Aussies return with more aid
Serafina Silaitoga
Thursday, August 05, 2010

Nabavatu villagers surround Joy Baxter from Geelong Rotary Club in Melbourne, Australia who visited their village
AN Australian charity has come to the aid of a group of villagers, schools and hospital in the North.

The Rotary Club of Geelong from Victoria is known for its annual donations to the villagers of Nabavatu in Dreketi, Macuata, health centre and schools in Dreketi and the Labasa hospital.

Club member Joyce Baxter, who arrived in the country this week, said the Labasa hospital will tomorrow receive seven beds, three of which are electronically operated.

This, Mrs Baxter said would help patients get in and out of bed by pressing buttons to either raise the bed or to put out its arm rest from the side of bed.

Apart from the seven beds, she said wheelchairs, an incubator and other machineries needed at the hospital would be also donated.

"At Nabavatu, we will give a set of computers and sewing machines to Dreketi High School and library books to the primary school," Mrs Baxter said.

"We believe in helping students in whatever way we can and the computers, library books and sewing machines will assist the students academically," she said.

The club will also donate cartons of household items to Nabavatu villagers.

"Every year, we give to these villagers, so this week they will receive clothes, cooking utensils and other household items we have packed," Mrs Baxter said.

"The club also built their pipes and reservoir last year, which has seen every house with a tap and we are glad to be a part of the local community," she said.

Mrs Baxter said items were donated to the club by members and companies back home in Australia.

Homeless John Cote Thursday, August 05,

Kolinio Waqairawai, who has been living on the streets under the Transbay Terminal, talks with the mayor about relocating. Picture: MICHAEL MACOR/The Chronicle
SAN Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom didn't get the warmest reception Friday morning when he approached a homeless encampment under a bus overpass for the soon-to-be-demolished Transbay Terminal.

"Go away, man!" hollered 60-year-old Kolinio Waqairawai as he sat against a concrete pillar, a koala blanket draped over his legs, a pack of Parliament cigarettes on his lap and a 16-ounce Bud Light tall boy near at hand. "You're wasting the state's money."

Within five minutes, Waqairawai was holding Newsom's hand and flashing a smile showing his missing lower tooth as the mayor knelt next to him. After rhapsodising about Marin County Waqairawai said both of his sisters went to Newsom's alma mater, Redwood High School in Larkspur the mayor made his pitch.

"So how do we get you into some housing?" Newsom asked.

It's part of a final push by city officials to find homes for about 30 die-hards who have used the Transbay Terminal and its web of overpasses as a shelter for years, repeatedly resisting the city's stepped-up efforts to get them into transitional housing.

Calling the Transbay Terminal home won't be an option in a week. That's when demolition is scheduled to start on the dank and graffitied bus terminal at First and Mission streets to make way for a gleaming hub for commuter trains, high-speed rail and buses dubbed the "Grand Central Station of the West."

Waqairawai and three others who share a camp under a bus ramp are part of a dwindling group that is resistant to leaving.

Among them is the gray-bearded Cat Man, who mumbles angrily as he strides around the terminal with a huge cat named Chiquita on his shoulder.

He sleeps with the cat in a coffin-size assembly of cardboard boxes just down from Waqairawai's two shopping carts and rebuffs offers of help with "Go away!" On Friday, he kept a few paces away from Newsom while listening as the mayor talked to two fellow homeless people in the camp.

"Don't say no," Newsom told them. "If you start saying yes, everything's possible."

Minutes later, with Newsom standing next to him, Waqairawai agreed, saying: "You are a good mayor."

"I better be. I work for you," Newsom replied.

But whether chronically homeless people will actually move into transitional housing is an open question.

As soon as Newsom and San Francisco Director of Homeless Policy Dariush Kayhan finished chatting with Waqairawai, three city outreach workers approached him to try to formalise an agreement to move him into his own room in a single-resident occupancy hotel, where he will stay for free until permanent housing is found. Sometimes people agree to go and then change their minds, Kayhan said. Other times, hotel rooms aren't available and people are placed in shelters before housing is arranged. The process averages about six months, Newsom said.

