totally indifferent.

Witness the abject silence and disinterest of the majority of young educated Indo-Fijians in national events, immersed as they are in Bollywood, and pre-occupation to emigrate from Fiji.

The irony is that when these apathetic Indo-Fijians emigrate, they will have lost 20 percent of all their life savings in Fiji, because of the 20% devaluation, with more losses to come in the future.