Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian

A place to share my thoughts and reflections

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  • From Relocation to Right: A Human Rights-Based Housing Model for Fiji’s Villages

    The Nabavatu Relocation Project in Dreketi, Macuata, is a rare beacon. Thirty-seven climate-resilient homes rise where landslides once buried hope. Women bless rooftops with traditional ritual—unity, protection, gratitude.

    But across Fiji, families have spent years in crowded makeshift shelters, waiting for a sense of normalcy. As Environment Minister Lynda Tabuya admits: “Absolutely too long. I feel for the families.”

    Yet feeling is not policy.

    The hard truth is that rural housing—especially for iTaukei families on customary land—has never been a priority for this or any previous government. A family cannot mortgage their yavu. They cannot walk into a bank and offer their ancestral village plot as collateral because an iTaukei village plot, is inalienable. So they are left to their own devices: hammering rusted iron sheets over river stones, praying the next cyclone doesn’t tear their children from their arms. You drive past any Fijian village and you’ll know what I mean.

    This is not benign neglect. It is a dereliction of the state’s duty of care to the first people of this nation—compounded by the obscenity of pumping millions into a sugar industry on intensive care, while housing languishes.

    Yet Nabavatu shows a way forward—if we refine it with three missing elements: housing as a human right, a solution to the yavu mortgage trap, and a re-prioritisation of state funding away from dying commodities and toward living families.

    Pillar One: Housing as a Right, Not Charity

    The government must declare—through parliamentary resolution or presidential decree—that adequate, climate-resilient housing is a justiciable human right for every iTaukei family on customary land. This carries legal weight: families could petition the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission when the state fails to act. The right includes safe sanitation, cyclone resilience, and security of tenure—not ownership of the yavu, but a heritable, non-transferable right to occupy and improve a specific house site. Once a right is established, delay becomes a violation.

    Pillar Two: Solving the Yavu Mortgage Trap

    Because customary land cannot be mortgaged, successive governments have washed their hands of responsibility. A solution exists: a Village Housing Guarantee Fund; capitalised by the state and administered by the iTaukei Affairs Board, under the Bose Levu Vakaturaga. A family applies for a zero-interest, 20-year loan secured not against the land but against the house structure itself and a communal guarantee from the mataqali. Default triggers not eviction but a work-back arrangement with the village—traditional solesolevaki repurposed as a credit mechanism. This unlocks capital for renovation while respecting the inalienability of yavu.

    Pillar Three: Redirect the Sugar ICU Millions

    Millions continue to be pumped into a sugar industry already on life support—legacy infrastructure, bailouts for a sector that employs fewer families each year—while climate-displaced villages wait half a decade for a single house. We demand an immediate, transparent audit: redirect 30% of the annual sugar subsidy (approximately $30–40 million FJD) into the Village Housing Guarantee Fund. Let the sugar industry restructure or fade, but let housing rise.

    Pillar Four: A National Baseline from Nabavatu to Every Koro

    The state must establish a minimum housing standard: cyclone-rated roofing strapped to reinforced foundations, elevated sleeping platforms in flood zones, screened windows, safe sanitation, and a designated cyclone shelter room per house. This baseline is minimal and affordable. The state provides core materials free to the poorest 40% of villages, with sliding-scale contributions in labor or local timber for others.

    Pillar Five: Renovation Literacy—Reclaiming Indigenous Knowledge

    Every household undergoing an upgrade must complete a three-day Renovation Literacy Course, co-taught by vanua mataisau (master carpenters) and a government technical officer. Topics include cyclone strap installation, traditional timber preservation, rainwater tank maintenance, and—critically—understanding their rights under the new housing guarantee. Graduates receive a tool kit and certificate. Over a decade, thousands of village-based renovators emerge, rebuilding indigenous expertise.

    Pillar Six: Cleanliness as Daily Sovereignty

    A resilient house is a clean house. The standard is simple: swept floors, rubbish composted or removed, clear drainage, a clean compound and village. But enforcement is communal, not punitive. Village health committees—women-led, as in Nabavatu—organise monthly cleanups followed by a shared meal. The cleanest mataqali receives a small prize: seedlings, fishing nets, a solar light. Cleanliness becomes an expression of vanua pride.

    Pillar Seven: Local Characteristics—A Provincial Compass

    Nabavatu is in Macuata, but Ra, Lau, Nadroga, and Kadavu are not Macuata. Each province must produce its own Vanua Building Code Addendum, approved nationally but written locally. Macuata houses may use woven voivoi interior walls; Lau houses require elevated coral pillars and thatch over waterproof membrane; Ra houses need stilt foundations with volcanic stone walls. No more imported concrete-block monocultures. This decentralisation answers Minister Tabuya’s own call: “National climate planning cannot happen without the lives of our citizens.”

    From Five-Year Wait to Five-Year Plan

    The current excuse—“complex international funding processes taking months”—is a scandal. We cannot depend exclusively on slow, conditional climate finance. A parallel domestic stream must be created via the redirected sugar subsidy, a small vanua levy on tourism (1% of resort bed nights), and a “Climate Resilience Bond” sold to the Fijian diaspora. Target: 5,000 upgraded houses per year nationally. In-place upgrading is always the first option using the Village Housing Guarantee Fund. Relocation occurs only when a yavu is physically uninhabitable—and then only with full mataqali consent and a ritual land-clearing ceremony at the new site.

    Shame into Action

    The government should be ashamed. Ashamed that families wait half a decade. Ashamed that a family cannot improve their own yavu because no bank will lend against ancestral land—and the state offers nothing instead. Ashamed that millions prop up a dying sugar industry while a mother in Dreketi patches a leaking roof with plastic rice sacks.

    But shame without change is just performance.

    The Nabavatu project shows what is possible when the state actually builds. Now refine it: declare housing a right, create the yavu guarantee fund, cut the sugar ICU millions, and let every village rise to a standard that is safe, clean, and unmistakably Fijian.

    The women of Nabavatu blessed their new roofs with gratitude. Let us make that blessing national—and let no family ever again be left to their own devices.

  • Between Two Giants: Can the Pasifika Still Navigate Her Own Course?

    Between Two Giants: Can the Pasifika Still Navigate Her Own Course?

    The news from Vanuatu lands like a stone dropped into still water. Prime Minister Jotham Napat announces that his cabinet has approved a strategic cooperation pact with China—while simultaneously confirming that Vanuatu is “ready” to sign a stripped-back Nakamal Agreement with Australia. In the same breath, he accuses both Beijing and Canberra of “undermining” his country as they jostle for supremacy.

    This is not diplomacy as we once understood it. This is the sound of a small nation trying to keep its balance while two titans wrestle on its deck.

    For those of us watching from Fiji and across the Pasifika, the question is no longer whether geopolitical rivalries will reach our shores. They are already here. The question is whether we will meet them as scattered islands—or as a united ocean.

    What Does This Mean for Pasifika Solidarity?