"People end up doing six years on the street because they didn't want to do six months in a transition," Newsom said. "That's the most frustrating part."

One woman in a tent a block away, on the stretch of Beale Street known as The Strip because it's lined with camps at night, said she's "had some really bad experiences in shelters."

"San Francisco is full of characters," said the woman, who calls herself Bambi from Baltimore. "Some of them I don't want to run into again."

Ben Avery, who was hanging out at Cat Man's camp eating a sandwich, said he wanted to fend for himself. He didn't have a home, but was staying on a friend's couch and said he made $200 or so a week recycling or selling items like books on eBay.

"I just do my own thing," Avery said.

It can take dozens of discussions with outreach workers before some people agree to accept help, Kayhan said.

Sometimes it takes urging from peers who have made the transition.

Or it can be the jolt of seeing the mayor standing in front you.

Newsom said his influence was fleeting, though.

"You have to bring the case manager out on the street.

"You have to be able to say yes on the spot," he said.

As he stood in the bowels of the terminal, Newsom fretted that if Waqairawai wasn't moved into housing that day, he would change his mind. The low-ceilinged hall echoed as a disheveled man walked by singing: "We're all together again, we're here, we're here."

Then an outreach team member rushed up.

Waqairawai had agreed to take a room.

Then came the surprising part. The Cat Man had, too.

A short time later, the Cat Man was gone from the camp. Waqairawai was finalising the paperwork, asking, "Where do I sign?"

Ratu Tevita Momoedonu appears in court
Publish date/time: 04/08/2010 [17:06]



Vuda High Chief the Taukei Sawaieke of Viseisei Ratu Tevita Momoedonu appeared at the Lautoka Magistrate court in the last hour charged with allegedly making off without payment.

Momoedonu is alleged to have failed to pay a contractor around $10,000 and it is also alleged that the cheque he issued was declined.

He is charged under Section 314 (1B) of the Crime Decree 2009.

No plea was taken today and Momoedonu has been released on bail with strict conditions to re-appear in court on the 15th of next month.


Story by: Tokasa Rainima

| Fiji's dictator intoxicated with power

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Commodore Frank Bainimarama says he was intoxicated when the Australian defense minister called to threaten him.

"We had a heavy grog session the night before, and I was still doped," he explained with a silly grin to a television interviewer. "He told me, 'Don't ever do anything that will pit my troops against yours.' I thought, I'm not the one who's doped" on a kava-root beverage. "It must be this guy."


Bainimarama, the self-appointed prime minister of Fiji, is a South Pacific dictator. But he's not very good at it. The U.S. State Department says it has seen no reports of "unlawful killings," disappearances or political prisoners in Fiji. What kind of dictator is that? And earlier this month, the Bainimarama administration gave out good-governance awards. The top performers: the ministries of information and prisons.

Four years ago, Commodore Bainimarama seized power in a military coup. No blood was shed, but he immediately earned the undying enmity of his largest neighbors, Australia and New Zealand. They imposed sanctions, as did the United States and European Union. They call him the Pariah of the Pacific and repeatedly urge him to hold elections.

But Bainimarama says they don't understand. He is interested in maintaining power only as long as it takes to enact important reforms. In fact, he promised to hold elections again in 2009. But then in April of that year, Fiji's court of appeals ruled that his 2006 coup had been illegal. What choice did the commodore have? He abolished the courts, abrogated the Constitution and removed almost every official appointed under the old, elected government.

"Everything was removed, right?" asked reporter Graham Davis, in a Sky News television interview. No, Bainimarama said with an earnest expression. He was wearing a flowered, short-sleeve shirt. "Let's get that right. Not everything was removed. I was reappointed as prime minister."

