Tag: news

• Fatal Vital Signs: Why Fiji’s Sugar Industry Must Be Allowed to Die

  By the numbers, our sugar industry is no longer a struggling patient—it is a corpse kept warm by political ventilators. Under the previous regime, the Fiji Sugar Corporation bled $543 million in losses. Since the Coalition took over in 2022, it has haemorrhaged a further $106 million—achieved despite a $200 million government debt write-off. Production languishes at 1.33 million tonnes, far below the 1.5 million tonnes required to justify the current $85-per-tonne subsidy.

  When an industry loses a billion dollars across two decades, requires constant taxpayer top-ups, and fails to achieve economies of scale, it is not a commercial enterprise—it is a charity case. Yet we persist, primarily because of politics.

  The ICU Delusion

  Sugarcane farming has devolved into a “mom-and-pop” hobby. The children of farmers have fled to tourism hubs and supermarket packing sheds; they refuse to endure backbreaking labour for cents on the dollar. Traditional knowledge was deliberately not passed on, because parents wanted their children to escape the drudgery. We now face an aging farmer base with no succession plan.

  Meanwhile, the land lies fallow. One encounter with a tenant selling leased TLTB land for $100,000 an acre—land choked with para grass, no road access, no power—exposes the speculative fantasy propping up this industry. It is not farming; it is waiting for a payout.

  Politics Over Economics

  The National Farmers Union has dug in, demanding the government negotiate directly with them and threatening to boycott the 2026 harvest unless a $60-per-tonne delivery price is met. This is political hostage-taking, not economic negotiation. The union refuses to acknowledge global realities where Brazil, Australia, and India have mechanized and driven prices into the dirt. Instead, they demand ever-higher subsidies while resisting structural reform.

  Proposals to legislate maximum production and nationalize idle farms are equally misguided. We cannot cure an industry by forcing farmers into it with legal coercion. If you have to threaten farmers with nationalization to make them farm, the industry is already comatose.

  The Unforgivable Sin

  The most damning aspect is the opportunity cost. Why is the Fijian taxpayer pouring hundreds of millions into an unviable crop, while iTaukei non-sugar farmers receive virtually nothing?

  Consider the structural inequity:

  · The State subsidizes cane growers (predominantly Indo-Fijian lessees) to the tune of $85 to $106 per tonne, guaranteeing an income regardless of global market prices.

  · Meanwhile, iTaukei landowners receive paltry, below-market rent via the TLTB—paid late, undervaluing their ancestral inheritance.

  · iTaukei farmers who wish to diversify into ginger, turmeric, kava, or vegetables receive a fraction of government attention and none of the guaranteed subsidies sugar farmers enjoy.

  This is not just economic failure; it is a profound governance failure and a breach of fiduciary duty to the traditional custodians of the land. We are using public funds to trap one community in generational debt while another sees its land utilized for pennies on the dollar. The $105 million annual loss is effectively a transfer of wealth from the general taxpayer to a politically influential, shrinking minority of sugarcane growers. Landowners are left with degraded soil and cheap rent, while the Minister smiles and tells farmers in Labasa to “diversify”—without providing the capital that sugar subsidies so wastefully absorb.

  The Do-Not-Resuscitate Order

  It is time to issue a DNR order for the sugar industry. We must stop confusing nostalgia with national interest. The government should initiate a managed wind-down:

  1. Cease the Subsidies: Announce a three-year sunset period. No more taxpayer top-ups. Let the global market price dictate the farm-gate price. If it is unviable, it dies.

  2. Compensate Transition: Use the money saved from annual $100M+ losses to fund a massive vocational training programme for all farmers—sugarcane growers, iTaukei landowners, and non-sugar farmers alike. Teach them commercial alternatives, aquaculture, or agro-tourism.

  3. Empower the Landowners: Rewrite the TLTB framework to give landowners autonomy to form agricultural corporations, develop commercial plazas, and lease to productive ventures—not just sugar monoculture.

