Double celebrations this Christmas
This year, Christmas came with double celebrations for Fiji, particularly so for those who had borne the brunt of the growing arrogance of the former government, which had been in power for 16 years.
Notable among those who will be celebrating are those at the receiving end of the blatant injustices of the previous government, including the citizens and intellectuals who were exiled or otherwise denied their basic rights.
They included the staff of USP, starting from Prof Pal Ahluwalia who was forcefully deported from the country, and will now be able to carry out his VC’s duties freely from the Laucala Campus.
It also includes the thousands of USP employees who have been living in uncertainty and insecurity over the past several years due to the totally unjustified cancelling of the former Fiji government’s funding commitments to the university.
They can now finally heave a collective sigh of relief that their salaries will be assured.
But most notably it includes the case of Dr Padma Lal and the late Prof Brij Lal, two of Fiji’s leading academics and true-born children.
They were expelled from the country for speaking out against the government. Dr Padma was a student colleague of mine at USP during its formative years, and she used to beat the hell out of us in academic performance everytime in all the classes we attended together!
I am truly glad that she will be able to return to Fiji with Brij’s ashes and complete the rites that is required of the Hindu tradition.
A difficult way ahead
We are still in the celebratory mood, and have perhaps not stopped to think of the tasks of rebuilding and progress that lie ahead of us. But when we do, most of us will realise that it will not be easy. For the coalition Government consists of three parties, each with its own priorities and agendas. Several of these will conflict with each other. Whatever we do, it is vital that we do so through open dialogue, rather than unilateral imposition of one’s own preferences. The importance of sharing and caring and co-operation forms an essential part of all Fiji citizens. This is the essence of talanoa among the iTaukei, and shistachar amongst the Hindus – and to the best of my knowledge – taavon in Islam. These modes of decision-making are all based on mutual respect, and will perhaps be the most expeditious way of consensus-building and strategising for the future available to us. So what are some of the tasks that deserve immediate action?
What needs fixing
Three areas that deserve the highest priority are education, trade and industry, and governance.
Education
We need to re-align the education sector with the current human resource requirements of the country. While the training needs of the country has diversified and intensified over the past few decades, the formal infrastructure of the educational system has remained essentially unchanged. To exacerbate the issue, one subsector (the universities) has received much more attention than another (the vocational education and training or TAFE sector). We need to:
• Develop our vocational/TAFE sector to meet our increasing and new demands for the technical workforce. Not all our training demands can be (or should be) provided by universities;
• Develop a wider range of technical training offerings (including new software and hardware skills such as climate change negotiations, project management, and food processing technology);
• Place more emphasis on cutting edge technology demands. The world is undergoing an energy transition from fossil fuel to renewable (clean) energy technologies. Fiji is committed to this transition. We should encourage our universities and TAFE to work with industry in bringing about a seamless energy transition in support of our net-zero commitments; and
• Review the role of the Fiji Higher Education Commission (FHEC). At the moment it is only assessing the formal structure of courses and programs to ascertain that they satisfy the set criteria. We should introduce content assessment in addition to merely judging study programs by their outward appearance for both university and TAFE programs. Judging a book by its cover alone can be very misleading.
Trade and industry
COVID-19 was a rude reminder that Fiji was much too dependent on a single industry (tourism) for its sustenance, but it seems we have learnt nothing from it as we continue to remain focussed on this single sector. We need to:
• Diversify our industrial sector to make it more resilient towards crises such as pandemics, wars and supply line disruptions – depending on tourism alone is not enough;
• Become more self-subsistent in our consumer requirements. The first step is to realise that the consumer requirements of a country can be divided into essential and non-essential, and we need to ascertain that the essential requirements are always met; and
• Utilise our agricultural resources to the fullest. With so much arable land around us, we are still spending $40 million in importing rice (one of our staple foods). We can produce “cash crops” far beyond our own needs, but do not have the technological infrastructure to preserve and make them fit for export. We need to incentivise the development of centres of food processing and technology to convert our perishable “cash crops” into exportable commodities.
Governance
Two hallmarks of a truly democratic country are freedom of speech and the sharing of opportunities based on merit (and not on cronyism, nepotism or other forms of discrimination). The cause of freedom of speech and expression was given a tremendous boost by the new government in its immediate lifting of bans on our exiled citizens. We can become a truly democratic country by ensuring that our freedoms of expression are better enjoyed.
Transparency and non-discrimination in appointments
We must ensure that all appointments are based on merit alone. Despite our Constitution that states to the contrary, many appointments are still being made on the basis of age and sex. All age limits to appointments should be lifted. What is perhaps unknown to many in the country is the large number of appointments made to the boards of directors of government and statutory bodies. More often than not, these seem to be made on an arbitrary basis, and turn out to be “rewards for services rendered” (either in the past or future) rather than on the true ability to serve. All such appointments should be made transparently, with the qualifications of board members available to public scrutiny.
Climate change
Fiji has a leading role within the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) structure in climate change negotiations for the Pacific. The new government must do its best to ensure that we continue to contribute significantly in these negotiations. The new theme of ‘Loss and Damage’ was of special interest at COP27 this year. This refers to the “loss and damage associated with adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events”, and calls for the wealthy nations to compensate the poor countries (the developing country parties such as the Pacific Island Countries) for losses incurred to them by climate change impacts. This compensation is to be paid by the developed country parties to the developing country parties. At COP27, the parties agreed to set up a transitional committee to make relevant recommendations for adoption at COP28 in November 2023. Climate change negotiations are now being carried out by the Climate Change and International Cooperation Division (CCICD) of the Ministry of Economy, which has been doing a sterling job at strategising and developing policies related to climate change. This activity must be given continued support by the new government, and should be given a greater role in the Department of Environment.
• ANIRUDH SINGH is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern Queensland and former Associate Professor in Physics at USP. He has taught at universities and TAFEs for more than thirty years. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of this newspaper or the institutions that the author is associated with.
