By Dennis Rounds
One thing is certain about living in Fiji’s western and northern farmlands and having to rely on wells and boreholes for water needs.
When there’s a hole in the bucket, Dear Henry now knows all too well how to plug the breach and spare himself Dear Liza’s lecture about using one’s head!!
Drowning in the sweetness of our Sugar City, I sometimes wonder whether Harry Belafonte’s “Hole in the bucket” song should be played on auto-repeat in “new Fiji’s” corridors of power.
There are so many “holes” appearing in Fiji’s “governance bucket” that the leaks are becoming a torrent.
There’s the instance where an angered Attorney General and Minister for Economy recently “plugged a hole” in the Bureau of Statistics.
The country’s chief statistician was given his marching orders because he dared to reveal “flawed” statistics on poverty which showed affected sectors of the population by ethnicity!
Apparently, while the relevant laws relating to statistics gathering don’t ban such information, the Fiji First government, as Mr Sayed-Khaiyum tried to explain, encourages a homogenous nation where all citizens are equal.
In our mutli-racial/ethnic west, we’re starting to wonder whether our “ethnicity” is now a figment of our own imagination.
A “loophole” was also discovered in the electoral process where people (especially married women) were suddenly found to have been voting all these years under names different to that on their birth certificates.
At least one Parliamentarian was forced, a few months back to crawl into a temporary hole of “political obscurity” for using his common name to win a seat in the “august” House. Until he contested the matter in court and was able to rejoin the ranks of Parliament!
This “major flaw in the law” is headed for an overhaul in the not too distant future.
And, as a first step in “patching” that hole, Fijian voters who registered to exercise their democratic rights in Fiji’s first “truly democratic elections” in 2014 will now have to re-register. While there are laws preventing someone being unduly struck off the National Roll of Voters, the Supervisor of Elections has declared that original 2014 Green Voter ID cards have “expired”.
Whether that “technically” prevents them from voting in future elections, despite laying claim to a stake in the Voters Roll, is somewhat of a hole that is becoming so large that people are wondering whether they should save some grief and just crawl into it.
Not too long in the COVID-19 $360 unemployment assistance fervor, a gaping hole was discovered in the distribution system.
A “digital loophole” allowed people in the Northern Division to collect the government assistance when in fact they should have been assisted through the Fiji National Provident Fund.
Just like the seemingly infinite number of potholes, “governance holes” are becoming a “new normal” in our Pacific paradise.
Where one is plugged, two or three more are created elsewhere.
Here in the western division, we’re still wondering about that Minister who promised to “plug the million dollar leak” which sank our municipal swimming pool.
She’s apparently moved on to another ministry where she now plans to address loopholes in the education system.
The pool, meanwhile, remains incomplete and without water.
“With what shall I mend it, dear Minister, with what?
“With band aid, dear westerner, with band aid – that’s what!”