With all the foment that came from abolishing the government, the commodore's reform agenda was foundering. He wanted to end crime and racism, improve government efficiency and promote economic growth. So elections had to be postponed until 2014.

The economic part is not going so well. Fiji's vacation resorts are half-empty; tourists are afraid of him. Sugar-export prices are down, and earlier this year the government had to fight a cataclysmic termite infestation. The commodore was forced to devalue the currency by 20 percent. Earlier this month, he asked the International Monetary Fund for a $594 million loan.

Australia and New Zealand are taking every opportunity to rail at him. Just a few days ago, the Australian newspaper quoted an unnamed foreign-affairs official saying: "The people may have no choice but to stand up to Bainimarama and his thugs." The commodore was understandably offended, principally because "some of the foreign countries are turning a blind eye" to "the reforms that the government is carrying out," he complained.

Among them, on June 28 the government implemented the Media-Industry Development Decree - an important part of the government's reform agenda, the secretary of information said. The decree imposes two-year jail terms on reporters and editors who write "irresponsible" stories that undermine government initiatives. It is also forcing sale or closure of the Fiji Times, the nation's oldest and most important newspaper. The new decree says Fijians must own 90 percent of the paper.

Every newsroom now has a government censor. But the prime minister, in that Sky News interview, insisted that reporters still have "the right to say whatever they want - as long as they don't stop us from moving forward."

He moved forward with another reform earlier this month. Everyone in the nation now must register his phone number with the government. Justice Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum explained that some misguided citizens "have threatened the lives of government ministers in an attempt to deter ministers from the execution of their official duties," like warrantless arrests, property seizures, religious persecution and deportations.

Last year, Australia and New Zealand suspended Fiji from the Pacific Island Forum, an important, 16-state organization. So the commodore tried to arrange his own regional summit this month, inviting the few nations that remain friendly. Unfortunately, the prime minister of Vanuatu, Edward Natapei, announced earlier this month that the group would not come to Fiji because of concerns about the "lack of democracy and good governance."

Of course, Bainimarama blamed Australia. He immediately expelled the Australian ambassador and announced that because of "constant interference" by Australia and New Zealand, "I'm all of a sudden thinking that we might not be ready, come 2014, for elections."

© 2010 Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times. To comment, e-mail Brinkley@foreign-matters.com. Contact us via our online form at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/25/IN301EH5DC.DTL#ixzz0v0qtzYTz

BROWN PERSPECTIVE ON FIJI PROVIDES BALANCE BUT SOME MYTHS PERSIST

Voreqe Bainimarama talking to Native Affairs presenter Julian Wilcox. Photo: Māori Television