    Let me be blunt: Pasifika solidarity is under greater strain today than at any point since decolonisation. Not because we have stopped caring for one another, but because the incentives for going it alone have never been stronger.

    When China offers a bilateral deal—infrastructure, financing, a seat at a very different table—it does not come with a requirement to consult your neighbours. When Australia offers security cooperation and police training, it speaks directly to a single capital city’s fears. Both powers understand a basic truth: it is easier to negotiate with one small country than with a regional bloc.

    The result is what we are seeing in Vanuatu. A subterranean arm wrestle, as a recent ABC report called it. Neither great power wants to be seen as heavy-handed. But both are placing their chips on individual nations, not on the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as a collective voice.

    This does not mean Pasifika solidarity is dead. It means it is being tested—and so far, we are failing the test. We speak of a “Blue Pacific Continent” in grand declarations, but when the moment comes to coordinate our responses to external security pacts, we act as separate jurisdictions. Vanuatu makes its own calculus. Solomon Islands makes another. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga—each calibrates its own balance.

    That is not solidarity. That is fragmentation dressed in polite regional language.

    Are We Being Quietly Isolated and Targeted Individually?

    Yes. And the word “quietly” is doing important work here.

    No foreign power will announce that it intends to divide the Pasifika. That would be counterproductive and diplomatically ruinous. But the effect of bilateral competition is precisely that: division by seduction.

    China does not need to weaken the PIF. It simply offers deals so attractive that small nations feel they cannot afford to wait for a regional consensus. Australia, in response, deepens its own bilateral security architecture—the Pasifika Policing Initiative, the Step Up, the new defense cooperation agreements. Neither is overtly hostile to regionalism. But neither makes regionalism their priority.

    The danger is not that we will be conquered. The danger is that we will be managed—treated as a collection of strategic real estate rather than as a civilisation of peoples with our own aspirations.

    Look at the language. “Infrastructure and capacity building,” says China’s embassy. “Security and resilience,” says Canberra. Both are true. Both are also covers for strategic positioning. And the small nation caught in the middle—Vanuatu, in this case—ends up doing something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago: signing two competing pacts with two competing powers, while publicly accusing both of undermining it.

    That is not sovereignty. That is survival swimming.

    Is Our Own Nationalism Preventing Us from Uniting Under a Common Front?

    This is the hardest question, because nationalism in the Pasifika is not a dirty word. We fought for our independence. We built identities out of colonial borders that were never ours to begin with. Our national pride is real and earned.

    But that same nationalism—when it becomes narrow, when it prioritises the immediate deal over the long-term regional interest—becomes a trap.

    Consider: What would a united Pasifika front look like in the face of great power competition? It might look like a collective moratorium on bilateral security pacts without regional consultation. It might look like a shared negotiating position on infrastructure financing, so that China and Australia and the United States bid against each other for regional projects, not for individual allegiances. It might look like a PIF that has real enforcement power over its members’ foreign engagements.

    We have none of that. Instead, we have what one diplomat once called “the tyranny of smallness”—the belief that each of us is too small to act alone, and therefore each of us must cut the best bilateral deal we can, and to hell with the neighbourhood.

    That is not nationalism in service of our people. That is nationalism as self-cancellation. It leaves every one of us weaker, because Beijing and Canberra know that they can play Port Moresby against Suva against Port Vila against Honiara.

    Are We Selling Ourselves Short for the Now, the Next Election Cycle, for Intergenerational Prosperity?

    Now we arrive at the deepest wound.

    I wrote earlier this week, about China’s thirty-year plan for renewable energy, about the US’s inability to think beyond the next election—is not just a story about superpowers. It is a mirror held up to our own politics.

    How many of our national energy strategies extend beyond the next budget cycle? How many of our foreign policy choices are driven by the need for a headline rather than a generation? When a prime minister signs a strategic pact with China, is that a carefully considered step in a fifty-year vision—or is it a response to a domestic political problem that will be forgotten in eighteen months?

    I do not ask this to single out Vanuatu. Every Pasifika nation, Fiji included, has made short-term calculations that mortgaged long-term autonomy.

    The tragedy is that the great powers do think long-term. China’s engagement in the Pasifika did not begin yesterday. It began with fishing agreements, with small infrastructure loans, with diplomatic courting that seemed harmless a decade ago. Now those relationships have matured into security pacts and strategic partnerships. Australia, belatedly waking up, is scrambling to play catch-up with its own long-term Pasifika strategy.

    Meanwhile, we in the Pasifika are still debating the next election.

    Intergenerational prosperity is not a slogan. It is the sum of every decision we make today about who we ally with, what infrastructure we build, what energy systems we rely on, and whether we sell access to our waters, our ports, our data cables, and our loyalties for short-term gain.

    The Chinese have a saying: “If you do not plan for a hundred years, you cannot plan for even one.” We are not planning for ten.

    What Does This Mean for National Aspirations and Our Common Pasifika Bond?

    A national aspiration is not just about sovereignty in the abstract. It is about the concrete ability of a people to determine their own future—to feed their children, to educate them, to keep them safe, and to pass on an inheritance larger than the one received.

    Our common Pasifika bond—the thing that makes us more than a scattering of islands—is the understanding that no one of us is safe until all of us are. A climate disaster does not respect borders. A debt crisis in one capital affects lenders’ willingness to lend to all. A security pact that gives one nation’s ports to a foreign navy changes the strategic calculus for every neighbour.

    That bond is being tested not by external enemies, but by our own failure to invest in it.

    Vanuatu’s double-pact strategy is understandable. When two giants are arm-wrestling on your table, you try not to get crushed. But understandable is not the same as sustainable. The long arc of history suggests that small nations caught between great powers eventually have to choose—and that the act of choosing fractures them internally and regionally.

    And Then Some: A Way Forward

    I do not want to end on despair. There is a way forward, but it requires three things we have so far lacked.

    First, a regional foreign policy framework with teeth. The PIF must evolve from a talking shop into a coordinating body where members agree—voluntarily but credibly—to consult before signing major security or strategic pacts with external powers. This is not about blocking any nation’s sovereignty. It is about recognising that a pact with China in Port Vila affects Suva, Nuku‘alofa, and Apia. That recognition must be institutionalised.

    Second, a long-term economic vision that reduces our vulnerability. We chase great power deals because we lack capital, infrastructure, and resilience. China and Australia offer what we need. But we will always be supplicants until we build regional pools of investment—a Pasifika Development Bank with real resources, regional energy grids, shared undersea cables, and collective bargaining for everything from vaccine procurement to aviation fuel.

    Third, a renewal of the Pasifika conversation at the grassroots. Our leaders sign pacts in capital cities. But our people—in villages, in outer islands, in the diaspora—must debate what kind of future we want. Do we want to be the playground of great powers? Or do we want to be the navigators of our own destiny, as our ancestors were when they crossed this ocean without GPS or foreign aid?

    Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Napat says both Beijing and Canberra are “undermining” his country. He may be right. But the deeper undermining—the one we do to ourselves—is the belief that we cannot unite, that our nationalism must be narrow, that the next election matters more than the next generation.