  For 56 years, politicians have deceived farmers to secure their votes, promising salvation while presiding over decline. The NFU and the Labour Party cannot be allowed to hold the nation hostage over a crop that no longer pays its way.

  Fiji does not need to produce raw sugar for the world. Fiji needs to produce prosperity for all its citizens. That starts by pulling the plug on a dying industry and directing resources toward the living, breathing farmers—iTaukei and otherwise—who are ready to grow something more valuable than a colonial relic. The time for bold, uncomfortable decisions has arrived. The sugar industry is on ICU, and for the sake of our rural economy, we must let it go.

  2026.06.24

• A Decade After Brexit: Reflections from a French Farmhouse

  Nine years ago, in the heart of French wine country, a group of friends gathered for what was supposed to be a week of simple pleasures. 

  The rural district of Les Marronniers is the kind of place where time moves differently. Vineyards stretch toward the horizon, stone farmhouses hold centuries of stories, and the air carries the scent of earth and aging oak. It was there, in our friend Helena Eversole’s typically French farmhouse, that far-flung friends reunited for a week of wine, dining, and reminiscence.

  But as dusk settled each evening and bottles of local Bordeaux were uncorked, our conversations drifted from shared memories to the question of Brexit.

  The Leave campaign had promised something seductive: “Take back control.” For millions, that slogan spoke to unease about where the globalized world was headed—tighter borders, reclaimed sovereignty. For others, Brexit meant a transformed Britain: a “Singapore-on-Thames,” a deregulated, low-tax competitor ready to strike trade deals with the wider world.

  Around Helena’s table, lively discussions went late into the night. One saw liberation. Others warned of isolation and economic self-harm. “We’ll be free,” one friend insisted. “Free to make ourselves poorer?” another countered. Neither could predict just how right—and how wrong—they would both turn out to be.

  A decade on, the data tells a sobering story. Published economic research estimate that Brexit reduced Britain’s GDP by upto 8% by 2025 and a 15% drop in trade. As The Economist argued, “Brexit lingers like a toxin in the economy’s bloodstream”

  The promised Singapore never materialized. Britain under Thatcher had prospered by shaping free trade rules. But now, as the world fragments into competing blocs, Britain has “fallen through the cracks.” When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, another cost emerged: British defense firms have been largely shut out of the EU’s rearmament programme. Brexit’s cost was never just economic.

  Harder to measure is the cost of what Britain didn’t do—years consumed by revolving-door leadership and endless debate over how to leave. Meanwhile, public sentiment has soured. The share of Britons who say Brexit is worse than expected has nearly doubled.

  Yet Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, now leads national polls, eroding Labour and Conservative dominance. Brexit continues to define voting lines, with Reform appealing to older, less-educated voters driven by cultural anxiety.

  The lesson of the past decade is that there are no clean exits and no clean returns. Reversal is unrealistic. Some advocate a Swiss-style arrangement—a patchwork of treaties to align with the EU on trade, science, and security. Britain would become a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker. Imperfect, but perhaps necessary.

  I think back to Les Marronniers—the long dinners, the clinking glasses, the discussions stretching late into the night. None of us sensed that the world was shifting. Old certainties were crumbling. And Britain had chosen to walk away from its nearest neighbors.

  Helena’s farmhouse had stood for centuries. It had seen France and Britain fight, and it had seen them reconcile. As we sat there in 2017, we wondered what the future held.

  A decade on, the question remains. But the debate has shifted. It is no longer about whether Brexit was right or wrong. It is about what comes next—for Britain and for the millions who will live with the consequences for years to come.

  The vineyards endure. The wine still pours at Helena’s Les Marronniers farmhouse and the conversations continue.

  2026.06.22

• Beyond the Chokehold: A Call for Solar Sovereignty

  My wife and I had been discussing solar power. Retirement brings a certain slo-mo consideration to everything—there was always a reason to wait for tomorrow, next month, or after the next trip. Then the world intervened, and that slow deliberation was jolted into fast-forward.