Pacific Scoop
Opinion – By Thakur Ranjit Singh
HISTORY has shown that countries with a cosmopolitan population but with a dominating mainstream white media tend to create stereotypes portraying ethnic minorities or non-whites negatively.
That is, until ethnic journalists come in to fill the vacuum and portray a more balanced picture.
That in a nutshell depicts coverage – or rather lack of it – of Fiji by the mainstream New Zealand media.
I must commend Māori Television’s Julian Wilcox and Radio New Zealand’s Richard Pamatatau, a Cook Islands Māori Kiwi, for venturing into the lion’s den and getting first hand information and news on Fiji that much of the media in New Zealand has ignored.
David Robie’s Café Pacific and Media 7 have done their share, among others, in bringing these reports to the general public.
The reports of Wilcox and Pamatatau have eroded the myth that Fiji is a militarised zone with soldiers lurking around every corner. They have seen no evidence or feeling of a military presence. Most people appeared to be happy with the way things were and it appears the misconception is created by some Fijians in New Zealand with an agenda against the Fiji government.
While the Media 7 coverage on Fiji did show a side of picture that was welcome, there were, however, some misconceptions that need to be clarified by somebody who knows Fiji.
Regarding comments about poverty and squatter settlements, this problem was there there from the days of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Sitiveni Rabuka and Laisenia Qarase, so it is unjustified for New Zealand media to imply that poverty and squatter settlements crept in after Bainimarama took over government in 2006.
As former Director Administration and Operations of Suva City Council until 2003, I can vouch with first hand knowledge that the squatter settlements we have in and around Suva were there for a long time.
Displaced farmers
However, they have increased due to displaced farmers from expired cane farm leases on indigenous land, the poor state of rural development and failure of agriculture and land use through ineffective regimes which resulted in urban drift of especially rural Fijians to Suva City.
The failure of policies of past democratic governments has been to explain about increasing poverty in Fiji where the poverty of the downtrodden is inversely related to the expanding good fortunes of rich elite Fijians and the Indian business community.
Comments that Pamatatau obtained from some villagers and which interviewer Russell Brown has taken as the “other” side of the story are misleading.
Richard Pamatatau’s interview quoted rural Fijians as follows:
“Everyday you are getting new people coming to sell you food – these people are just trying to make ends meet.”
This statement could have been given by people in Otara, Avondale or other markets in Auckland where they eke out a living by selling food even here in New Zealand. So what is new in Fiji? This is happening even here in New Zealand.
“Before the coup in 2000, everything you buy is good price, but now everything … the price is going up.”
Price doubled
This statement can be given by any Kiwi, even by me. Some two years ago, I could buy my Rivermill whole meal grain bread for 99c. Now it costs $1.90. The rice I was eating has doubled in price, with an increase in price of dairy products and virtually everything else.
Do I blame John Key’s National government for it? Hence, Voreqe Bainimarama is as much responsible for price increases in Fiji as John Key is in New Zealand.
“Now when the country changed… life has [now] become difficult.”
So, what is new about that? Ask Social Development Minister Paula Bennett and she will tell you how difficult things are in New Zealand now. Ask those trying to make ends meet with rising prices and increasing unemployment – so it is not confined to Fiji.
Things have changed globally.
“People are coming here every day at our gate, asking for clothes and food. Everyday. That has never happened in Fiji, how many years back. But it is happening now.”
Like squatter settlements, this has been prevalent in Fiji long before 2006, people have been begging in Fiji for long, just like in New Zealand. Except, the begging in NZ is more sophisticated, you beg through charitable organisations.
Street sleepers
I bump into people sleeping in Queen Street every now and then and see long queues of people seeking food and support at City Mission in Auckland. So Fiji is no exception.
Therefore, Russell Brown of Media 7 really needs to explain what he meant when he said Pamatatau’s interviews told another story. What other story?
What was said in Fiji about a difficult life is also applicable here.
Perhaps one of the biggest disappointments about what has escaped these journalists and those who covered the interviews is about the myth of Fijian democracy. In explaining about his interview in a Fijian village, Richard Pamatatau said:
“I had to speak to the village chief before anybody would speak to me.”
That was the gist of the interview that New Zealand media in general, and Radio New Zealand in particular, have not deciphered or have ignored.
In one of the segments of Māori TV’s Native Affairs interview, Frank Bainimarama said:
“In Fiji you do not come up with your own vote… Your vote is decided by the chiefs, it is dictated by the Great Council of Chiefs, it is dictated by the Provincial Council, it is dictated by the church- so it is not your vote. So, do not tell me it is democracy…” [Bainimarama]
It needed to be clarified that if you cannot have the democratic right of freedom of expression in a Fijian village without the chief’s approval, how can the people be expected to vote freely?
What Bainimarama told Julian Wilcox about lack of democracy in Fiji’s current system was substantiated by the experience of Radio New Zealand’s Richard Pamatatau in a Fijian village.
It’s such a pity this was not fully explained to the New Zealand audience.
Thakur Ranjit Singh is a former publisher of the Fiji Daily Post, a political commentator and a postgraduate student in Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology.