There are many issues by which the voters of Fiji will be judging the different political parties at the forthcoming 2022 General Election, mostly local issues such as growth of the economy, creation of jobs, increasing incomes, reducing poverty, managing public debt, improving the education system, improving the health system, and protecting the environment.
I suggest that all political parties should also be judged by a most important regional issue which also delivers quality tertiary education to Fiji students and others: that of managing the regional University of the South Pacific. At stake are the following:
• the very viability of this quality premier institution in the Pacific
• the quality of tertiary education provided to the students from Fiji and the other Pacific partners in the region, and the potential bonds that are created between them
• the ability to retain quality academic staff
• the grand spirit of co-operation between all the Pacific countries and the goodwill it generates in the region, exemplified by this unique model of ownership and management
• the confidence it gives major donors like Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan and many others that this institution will not squander the hundreds of millions in aid money that has been invested over the last 55 years, and will continue to be invested and used efficiently into the future
• alongside all the other regional (“CROP”) organisations like Forum Secretariat, Pacific Community and many others, all contributing to sound socioeconomic development of the Pacific peoples
• under solid governance standards of respect for democracy, rule of law, accountability, and transparency. These grand objectives are all under threat if the next government after the 2022 election does not value what I have listed above.
Bainimarama’s claims
The Fiji Prime Minister is supposed to have said at the Ra Provincial Council meeting recently that “God guided him during his term in office” and that Fiji is “the most powerful voice in the Pacific”.
But did God guide his Government, which refuses to meet its financial obligations to USP, to rob the smaller Pacific countries who are regularly paying their dues ? And what kind of voice has it been, as seen by the smaller countries in the Pacific?
Both these questions and many others can be answered by examining the Fiji Government’s treatment of USP, of USP Council, its staff, its students, and the whole culture of what constitutes a “good university”.
Brutal treatment of USP
The Fiji Times readers will recollect my article (“A USP Council solution to the non-payment of Fiji’s USP Dues” The Fiji Times, July 23, 2022).
There I wrote: “At the recent Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Suva, all the regional leaders expressed concern about the “USP grant issue” that has arisen because the Fiji Government has unilaterally decided not to pay its bill to USP for the last three years, unless USP Council investigates allegations of mismanagement by its vice-chancellor Ahluwalia.
“Effectively, Fiji is taking its ‘USP loaf of bread’ from the USP bakery but is refusing to pay the USP bakery its full bill.
In the meantime, all the other smaller eleven USP member countries are dutifully paying their bills to USP.
“This is surely outrageous and would never be allowed in the real world. In a pure market situation, if anyone wants to consume a loaf of bread (i.e. get your students taught), you should pay for it before you take the bread (graduates) from the shop.”
Six months on, nothing has changed other than that the amount owed by the Fiji Government and Fiji taxpayers has increased to more than $90 million. In the meantime, Fiji students have kept attending USP courses and Fiji citizens have kept graduating.
The Fiji taxpayers have been collecting their “educated loaves of bread” from the USP bakery, without paying for them.
They have been robbing USP of the value of all these students being taught and graduated.
Of course, what this also means is two-fold: that the burden of financing USP effectively falls on the smaller Pacific countries who pay their dues, a totally unfair burden; and secondly, the quality of a small university like USP is further threatened by the reduction of funding.
Fiji’s poorer Pacific partners
Fiji’s voters must try to understand that the Fiji Government’s partners at USP are mostly much poorer than Fiji is, as set out in the graph on this page.
Fiji’s GDP per capita is twice that of Vanuatu, three times that of the Solomon Islands and four times that of Kiribati.
If Fiji does not pay its fair share of the cost of running USP, the financial burdens fall on the other regional partners who contribute to USP, especially countries such as the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
For the Fiji Government, a relatively rich country, to transfer its burden to the poorer partners in the Pacific is transferring the financial burden from the rich to the poor. How utterly shameful.
No God of any religion would ever guide any Prime Minister of Fiji to unilaterally follow a dastardly financial policy that would achieve this.
No honest taxpayer of Fiji and voter in the coming election, would want to support a political party and Prime Minister that attacks the integrity of USP like this.
Small university quality challenge
In Australia and New Zealand the smaller universities with enrolments of around 50,000 struggle to maintain quality in all disciplines.
When USP was established in 1968, there were many education experts who were sceptical that it would be possible to have a quality institution given the small enrolments in the early seventies.
Nevertheless, leaders such as Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and AD Patel were brave enough to adopt a regional university model with several Pacific countries pooling their financial and student resources to create a regionally owned and managed university.
Against all the odds, USP thrived for the first 40 years with many regional bonds established. I remember with fondness staff from Tonga (Dr Sitiveni Halapua who taught me the delights of making a Tongan lovo) and most of the Pacific countries.
Most people in the region are now used to the establishment of new universities – some really small. Fiji has seen Fiji National University and University of Fiji.
There is a new and struggling Solomon Islands National University and also the National University of Samoa.
So the average intelligent person has no idea how difficult it is to create a quality university of small enrolments in the tens of thousands, especially in areas such as science.
Even at the best of times there is always a downward pressure on quality of graduates because
• our Pacific universities are not able to hire the best academic staff because of low salary scales
• they are unable to enrol the best local students who go overseas because of scholarships or their own funding
• tertiary education has been extended to far mor of the secondary school outputs than in earlier years when only the best enrolled at university.