  First came the Iran-US war. Then the Hormuz Strait effectively closed. The strategy was to strangle Iran’s economy—and it succeeded. But it also strangled the global economy, including ours here in the Pasifika. For small island nations utterly dependent on shipped fuel, the pain arrived as fast as the breaking news. Higher prices at the pump. Canceled cargo shipments. EFL, Fiji Airways, and our inter-island ferries burning cash they do not have.

  Earlier today, Foreign Minister Sakiasi Ditoka offered a glimmer of hope: global fuel prices have dipped to around US90–$100 range. But here is the cruel arithmetic of island dependency—he cautioned that Fijians will wait. There is a “lag time” between international purchases and local supply. While the world pays $83, we continue to bleed at the old rates until the delayed shipments catch up. We are always the last to feel relief and the first to feel the squeeze.

  To his credit, Minister Ditoka has been tireless. He travelled to Singapore—the origin of our supply chain—to secure assurances that Fiji’s shipments would not again be pushed to the back of the queue. He travelled to Australia, securing $30 million in budget support and discussing strategic fuel reserves in Geelong with Viva Energy. Talks are even underway with Korea, Malaysia, and the United States. These are the frantic, expensive shuttles of a nation trying to secure a lifeline it does not control.

  Yet reading between the lines, the truth is unavoidable. Singapore confirmed it cannot control global prices. Australia admitted its own reserve situation is challenging. And even if we build regional storage or bulk-buy with neighbours, we are still playing a high-stakes game of geopolitical whack-a-mole. A tanker in Geelong or a promise from Kuala Lumpur does not insulate us from the next Hormuz crisis. It merely buys us time until the next rerouted shipment.

  This brings me to Vani Catanasiga’s recent warning: our vulnerability to global fuel shocks is not merely an economic headache—it is a social justice emergency. Every lag day at the pump hits the families in our villages and settlements hardest. When the Minister asks the public to be “understanding,” I empathise with his diplomatic burden. But empathy does not cool a fridge or fill a bus tank.

  That is why, two weeks ago, my wife and I made our start at home. Panels on the roof. Batteries on the wall. A meter that now spins backward. The upfront cost was not lite, but we saw it as an investment in sovereignty. Because the sun has no lag time. It does not require a flight to Singapore for assurances. It does not fluctuate with West Asian ceasefires, and it never gets pushed to the back of a queue.

  Minister Ditoka’s shuttle diplomacy is admirable, and those $30 million in Australian funds are welcome. But imagine if even a fraction of that regional maneuvering—the flights, the memoranda, the storage talks—were redirected into subsidising rooftop solar for every vulnerable household. Imagine if our “strategic reserve” were not barrels in Geelong, but batteries distributed across our islands.

  Our ancestors crossed these vast oceans by reading stars and currents. They understood self-reliance intrinsically. Today, our version of that is far simpler: sunlight falls on our shores every single day, free of geopolitics. The Government will continue its necessary, but ultimately reactive, work to secure the tankers. That is their job.

  But for us—the families, the retirees, the households who feel every lag day at the pump—the only lasting security is the one we generate ourselves. The war will end. The strait will reopen. The price will drop to $80, then climb again. The tankers will come, or they will not.

  The sun, however, never cancels its cargo. For us in the Pasifika, sovereignty is not found in a diplomatic note from Singapore or a reserve in Geelong. It is harvested from the sky above—one panel, one home, one island at a time.

  2026.06.18

• The Portugal–DRC and Spain–Cape Verde Lesson: Why World Rugby Must Abandon Its Colonial Playbook for FIFA’s Global Vision

  The 2026 FIFA World Cup draw offered not one, but two moments that, for decades, would have been unthinkable. Portugal—European powerhouse, home to Cristiano Ronaldo’s legacy—sharing a group-stage conversation with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Spain—tiki-taka royalty, World Cup champions—drawn alongside Cape Verde, a tiny island nation that only a generation ago was a football afterthought. These are not ceremonial sacrificial lambs. These are competitive threats, legitimate narratives, and commercial goldmines. Neither the DRC nor Cape Verde qualified by accident. They qualified because FIFA, belatedly and imperfectly, understood that growing the pie benefits everyone—more viewers, more unpredictable storylines, more grassroots investment, and ultimately, more revenue for the entire ecosystem.