    Conclusion: Who Shall Be Captain?

    Vanuatu is determined to be its own captain. I respect that. Every Pasifika nation should be its own captain.

    But being a captain does not mean ignoring the other vessels in the fleet. It does not mean sailing into a storm alone because a foreign power promised safe passage. It means knowing that in the vast Pasifika, no boat survives long without its neighbours.

    The question before us is not whether we will engage with China or Australia or the United States. We will, and we should. The question is whether we will do so as Pasifika—with a common front, a common voice, and a common commitment to the generations who will inherit the choices we make today.

    If we cannot answer that question together, then the giants will answer it for us. And we will not like their answer.

  • The Vision We Cannot Afford to Lose: Lessons from China’s Long Game

    When I was younger and read in the Fiji Times of the USSR’s “five-year plans,” it conjured images of failures—bureaucratic rigidity, empty shelves, and a system that ultimately crumbled under its own weight. China has rewritten that script. What the Soviets got wrong—inflexible ideology, isolation from markets, and a disregard for efficiency—China has reimagined as something entirely different: strategic patience married to ruthless pragmatism.

    China began investing in renewable energy in the early 1990s. They invited Western firms in, learned the technology, adapted it, and then dominated it. Twenty years ago, when the West congratulated itself on offshoring “dirty manufacturing,” China was quietly building the infrastructure that would make it the undisputed king of solar, wind, batteries and EVs.

    China today, generates more clean energy than fossil fuels. It has added more power capacity in five years than the US has in its entire history. And it is on track to have half its energy from renewables.

    This was not luck. This was a state that understood something the West has forgotten: energy security is the foundation of every other form of power.

    What This Means for Fiji

    We sit in the blue Pasifika, surrounded by renewable energy potential. The sun beats down on our islands with reliable intensity. The waves and currents never stop.

    And yet, our debates are stuck.

    We argue about possible waste-to-energy projects. We treat fossil fuel imports as a necessary evil while watching our foreign reserves drain precariously to pay for diesel shipped from halfway across the world.

    Are we disadvantaging ourselves?

    For the Pasifika, the answer is yes. We lack resources, and we lack strategic vision.

    The American Warning: Policy Whiplash and Short-Term Thinking

    The US is the richest country in the world. It has Silicon Valley, the world’s deepest capital markets, and a culture of innovation that has produced more technological breakthroughs than anywhere else.

    And yet, the US is floundering on energy. The Biden administration’s serious attempt to reboot American clean energy, has seen 95% of its incentives rolled back. Utilities cannot meet demand. Electricity prices are spiking. And the country is pulling back from a sector China increasingly dominates.

    Why? Because American energy policy changes with every election. A five-year plan in the US is a political fantasy. What China built over thirty years, the US cannot sustain for thirty months without partisan warfare.

    Here is the hard truth for the Pasifika: we do not have the luxury of partisan debate that fails to address our core energy dilemma. We are small. We are vulnerable to global shocks. Every barrel of oil we import, is a bet against our own future. Every year we delay a coherent alternative energy strategy is a year lost to high fossil fuel costs.

    What we can learn is the discipline of long-term thinking.

    China’s bet on clean energy was not just about the environment. It was a real economic play. And it is now realising the benefits of that bet.

    For Fiji, we can command our own destiny. Every megawatt of solar we install, every microgrid we build on a remote island, is not just a climate victory—it is a sovereignty victory. It is foreign exchange not sent to fossil fuel exporters. It is resilience against global price spikes. It is electricity that cannot be cut off by a cyclone taking out a shipping lane.

    The real debate is whether there is political will to commit to a twenty-year alternative energy transition and actually stick to it. Not through one government. Not through two. But through a national consensus that transcends election cycles.

    The Trust Deficit We Must Close

    We have a trust deficit—between government and communities, between environmental advocates and economic development proponents, between those who want to move fast and those who fear being left behind.

    We will not close that deficit with more debates about waste-to-energy alone. We will close it by articulating a vision that is honest about trade-offs, ambitious in its goals, and patient in its timeline.

    China showed that five-year plans work when they are built on strategic vision and executed with consistency. The US shows what happens when policy lurches from one administration to the next. The choice is ours.

    We in Fiji have something China and the US do not: an identity rooted in the ocean and a deep understanding that the long game is the only game that matters on a small island.

    The question is whether we have the vision to rise above our partisan debates. Whether we can think strategically about energy alternatives. Whether we can say to our children that we saw the opportunity and took it—not because it was easy, but because it was necessary.

    The sun is rising on a new energy era. Let us not waste the light.

  • The Student and the Master: Asymmetric Negotiation in the Iran Playbook

    There is a quiet irony unfolding in the back channels of West Asian diplomacy. As the Trump administration attempts to reassert maximum pressure on Iran, a different dynamic has taken root. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Iranians understand Donald Trump far more deeply than he, or his hand-picked emissaries, understand them. With the likes of son-in-law Jared Kushner and billionaire friend Steve Witkoff serving as his primary interlocutors, the Islamic Republic has found itself across the table from diplomatic Lilliputians. And for seasoned State Department veterans watching from the sidelines, the spectacle is one part amusement, two parts quiet horror.

    But the miscalculation runs deeper than personnel. America’s attempts to outsource pressure have backfired in ways that only further reveal Tehran’s strategic patience. First, Washington tried using Oman as a negotiating proxy—a quiet, trusted intermediary long accustomed to shuttling between the Islamic Republic and the West. Omani mediators, discreet and effective, had managed to build enough trust to keep channels open. Then came February 28. In the midst of active Omani-mediated discussions, the United States launched an attack without any prior consultation with Muscat. The Omanis were not merely blindsided; they were insultingly barbecued. A proxy’s only currency is credibility, and Washington spent it carelessly. That channel is now dead, another casualty of transactional impulsiveness.

    The Americans then turned to Pakistan. The logic is understandable on paper: Pakistan has its own complex relationship with Iran, shares a border, and possesses the one thing that commands respect in the region—an Islamic nuclear arsenal. But Pakistan is no compliant proxy. Islamabad dances to no American tune, least of all when it involves mediating with a neighbor that also happens to be a Shia-majority state facing Sunni-majority Pakistan’s strategic calculations. The Pakistanis are nuclear-armed, proudly independent, and deeply skeptical of being used as Washington’s errand boy—a skepticism forged since the USSR waged war in Afghanistan. More importantly, Pakistan understands what Iran already knows: in the current administration, there is an audience of one.

    That audience is POTUS. Not Senator Lindsey Graham, whose boorish, hawkish chants echo into an empty chamber. Not Kushner or Witkoff, whose real estate playbooks have no chapter on nuclear thresholds. Not J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, however loudly they posture in press interviews. When Pakistan’s interlocutors sit down—whether with Iranians or with American intermediaries—they know that the only number worth dialing is POTUS’s. Every other voice in Washington is background noise. That knowledge alone, fundamentally warps negotiations: it means Pakistan will act not as a faithful agent but as a free agent, advancing its own interests, withholding its cooperation when it sees fit, and never forgetting that it holds nuclear cards of its own.

    The contrast with Iran is stark. Iran’s negotiators do not need to guess who is in charge; they have internalized that POTUS prizes deals over doctrine, loyalty over expertise, and spectacle over substance. They watched Oman get burned and learned the lesson: American intermediaries are expendable. They now see Pakistan entering the fray not as an honest broker but as another variable to be managed. And they understand that whether the messenger is Muscat, Islamabad, or Witkoff himself, the real conversation is not about enrichment thresholds or sanctions relief. It is about whether Trump can be made to believe he is winning.

    This is the heart of the asymmetry. The Iranians have spent decades learning to read American domestic politics, presidential psychology, and the gap between threat and action. Trump’s envoys, by contrast, are still learning that a handshake in West Asia, does not survive a tweet from Mar-a-Lago. The State Department career corps watches with a mixture of amusement and disdain: amusement at the spectacle of real estate developers and compliant proxies being cycled through like failed properties, disdain because the stakes are a nuclear programme, not a condominium.

    In the end, Iran knows how to deal with POTUS because they have made him the centre of gravity. He has not returned the favor. Until Washington understands that no proxy—whether a low-key Oman or a prickly nuclear-armed Pakistan—can substitute for disciplined, professional diplomacy, the pattern will repeat. Oman learned this the hard way on February 28. Pakistan, ever the survivor, will likely do the same. And the Iranians will continue to watch, wait, and quietly advance, knowing that the audience of one is the easiest stage to manipulate. After all, they have the time while the administration has the watch. And it is ticking towards the US midterm elections.

  • The Hard Reality We Can No Longer Ignore

    My friend Charlie Charters has meticulously catalogued the sudden proliferation of waste-to-energy companies across our social media feeds and newspapers in Fiji. His observation on the TNG project has become a hot-button issue, but the forces driving it—our deepening energy crisis and our chronic failure to manage waste—are not going away.

    Let us be clear about what his catalogue actually demonstrates. When three separate foreign entities materialise; each offering capital-intensive technological solutions to a problem Fiji has ignored for decades, that is not merely evidence of opportunism. It is evidence of a vacuum. It is evidence that our inability to govern basic municipal functions—waste collection, landfill management, environmental protection—has become so glaring that it now invites outside intervention. The alternative is not a clean, controversy-free, locally funded solution. The alternative is what we have right now: creeks and drains choked with plastic, dumps on fire, and a national grid teetering and being put under pressure like never before.

    The Energy Crisis Is Here, Not Coming

    The never-ending war in the Persian Gulf continues with no end in sight. Even if it miraculously ended tomorrow, our energy crisis would persist into next year and beyond, because the underlying problem is structural, not episodic. We rely on imported fossil fuel. We have no clear alternative. And our government’s response—appreciating a modest fuel reprieve from Australia while otherwise projecting a lackadaisical approach—is concerning, to say the least.

    I wrote at the start of the current Gulf war that any government with vision should be planning for a worst-case scenario. Where are those plans? Where is the load shedding schedule, the four-day work week strategy, the vehicle reduction measures, the mandatory energy conservation for government entities? The National Security Council should be convening energy executives and major users, not just politicians who view these matters through a lens disconnected from ordinary Fijians. The fact that I see none of this planning suggests a government either unwilling or unable to grasp the severity of what is coming.

    What Alternatives Does Fiji Actually Have?

    This brings us back to the waste-to-energy question. Beyond hydro, what does Fiji offer? What alternatives exist? Who will help us fund them when we all know that any serious transition will cost millions—if not billions—of dollars we do not have?

    The answer is uncomfortable but necessary: any alternative cleaner energy source will invite controversy. That is the nature of the beast. Waste-to-energy draws fierce opposition. Solar farms demand vast land and capital. Wind power struggles with reliability and maintenance. Geothermal remains untested at scale in Fiji. We can and should demand guardrails. But to oppose every available option while refusing to acknowledge the scale and cost of alternatives is to remain blind to an undeniable trajectory: fossil fuel use is trending downwards, and the never-ending Gulf war, is only accelerating the global search for what comes next.

    We are not Australia. We are a small Pasifika nation, disproportionately reliant on imported energy, with a fragile economy, a growing population, and a waste crisis that we have proven incapable of solving through conventional means. And right now, we are actively battling over one of the few alternatives being offered, while other separate companies circle in the background sensing opportunity.

    A Toxic Mix That Demands Action

    On top of our drug epidemic, HIV crisis, and NCD burden, an energy crisis creates a toxic mixture that in my view, now calls for urgent action. I repeat what I have said before: government needs to bite the bullet and declare a state of emergency sooner rather than later. Not as a press release, but as a framework for action—load shedding, reduced working weeks, vehicle restrictions, mandatory conservation, and above all, a serious, transparent, and expedited process for evaluating and implementing alternative energy solutions.

    Charlie’s observation about the sudden appearance of alternative companies confirms what many of us already sense: the vacuum is real, the crisis is accelerating, and the private sector—foreign and domestic—is moving faster than our government. Whether any of these specific proposals survive scrutiny is a separate question. But the underlying point remains. We cannot afford to reject every alternative because of controversy, because the alternative to controversy right now is continued reliance on fossil fuel, continued vulnerability to global shocks, higher import costs and inflation, and continued degradation of our environment and our economy.

    The guardrails must be strong. But the door must be open. Because closed doors lead only to one place: the dark.

  • TLTB Statement:

    CLARIFICATION ON LAND OWNERSHIP AND MINERAL RIGHTS IN FIJI

    TLTB notes that many views and comments have been shared on social media platforms regarding land and land ownership in Fiji. TLTB intends to demystify land ownership in Fiji to clear up misconceptions, particularly regarding the rights of iTaukei landowners.

    The starting point of the discussion must be on the different land tenure types in Fiji, of which there are three: iTaukei land, Freehold land and State land

    iTAUKEI LAND

    The iTaukei Lands Act 1905 defines “iTaukei land” as land which is neither State Land nor subject of a State grant nor iTaukei grant, but includes:

    (a) All vacant land, including such land declared as vacant land under section 19 of the iTaukei Lands Act 1905

    (b) All land set aside by proclamation under section 18 of the iTaukei Land Trust Act 1940

    (c) All extinct mataqali land vested in the Board under section 19 of the iTaukei Land Trust Act 1940

    iTaukei Land is owned by the respective iTaukei owners and administered by TLTB for the benefit of the iTaukei owners under the iTaukei Land Trust Act 1940. About 91% of Fiji’s landmass is iTaukei land.

    FREEHOLD LAND

    Freehold lands in Fiji are Crown grants and represent absolute ownership of land in perpetuity (estate in fee simple). Lands which were sold prior to Fiji’s cession to Great Britain in 1874 required validation by the Lands Claims Commission in 1876. All validated sales were issued with a Crown Grant. A total of 1582 Crown Grants covering an area of 152,815 hectares thus became “freehold land”. Some Grown Grants have since been purchased or acquired by the State. These lands are now known as “State Freehold Lands”.

    About 6% of Fiji’s landmass is freehold land.

    STATE LAND

    Under section 2 of the State Lands Act 1945 “State lands” means all public lands in Fiji including foreshores and the soil under the waters of Fiji (including all inland waters such as

    rivers and streams) which are for the time being subject to the control of the state and all lands which have been or may be hereafter acquired by or on behalf of the State for any public purpose.

    State land is owned by the State, administered by the Department of Lands, and leased/licensed under the State Lands Act.

    Myth: land below “three feet or six feet underground” is owned by the State

    Fact: if land is iTaukei land or freehold land, the respective iTaukei owners and registered owners of freehold land have full ownership rights, including to land more than six feet below the ground.

    There are no provisions in law that differentiate between ownership of land above or below six feet from the surface of the land.

    The misconception likely arises from applying mineral ownership to land ownership in Fiji.

    Under the 2013 Constitution and the Mining Act, the State owns all minerals in Fiji – regardless of whether they are found on iTaukei land or freehold land. Minerals include all precious metals and precious stones. Also, under the Petroleum (Exploration and Exploitation) Act 1978, all petroleum is owned by the State.

    What this basically means is that, while ownership of minerals and petroleum is reserved to the State, the owners of iTaukei or freehold lands have full rights to their lands regardless of depth.

    Currently, under the Fair Share of Mineral Royalties Act 2018, landowners receive 80% of mineral royalties, with the State retaining 20%. However, this percentage applies to the royalty that is paid to the State under the Mining Regulations 1966. The rates currently prescribed under the regulations are as follows:

    1. For bauxite or iron ore – at the rate of 3% of their value

    2. For any other mineral – at the rate of 5% of their value.

    This means that landowners will only get 80% of the 5% royalty paid to the State, for example, on the value of gold extracted. TLTB is of the view that royalty currently paid to the respective owners is neither a “fair share” nor does it represent an equitable return of their land.

    TLTB SUBMISSION ON LEGISLATIVE REVIEWS

    The TLTB has made submissions to the Fiji Law Reform Commission on the review of the State Lands Act and Mining Act for:

    1. An amendment to the definition of “State lands” to exclude foreshore, and soil under inland waters, so that full ownership rights are reverted to the respective iTaukei owners

    2. An amendment to the Mining Act for full ownership of minerals to be returned to the respective iTaukei land and qoliqoli owners

    TLTB is also making submissions to the Constitution Review Commission on the review of the 2013 Constitution on the matters above.

    TLTB MANAGEMENT

    Decolonising the Land: A Response to TLTB’s Clarification above:

    The TLTB management deserves a measure of commendation. Earlier today, it issued a public clarification on land ownership and mineral rights—an unusual step for an institution that has historically preferred opacity. The statement correctly dismantles the myth that the State owns land below six feet. It correctly notes that iTaukei and freehold landowners own their land to any depth. And it correctly observes that the so‑called “Fair Share” of mineral royalties is neither fair nor a share: 80 percent of a 5 percent royalty on gold value is; in plain arithmetic, 4 percent of the value. The TLTB even admits this is inadequate.

    That admission is rare. It should not go unremarked.

    But let us not mistake a single candid paragraph for a conversion. The TLTB statement, read in full, reveals an institution that still resides in the past—still pleading with the State for amendments, still accepting the premise that colonial laws are the only framework available, still issuing press releases in English to landowners who speak iTaukei. If TLTB truly intended to “demystify” land ownership, it would have issued the statement ena vosa vakaviti as well. The language of the iTaukei landowner is not legalese. It is not the dialect of Suva boardrooms. It is the voice of the koro, the mataqali, the Vanua. That the TLTB chose English alone tells you whose comfort it prioritises.

    The clarification that clarifies nothing new

    TLTB has told us what the law says. But the law itself is the problem. The iTaukei Lands Act of 1905. The Native Land Trust Act of 1940 (now the iTaukei Land Trust Act). The State Lands Act of 1945. These are colonial statutes, written by British administrators to serve a colonial economy—to make native land available for European plantations, to control the movement of labour, to keep the indigenous population contained and compliant. TLTB is a creature of that era. Its very structure—a board appointed by the minister, a CEO who answers to the board, a welfare fund that deducts money from landowners without their consent—is a colonial trust model, designed to manage natives, not to empower them.

    The TLTB’s statement acknowledges that the current mineral royalty regime is unfair. Then it says: “TLTB has made submissions to the Fiji Law Reform Commission… for amendments.” Submissions. Amendments. This is the language of petitioners, not of trustees. Imagine a freehold landowner discovering gold on their property. Would they write a submission asking the government to please allow them to keep their own minerals? Of course not. They would assert ownership. They would go to court. They would demand. The TLTB, by contrast, asks permission from the very State that wrote the laws, that dispossess iTaukei of their subsoil wealth.

    Decolonisation is not amendment

    TLTB is trapped in a reformist mindset. It believes that tweaking a percentage here, redefining “State lands” there, will eventually deliver justice. That is a delusion. Colonial laws do not become just through amendment; they become just through abolition. The 2013 Constitution itself declares that all minerals belong to the State. That is not a minor clause. That is a fundamental expropriation of iTaukei property. The TLTB’s response is to ask for a review. But the Bose Levu Vakaturaga—the true shareholder of iTaukei land—should not be asking. It should be demanding. It should be preparing legislation that vests full mineral ownership in the landowners; with the State as a licensing partner, not the owner.

    The same applies to foreshores and the soil under inland waters. TLTB says it has asked for an amendment to exclude these from “State lands.” Why ask? Why not assert? Because the TLTB does not see itself as the agent of iTaukei sovereignty. It sees itself as an administrator of a colonial estate. That is the institutional mindset that must die.

    The language of the Vanua

    I return to the language of the statement. The TLTB issued it in English—fluent, legalistic, correct. But the iTaukei landowner, the mataqali member in a remote village, does not read English legal prose. They listen to radio. They hear announcements in the vernacular. If the TLTB genuinely wanted to “demystify” and “clear up misconceptions,” it would have issued the statement in iTaukei on the same day. It would have sent divisional estate officers to explain the difference between land ownership and mineral rights in valevakoros/village halls, not in a press release aimed at Suva journalists.

    The failure to do so is not an oversight. It is a reflex. The TLTB still communicates upward—to the government, to the media—rather than downward to the 400,000 landowners it claims to serve. That is the habit of a colonial trust, not of an indigenous empowerment body.

    What real decolonisation looks like

    Genuine decolonisation of iTaukei land administration requires three acts, none of which the TLTB has proposed:

    First, the repeal of all colonial land statutes—the iTaukei Lands Act, the iTaukei Land Trust Act, the State Lands Act, and the Mining Act—and their replacement with a single, iTaukei‑drafted, constitutionally entrenched Land Sovereignty Act that vests full ownership (including minerals, foreshores, and water columns) in the landowning units, with the State exercising only regulatory powers for safety and environment.

    Second, the transformation of the TLTB itself: not through amendments to its board composition, but through a new institution—call it the Fijian Land Trust Council or whatever the Vanua through the BLV decides—that operates under a hard cap of 10 percent administration, with the President as its Chair, with no sitting minister on the board, and with a statutory obligation to issue all public communications in both English and iTaukei.

    Third, the immediate, unconditional public audit of the $26.1 million welfare fund, with the results published in the vernacular, and every cent of unaccounted money returned to the landowners with interest.

    The TLTB’s statement does not mention any of this. Instead, it asks for amendments. It asks for reviews. It speaks of “submissions.” That is the posture of a supplicant, not a sovereign.

    Conclusion: praise where due, but not silence

    Let me be clear: I commend the TLTB management for acknowledging that the current mineral royalty is not a “fair share.” I commend them for correcting the six‑feet myth. But commendation is not endorsement. A broken clock is right twice a day. The TLTB can issue a correct statement and still be the wrong institution for the job.

    The iTaukei have waited eighty‑five years for TLTB to serve them. It has not. It issues statements in English, asks for amendments, and calls that progress. It is not progress. It is the sound of an old machine trying to sound new.

    The time has come to decolonise not just the laws, but the institution itself. No more pelicans. No more ministers as chair. No more English‑only statements to landowners who speak iTaukei. And no more asking permission for what is already ours.

    The Vanua is watching. The land remembers. And we have waited long enough.

    It is time to wake up.

  • Digital Sovereignty in the Age of AI: Why the Pasifika Must Send Its Best to Both Superpowers

    A quiet scandal sits inside Fiji’s immigration system. Every passport application, every visa, every piece of sensitive biometric data from Fijian citizens is collected through Jotforms—an American‑owned platform run by a Turkish national, hosted on foreign servers beyond our legal reach. Worse, just months ago, the system failed to open because it had “run out of paid or free quota.” A national border function, reduced to a cloud subscription.

    This is not sovereignty. This is digital negligence.

    Yet when someone points out that China’s open‑source AI revolution offers an alternative path—that models like DeepSeek are now neck‑and‑neck with America’s best, and freely available for any nation to download, inspect, and run locally—the response is sometimes dismissive: “Another DeepSeek preacher.”

    That dismissal misses the point entirely. Observing a strategic shift in global technology is not preaching. It is prudence. The real question is not whether to trust China or the United States. It is how a small Pasifika nation navigates between two superpowers without becoming a vassal of either.

    The Jotforms Lesson: Dependency Is Dangerous

    Our current reliance on Jotforms is a perfect example of what happens when no one is paying attention. We handed our citizens’ most sensitive data to a closed‑source, foreign‑controlled platform with no transparency, no local audit, and no fallback when the quota ran out. Where are our local IT geniuses? They are here—graduating from USP, from FNU, from our technical colleges. But they have never been given a strategic mission or the political backing to build national systems from scratch.

    The answer, however, is not to replace American dependency with Chinese dependency. That would be the same mistake, just a different flag. A Chinese cloud platform holding our passport data is no more sovereign than an American one.

    Non‑Alignment in the Age of AI

    For decades, Pasifika nations have practised geopolitical non‑alignment—engaging with Washington, Beijing, Canberra, and Tokyo on our own terms, refusing to be pawns in anyone’s cold war. We need the same doctrine for artificial intelligence.

    China’s open‑source AI models are a powerful tool precisely because they are open. We can download DeepSeek, run it on our own servers, modify it for our languages and needs, and never send a single citizen’s data across an undersea cable. That is fundamentally different from closed‑source American platforms like Jotforms, OpenAI, or Google Cloud, where the code is secret and the data leaves our jurisdiction.

    But the United States still leads in foundational research, chip design, and private investment. American universities like MIT—where young Penioni Narube from Cuvu Village is heading—remain world leaders. To ignore American AI would be as foolish as ignoring Chinese AI.

    A responsible Pasifika government sends its best to both.

    Three Concrete Steps

    1. Audit and reclaim. Conduct an immediate audit of every foreign digital service holding citizen data—Jotforms included. Migrate critical systems to open‑source, locally‑hosted alternatives using code from any nation, but always under our own physical and legal control.
    2. Send our best to both. Establish scholarships and exchange programs with both MIT and Tsinghua University, Stanford and Zhejiang University. Let our brightest software engineers learn AI from every major power, then return to build regional capacity.
    3. Declare digital non‑alignment. Adopt a formal policy that no exclusive cloud or AI agreement will be signed with any single country. Build interoperability, redundancy, and choice into every government system. Small nations survive by keeping options open.

    The Cost of Doing Nothing

    If we continue on our current path, we will wake up in five years to find our government data scattered across half a dozen foreign cloud platforms, our citizens’ faces and fingerprints held in servers we cannot inspect, and our AI future dictated by whichever superpower offers the cheapest subscription.

    That is not sovereignty. That is a quiet surrender.

    The open‑source AI revolution—accelerated by China’s DeepSeek—is not a reason to abandon caution. It is a reason to act. The tools are free. The talent is here. The only missing ingredient is the courage to take a shot, just as a young man from Cuvu did.

    Let us honour his journey by building a Pasifika that no longer needs to send its data abroad. Let us send our best to both superpowers—and then bring them home to build for ourselves.

  • The Tensions We Feel: When Realpolitik Meets the iTaukei Question

    We are living through an age of calculation.

    In one corner of the world, the US President sits across from his Chinese counterpart. For the last thirty-six hours, they were discussing trade, tariffs, and Taiwan. Yet humming beneath every exchange—the elephant that fills the room without ever being named—is West Asia’s bleeding. No one expects morality to interrupt power. No one is surprised.

    In another corner, Australia’s Foreign Minister landed in Fiji, cheque in hand, an energy reprieve as the offering. The message is not subtle: We are still the premier power in the Pasifika. Meanwhile, Fiji’s Prime Minister meets Papua New Guinea’s leadership at the inaugural Melanesian Ocean Summit in Port Moresby. The other elephant—the plight of West Papua, its people gasping under Indonesian watch—fades further into silence. Not because it has been forgotten, but because Indonesia is watching. Realpolitik does not forget; it simply prioritises.

    And then there is Fiji itself.

    The Constitutional Reform Commission now travels to the maritime islands, gathering voices. What emerges from those consultations is not merely a debate about legal clauses or individual rights. It is a raw confrontation between two competing logics: the logic of realpolitik and the logic of what we might call idealpolitik.

    The urban elite—educated, connected, comfortable—argue for individual rights as the centrepiece of any new constitution. They speak the language of Western liberal democracy: equality before the law, the erasure of ethnic distinctions, the triumph of the citizen over the communal self. They point to the 2013 Constitution, which made “Fijian” a term for all citizens, and they call it progress.

    But among the majority iTaukei—especially those outside the urban centres—this is not progress. It is erasure.

    For the iTaukei, the term “Fijian” was, is, and will always belong to the first people of this land. The 2013 Constitution did not unify; it dispossessed—of land and of identity. The Bose Levu Vakaturaga (BLV) was removed, not reformed. A cultural and political architecture that had stood for generations, was simply erased. In its place came a single, flattening word: Fijian for everyone.

    The iTaukei response, framed in the language of realpolitik, is brutally simple: Power asymmetry must be addressed first.

    Why? Because the numbers tell a story our urban elite would rather not read. The iTaukei make up 75 percent of Fiji’s poverty population. Village housing—the foundation of iTaukei communal life—has been left to rot by successive governments, tourist-board images of smiling, happy villagers, notwithstanding. Native lands are leased out under Unimproved Capital Value (UCV) arrangements that ensure landowners receive a pittance in lease payments, while tenants build mansions on these same UCV’d lands. Freehold landowners, meanwhile, face no such shackles; only iTaukei landowners who lease their lands are bound this way. Add to this the cascading crises of drugs, HIV, and non-communicable diseases—all disproportionately affecting iTaukei communities—and the picture becomes impossible to ignore.

    The idealpolitik response is to say: These are class issues, not ethnic ones. A bill of individual rights will lift everyone.

    But the iTaukei no longer believe this. Their scepticism is not irrational. It is the hard-won wisdom of people who have been “used and abused”—who have seen their identity reduced to a tourism slogan, their institutions dismantled in the name of unity, their material conditions ignored while others prospered.

    In realpolitik terms, the iTaukei are now playing the only game that makes sense: they are naming their national interest. And they are saying, bluntly, that Fiji cannot become one nation until the foundational asymmetry between its indigenous people and everyone else is resolved. Not papered over. Not celebrated in cultural performances. Resolved.

    The urban elite call this divisive. The iTaukei call it honest.

    Consider the parallel with geopolitics. The United States does not raise West Papua with Indonesia because the relationship matters more than the principle. Australia does not mention it because its strategic calculus in the Pasifika runs through Jakarta. And Fiji and PNG, sitting together in Port Moresby, say nothing because to speak is to risk.

    That is realpolitik: what works, not what is right.

    The iTaukei are now asking whether Fiji’s urban elite are any different. Are they not, too, practising a form of realpolitik—one that preserves a constitution they benefit from, that protects individual rights precisely because those rights do not threaten their own power? Calling it “idealism” does not make it so. Idealism that refuses to see material suffering, is merely privilege dressed up as principle.

    The question facing Fiji is not whether to choose between power and principle. The question is: whose power, and whose principle?

    For the iTaukei, the way forward is clear. Restore the BLV to its rightful place. Recognise that “Fijian” belongs to the first people. Address land leases so that native owners are not perpetual tenants in their own domain, receiving only a pittance. And do all of this not as a gift, but as a precondition for any genuine national stability.

    Without this, the idealpolitik of individual rights will ring hollow. A constitution that makes everyone legally equal while iTaukei villages decay, iTaukei bodies suffer from preventable disease, and iTaukei children grow up in poverty—that is not unity. That is a formula for slow-burning resentment.

    The world watches as superpowers choose pragmatism over justice in West Papua. Fiji has the chance to choose differently—not by abandoning pragmatism, but by recognising that true pragmatism begins at home, with the people who have been waiting the longest.

    The tensions we feel are not abstract. They are the tensions between those who have been heard and those who have not; between those who benefit from the way things are and those who can no longer afford to wait.

    Who are we? We are a nation standing at the edge of a choice: continue the realpolitik of silence, or embrace a different kind of realism—one that understands that a nation which ignores the cry of its first people will never, in the end, be stable.

    The elephant in Fiji’s room has a name. It is time to speak it.

  • Beyond the Fear of the Word: Why Indo-Fijians Need to Understand iTaukei Communalism

    In Fiji, the word “communalism” has become a ghost at the feast. It is invoked with a shudder—usually by urban, educated, multiracial progressives, who see it as the opposite of national unity. For many Indo-Fijians, communalism evokes the coups of 1987, the 1990 constitution’s guaranteed parliamentary majority for indigenous Fijians, and the lingering suspicion that in any crisis, blood will speak louder than citizenship.

    But here is a difficult truth: communalism is not going away. And more importantly, for the iTaukei, it is not merely a political preference. It is a philosophy of survival, identity, and dignity. To demand that iTaukei abandon their communal framework is, in effect, to demand that they cease being iTaukei. That is neither realistic nor just.

    The question, then, is not whether communalism should exist. The question is whether Indo-Fijians can learn to read it correctly—not as a threat, but as a different grammar of belonging. And whether, in that reading, a new kind of national conversation becomes possible.

    A Lesson from Philadelphia: Anger Is Not the Enemy of Understanding

    In March 2008, at the height of a presidential campaign that had already broken racial barriers, Barack Obama stood before a nation deeply divided over the inflammatory sermons of his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama could have condemned Wright and moved on. Instead, he did something rare. He acknowledged the roots of Wright’s anger—the generations of racism, segregation, and neglect that had shaped black churches. Then he also acknowledged the resentment of working-class white Americans who felt they had watched their jobs and communities disappear.

    He said: “The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

    Fiji can learn from this. Indo-Fijian anger about coups and the fear of being permanent outsiders—that anger is real. iTaukei anger about land alienation, cultural erosion, and the feeling of being strangers in their own ancestral home—that anger is also real. Neither can be wished away by a constitution or a national slogan. The first step toward a more perfect union is not to suppress communal anger, but to listen to what it is actually protecting.

    What Communalism Actually Means in iTaukei Life

    Let us strip away the political caricature. For an iTaukei villager in Ra or Cakaudrove, communalism is not a doctrine imposed by a nationalist politician. It is the daily reality of veilomani (mutual care), solesolevaki (shared labor), and veivuke (assistance). It is the mataqali (land-owning unit) holding together families who have tilled the same soil for generations. It is the yavusa deciding together whether to lease grazing land to a sugar farmer or to reforest a watershed.

    When iTaukei speak anxiously about “land” or “custom” or taukei (owners of the land), they are not speaking about property deeds in the Western sense. They are speaking about Vanua—a word that means land, but also people, also custom, also the spiritual presence of ancestors. To be iTaukei is to be in relationship with the Vanua. That relationship is inherently communal. No iTaukei stands alone before the state. They stand within a web of obligations and inheritances.

    What iTaukei communalism seeks is recognition—that their ancestral way of organizing society has a legitimate place alongside the individualist, contract-based, market-driven logic that arrived with colonialism and sugar, and is now embedded in the imposed 2013 constitution.

    Why Indo-Fijians Often Misread Communalism as Exclusion

    The misunderstanding is understandable. Indo-Fijian history in this country is a story of individual and family survival. Arriving as girmitiyas between 1879 and 1920, Indo-Fijians had their communal bonds systematically broken by the colonial plantation system. They rebuilt them—through panchayats, through mandalis, through temples and sangams—but those bonds were always voluntary associations, not ancestral birthrights.

    Indo-Fijians feel they do not belong but have overhwelming economic power. Are they willing to share these in a genuine manner that embraces being Fijian, in the iTaukei sense? iTaukei have seen their land and culture stripped away. Neither grievance cancels the other. As Obama put it: “We can condemn a statement without condemning the person. We can acknowledge the pain of a community without endorsing every word spoken in that pain.” Indo-Fijians can reject ethno-nationalist politics while still understanding the pain behind iTaukei communalism. iTaukei can reject the bitterness of some Indo-Fijian leaders while still understanding the trauma of girmit and its aftermath.

    What Thoughtful Understanding Looks Like

    To “understand” iTaukei communalism does not mean agreeing with every iTaukei political demand. It does not mean accepting racial discrimination or supporting the abolition of the common roll. It means three things.

    First, understanding that iTaukei communalism is primarily defensive, not aggressive. The fear that drives most iTaukei anxiety is that globalization, land sales, tourism development and climate displacement will erode the Vanua until nothing is left. When an iTaukei elder insists on communal land tenure, they are trying to prevent a future where their grandchildren sell the last piece of ancestral soil for a resort and a second-hand SUV. Indo-Fijians, who have no ancestral land base of their own, can afford to see land as a commodity. iTaukei cannot.

    Second, understanding that communalism and multiracial democracy are not mutually exclusive—but they do require new institutions. Switzerland manages three languages and two religions through a federal system that gives cantons significant cultural autonomy. Belgium has been held together for decades by sophisticated power-sharing arrangements. Fiji has never seriously attempted a consociational model—one that guarantees iTaukei communal representation alongside common-roll seats, with iTaukei vetoes on matters of culture and land. Instead, we have swung between iTaukei-dominated ethnocracy (1987–2006) and a “one man, one vote” system (2013 onward) that many iTaukei see as imposed without addressing their existential anxiety. A thoughtful Indo-Fijian might ask: Is there a middle way that protects my vote and their Vanua?

    Third, understanding that iTaukei communalism contains wisdom that Indo-Fijians might actually need. The global climate crisis is going to devastate Fiji’s coastal villages and sugar belts. Individualist responses—buying your own higher ground, insuring your own assets—will fail. Survival will require veivuke: collective decisions about relocation, resource sharing, and mutual obligation. iTaukei have been doing this for centuries. Their communal structures, adapted wisely, could become Fiji’s resilience architecture. Indo-Fijians who dismiss communalism as backward are walking away from a toolkit that might save their grandchildren.

    The Path Forward: From Fear to a More Perfect Union

    Obama concluded his Philadelphia speech with a simple, powerful image: “I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle. But I do believe that we can get beyond them if we work together.” He did not demand that anyone leave their identity at the door. He asked only that each side extend the same grace to the other that they would claim for themselves.

    No one is asking Indo-Fijians to stop being Indo-Fijian. No one is asking iTaukei to stop being iTaukei. What thoughtful understanding asks is this: Stop seeing each other’s communalism as a zero-sum threat.

    When an iTaukei speaks of the Vanua, an Indo-Fijian could learn to hear “home” rather than “hierarchy.” When an Indo-Fijian speaks of individual enterprise, an iTaukei could learn to hear “aspiration” rather than “greed.” These translations are not easy. They require humility, patience, and the courage to sit in discomfort.

    But the alternative is what Fiji has known for too long: a politics of mutual suspicion where each community waits for the other to weaken. That is not a nation. That is a ceasefire.

    The Bose Levu Vakaturaga could be one space for this translation. A reformed parliamentary system, with genuine protections for both communal and individual rights, could be another. But no institution will work if the heart is not willing—if we refuse to see that, as Obama put it, “we may have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.”

    Indo-Fijians do not need to embrace communalism. They need to understand it—as a living, breathing, wounded, hopeful expression of iTaukei humanity. And in that understanding, perhaps, discover that their own survival is not separate from the survival of the Vanua. It is the same ocean, same shore, same storm.

    The difficulties will pass. But only if we stop rowing against each other, and start rowing toward the same horizon.

  • Our Thoughtlessness as Fijians: The Real Litter We Leave Behind

    Two weeks ago, I posted a video. It showed what anyone driving past the Naboro Prison junction can see with their own eyes: plastic bottles wedged into highway drains, food wrappers tangled in grass, rubbish breeding in full view of prisoners, Corrections personnel, commuters, and families.

    I have been watching to see if it would trigger a positive reaction. This morning, I drove that same road again. Alas, nothing had changed. The garbage continues to pile up. And there, walking along the shoulder, were prisoners under the watch of a Corrections officer. Across the drain—overflowing with garbage—people waited at the bus stop. No one looked at the drain. No one seemed to notice. Or if they did, they had already perfected the Fijian art of looking away.

    We are good at that. Very good.

    The law with teeth, and our habit of silence

    Fiji’s new parental liability law for littering is bold. It says parents can be fined or given community service when their children discard rubbish. On paper, it has teeth. But a law only bites when someone points at what needs chewing. And that is where we fail as neighbours.

    We see a prisoner walking past filth. We see a bus stop beside a reeking drain. We watch a Corrections officer lead a chain of able-bodied men past a mess they could clean in an hour, max. We are not cruel people. We are not lazy in our own homes. But in public spaces, we have developed a peculiar, quiet thoughtlessness—a habit of assuming that someone else will care.

    Who is the “someone else”?

    At Naboro, the “someone else” is conveniently everyone. The Fiji Corrections Service has prisoners who need purpose and rehabilitation. Cleaning their own roadside would teach more than any anger management class. The residents who wait at that bus stop—can they not see the potential health hazard to their families? And Corrections officers—can they not see the same hazard for those in their custody?

    But we don’t act. Because thoughtlessness often masks itself as politeness. So we breathe the hazard instead.

    The law alone will not save us

    The Minister for Environment said we are all custodians. But custodianship is not a government portfolio. It is the small, undramatic act of bending down and doing what is right there on your doorstep—for all and sundry to see.

    Education, fines, and even shame have their place. But before any of that works, we must admit our own role in the silence. Every time we see rubbish and do nothing, we teach the child beside us that litter is tolerable.

    A movement, not a mandate

    The parental litter law is not flawed. It is unfinished. It gives us a tool, but we are the hand that must wield it. That means asking the Corrections Service, publicly and politely, why their able workforce is not being deployed to their own junction. That means bus stop commuters refusing to wait in silence beside a health hazard.

    Fiji’s beauty is not automatic. It is an act of daily will. And right now, at the Naboro Prison junction, our will is on holiday. Let us call it home—not with shame, but with the quiet, firm thoughtfulness we have misplaced for too long.

    The rubbish will not disappear by magic. It will disappear when we stop pretending it is someone else’s problem.