I can assure the public that even at USP between the 1970s (when I taught the likes of Dr Ganesh Chand, Professor Biman Prasad and Aisake Eke (from Tonga) and 2011 when I left USP, academic standards had dropped by one year, with third year students in 2011 unable to write the quality papers that my second year 1970s students could write.
I would warrant a guess that smaller universities such as FNU and UniFiji are also struggling for quality because the better students go to USP (after the first tier have gone overseas).
Most universities inevitably follow policies that graduate the majority of their students even if their final quality is less than what is desired.
Employers in the region will vouch that they are deeply unhappy about the quality of the graduates they are hiring.
2006 attack on USP quality
Sadly, the 2006 coup set in motion negative forces culminating eventually in a university management which kowtowed to the coup leaders, squashed academic freedoms and fostered financial favourites.
When the new vice-chancellor Ahluwalia exposed the questionable financial behaviours, he (and his wife) were expelled from Fiji but reappointed by USP Council in Samoa.
That led to the punitive measure by Minister of Economy Aiyaz Sayed- Khaiyum to withhold its agreed funding liability to USP, now approaching $90 million.
Without that funding, the quality of USP must inevitably go down. The eventual outcome will be that USP will need to set commercial fees which replace the amounts that the Fiji Government has withheld.
Most Fiji students will feel the impact of these higher fees and many will have to attend other lower quality universities.
It is shocking that the Bainimarama Government is showing such contempt for its regional partners who for decades have followed the funding arrangements agreed to by all.
There is also a struggle to maintain the quality of USP as a university that encourages creative critical thinking (see my John Masefield poem at the end of this article) while the 2006 coup did the opposite.
There have been more than enough articles written about the Bainimarama Government’s censorship of USP:
• academics not allowed to give public lectures on World Press Freedom Day;
• professors forced to resign;
• lecturers sent packing because of their critical lectures;
• USP students not allowed to have demonstrations to express support for West Papuan independence and against Indonesian persecution of West Papuan leaders and people;
• a good vice-chancellor (Professor Pal Ahluwalia) and his wife brutally deported in the middle of the night for all the wrong reasons.
Given that all this is obvious to Fiji’s regional partners and indeed the donors to USP, how outrageous of Prime Minister Bainimarama to claim that Fiji is the most powerful “voice in the Pacific”.
Surely, this is not the kind of “voice” that Fiji’s voters would want to be associated with: the robbery of other Pacific partners through refusal to pay its bill; the brutal treatment of the USP vice-chancellor and other academic staff; the stifling of academic freedom; and the censorship of students’ voices.
What Fiji voters can do
In my previous article I had written “ it is a disappointment In the meantime, Fiji students have kept attending USP courses and Fiji citizens have kept graduating. The Fiji taxpayers have been collecting their “educated loaves of bread” from the USP bakery, without paying for them.
They have been robbing USP of the value of all these students being taught and graduated. – Prof Wadan Narsey to me personally that there are Fiji Government representatives on USP Council (including a former economics student of mine and a former CEO of Consumer Council of Fiji) who have not publicly resigned from the USP Council over their Government’s withholding of lawful dues they owe USP for services received.
“It is thoroughly disappointing that there are former senior USP staff and former USP graduates (again also a former student of mine) in the FijiFirst Cabinet who have not been able to stop the Fiji Government from its unfair decision, and I doubt if they have even tried.”
If they agree with the sentiments in this article, Fiji voters in a month’s time can strike a blow for USP by voting for parties who have promised to pay the Fiji Government’s and taxpayers dues to USP, who stand for rule of law, freedom of media and expression, who stand for meaningful respect for all the regional partners and smaller Pacific countries. The voters will get a university they deserve.
I remind today’s readers of The Fiji Times of the wonderful poem by British Poet Laureate John Masefield, composed in 1946 for the University of Sheffield which is in the box on this page. Something to think about at the polling booth!
A university splendid, beautiful and enduring [By John Masefield, poet laureate, at the installation of the Chancellor of the University of Sheffield] [25 June 1946]
“…There are few earthly things more splendid than a university. In these days of broken frontiers and collapsing values, when the dams are down and the floods are making misery, when every ancient foothold has become something of a quagmire, wherever a university stands, it stands and shines; wherever it exists, the free minds of men, urged on to full and fair enquiry, may still bring wisdom into human affairs. There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university. It is a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see; where seekers and learners alike, banded together in the search for knowledge, will honour thought in all its finer ways, will welcome thinkers in distress or in exile, will uphold ever the dignity of thought and learning and will exact standards in these things. They give to the young in their impressionable years, the bond of a lofty purpose shared, of a great corporate life whose links will not be loosed until they die. They give young people that close companionship for which youth longs, and that chance of the endless discussion of the themes which are endless, without which youth would seem a waste of time. There are few things more enduring than a university. Religions may split into sect or heresy; dynasties may perish or be supplanted, but for century after century the university will continue, and the stream of life will pass through it, and the thinker and the seeker will be bound together in the undying cause of bringing thought into the world. To be a member of one of these great societies must ever be a glad distinction…
• Prof WADAN NARSEY is an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and a former Professor of Economics at the University of the South Pacific where he worked for more than 40 years. The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of this newspaper.