  Now, cast your eyes to the other side of the global sporting spectrum, and you will find World Rugby—a governing body still mesmerized by the sepia-toned ghosts of the British Empire. While FIFA has democratised the beautiful game, World Rugby has perfected the art of structural apartheid, masquerading as “tradition.” The recent elevation of Fiji and Japan to Tier 1 status is not a victory; it is a performative crumb thrown from a banquet table that Tonga and Samoa are not even allowed to approach. This is colonialism rebranded—not with flags and cannons, but with broadcasting rights, fixture calendars, and centralised voting blocs.

  Let us be brutally clear about the numbers. Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga produce more professional rugby talent per capita than any nation on earth. They are the lifeblood of the global game—the entertainers, the innovators, the teams that play with “reckless abandonment” because they have nothing to lose and everything to prove. Yet, while their players fill the starting XVs of Australia, New Zealand, and France, their national unions are left to beg for scraps. They are granted one-off tests against Tier 1 nations once a blue moon, usually at neutral venues that extract maximum revenue for the host union and minimum investment back into Pasifika grassroots. This is not neglect; it is exploitation. It is the extraction of human capital without the repatriation of financial capital—the very essence of neocolonial economic theory.

  World Rugby’s defense is always the same: “We need to protect the integrity of the Rugby Championship and the Six Nations.” Protect what, exactly? A closed shop of old money where the same six European nations and the same three southern hemisphere aristocrats rotate the same trophies, while the rest of the world is fed a diet of one-off friendlies that are forgotten by Monday? Contrast this with FIFA’s expanded World Cup. The tournament is richer, not poorer, for the inclusion of minnows. A Spain–Cape Verde clash is no longer a foregone conclusion; it is a stage for the world to discover new heroes like Cape Verde’s 40-year old Josimar Dias-Vozinha . The global fanbase has exploded because fans in Kinshasa, Praia, Tbilisi, and Doha now have a stake in the narrative. They buy jerseys, they watch broadcasts, they inspire children. Rugby, by contrast, is cannibalising its own future by confining its “product” to a nostalgic cartel.

  The hypocrisy is suffocating. World Rugby finally admits Fiji and Japan to the elite table, yet Samoa and Tonga—who have beaten Tier 1 nations in recent World Cups—remain in the “doldrums.” Why? Because they do not offer lucrative television markets. That is the new colonialism: economic viability over sporting merit. It is the loudspeaker of the Global North dictating terms to the Global South, not with gunboats, but with broadcast schedules and ranking algorithms that deliberately starve tier-two nations of the regular, high-intensity fixtures required to climb the ladder.

  If World Rugby had even a fraction of FIFA’s strategic foresight, they would mandate that every Tier 1 nation must play a minimum of three away Tests in the Pasifika or emerging African nations per four-year cycle, with all gate revenue shared 50-50. They would scrap the Nations Cup proposal designed to entrench the status quo, and instead adopt a genuine promotion-relegation system for the Six Nations and Rugby Championship. They would redirect the surplus from the World Cup—a tournament that survives on the passion of Pasifika and African fans—into high-performance academies in Nuku’alofa, Apia, and even Kenyan outposts, rather than into the bloated administrative coffers of London and Dublin.

  FIFA is far from perfect; corruption and politics have stained its history. But on the fundamental question of growth, FIFA has embraced the reality that the future of sport is multilateral. The Portugal–DRC and Spain–Cape Verde fixtures are harbingers of football’s vibrant, chaotic, and inclusive future. Rugby’s equivalent—a potential Samoa vs. England or Tonga vs. France clash in a pool stage—is treated by World Rugby as a risk to be managed, rather than an opportunity to be celebrated. Until World Rugby unshackles itself from this institutionalised prejudice, until it redistributes wealth and fixtures with the same vigour it protects its own, it will remain not a world sport, but a colonial relic—beautifully played, but morally bankrupt and commercially stagnant.

  The world has moved on. Rugby has not. And that silence from the Pasifika and the broader Global South is not acceptance; it is the sound of a game slowly suffocating its own soul.

  2026.06.17

• The Silly Season Has Arrived Early

  Fiji is scheduled to hold its next election latest by February 2027. That is, if it happens at all. This is not idle speculation. Events entirely outside government control may well alter that timeline entirely.

  Consider the perfect storm forming on the horizon: an ongoing Gulf war causing global energy disruptions and shortages; a Tier 1 Super El Niño predicted for 2026 with potentially devastating weather impacts; a converging crisis of drugs, HIV, and non-communicable diseases; an economic meltdown that could deliver a COVID-like shock; and the very real prospect of a State of Emergency declaration. Any one of these could destabilise electoral preparations. All of them together? That is not merely a doomsday scenario—it is a trajectory any close observer of Fiji’s political, economic, environmental and social condition, would recognise.

  Yet the deeper problem is not the external shocks. It is our collective refusal to imagine something better.

  The Western liberal democratic model grafted onto Fiji has, in my view, never been a comfortable fit. But rather than build a truly Pasifika democratic framework—one that thinks outside the imported box and looks toward a visionary future—our leaders cling to what they know. Perhaps that is unsurprising when so many of them rose to prominence in the last century. But where are our new political leaders? The 2013 Constitution does not encourage independent thinking or cultivate new talent. It is a strongman’s document, built for an autocrat at the expense of potential. To call for fresh leadership while that constitution remains immovable, is to display a certain national naivety.

  The Bose Levu Vakaturaga understands this perfectly. That is why it insists on working within the existing system to secure its autonomy. Many Fijians dismiss the Great Council of Chiefs as an outdated governance model, but they are wrong. The iTaukei remain a largely traditional population, with all the nuances of belonging that non-iTaukei either fail to grasp or are conveniently blind to. The Fiji First party tried systematically to downgrade—if not eradicate—the chiefly system and iTaukei traditions. It did not succeed. But that does not mean later iterations of that same impulse, or individuals carrying that torch, have given up. Sadly, too many urban iTaukei—whether educated or simply misguided—have bought into this notion entirely.

  And so we enter the silly season, even before the writs are issued.

  This week’s Dialogue Fiji State of the Economy debate, gave political rivals the chance to critique the government’s projections and lay out their own economic policies. But we have such short memories. The previous regime made us live in fear of speaking, of criticising, even of sneezing. Dialogue Fiji itself felt that wrath. When that regime was defeated in December 2022, the nation was euphoric. We celebrated their demise with glee. We allowed the opposition that defeated them to form a bloated coalition—but that was beside the point. The Fiji First regime was gone. We voted for change. And we got it.

  Then we were let down. The visionary, mature, experienced, caring leadership we expected never materialised. The coalition’s selfish decision to grant themselves a massive pay raise, undressed whatever political virtues they claimed. Even their truest supporters felt the disappointment.

  Since then, they have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly: the lack of experienced political advisors; the Commission of Inquiry blunder and its ongoing fallout; the cynical embrace of figures from the previous regime’s innermost circle; the absence of a functioning National Security Council or a National Security Adviser; the palpable disrespect toward the Bose Levu Vakaturaga and iTaukei aspirations. The list goes on. Yes, they have done genuine good as well. But their worst instincts have consistently outweighed their best efforts, making their achievements look lethargic and their concern feel like an afterthought. They have seemed distant, living inside their own tinted Prado bubble.

  So here we are at the beginning of the silly season: the good, the bad and the ugly.

  If we learn one thing, let it be this: we must choose our politicians wisely. Not the loudest. Not those with the flashiest social media presence or the smoothest delivery. We must choose those who actually believe in and deliver what they promise. And if they do not, we must vote for those who convince us they will.

  There are far too many wannabe politicians without the experience or professional attributes to back up their ambitions. Too many carrying baggage from previous lives that should give us all pause. That someone has a social media following does not make them a leader. We must stop being a gullible electorate and start thinking critically—about vision for our children and grandchildren, about the future of the iTaukei, our aspirations and about the future of Fiji as a nation.

  Let me return to this week’s State of the Economy dialogue. It brought together political rivals, state officials and economists to debate our economic health ahead of the national budget. They spoke about economic factors in isolation—without any discussion of the looming energy crisis, the projected Tier 1 El Niño weather pattern, the drugs and HIV and NCD crises robbing us of our next generation, or the ‘people drain’ of the PALM and NEC schemes emptying Fiji of its young population. They talked about the ‘now’. Not a single intergenerational vision for the nation was offered. All short-term thinking. No vision.

  If these are Fiji’s next political leaders, the nation is truly doomed. So I will leave you with the only question that now matters, the one that hangs over every crisis, every empty promise, every short-term calculation: Where are our next generation’s political leaders?

  2026.06.11

• The Poison Tide: Why Fiji Cannot Afford to Wait Any Longer

  The evidence is no longer circumstantial. It is no longer whispers in police stations or rumours in village halls. It is crystalline meth washing up on the shores of Moce. It is cocaine packages drifting onto the reefs of Ogea. It is a shipping captain’s desperate plea for surveillance. And it is the measured, courageous voice of the Turaga Bale na Tui Nayau, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara, telling us plainly: our present responses are not effective enough.

  Let me say what needs to be said. What the Tui Nayau said with dignity, I will say with urgency bordering on rage.

  Fiji is losing. And we are losing because we are still having the wrong conversation.

  The Pattern We Ignore

  Read carefully what is happening on the other side of the Indian Ocean. In South Africa’s rural interior, Mexican cartels have done exactly what they are now attempting in our Pasifika waters. They scouted. They tested. They found corruption. They found weak enforcement. They found isolated communities without the tools to resist. And then they built.

  Four major meth labs linked to Mexican criminals in two years. Remote farms. Protected operations. Police who “don’t see” what is happening under their noses. A game of whack-a-mole that the cartels are winning.

  The Sinaloa Cartel does not need to defeat the Fiji Navy. It only needs to find one compromised officer. One corrupt official. One village too tired, too poor, too afraid to say no. And then the poison flows.

  The Tui Nayau has seen this coming. His proposal for strengthened village by-laws, for small boats and communications equipment, for a dedicated coast guard presence in Lau waters—this is not parochialism. It is strategic foresight born of lived reality. During the 1980s and 1990s, naval patrols were routine. Now they are reactive. Medical evacuations and search-and-rescue missions. By the time we respond, the cargo is already ashore. Already distributed. Already destroying.

  What the Shipping Captain Saw

  Uluilakeba Fleet’s social media post should have been a five-alarm fire in every government ministry in Suva. Instead, I fear it was scrolled past.

  Three to five-metre swells for three weeks. Drugs dislodged from “designated secured pick-up points at sea.” Packages confirmed as cocaine by testing in Suva. An astounding number of yachts and pleasure vessels operating with apparent impunity.

  Where is the Fiji Navy? That is not a rhetorical question. That is a citizen demanding accountability.

  These yachts do not sail thousands of miles across the Pasifika for the scenery. Not all of them. Some of them are tenders to a trade that is already inside our house. And if we do not have the maritime surveillance to know which is which, then we do not have sovereignty. We have an illusion of it.

  The State of Emergency Question

  I have written this before, and I will write it until I am blue in the face or until someone in authority listens.

  The advice the Prime Minister is receiving—that a State of Emergency will scare off tourists—is not merely wrong. It is dangerously, catastrophically naive.

  Tourism is our economic driver, yes. But what kills tourism? A decisive headline saying “Fiji Gets Tough on Drugs”? Or the slow, cumulative rot of a destination where backpackers are robbed, where families feel unsafe after dark, where the word spreads on social media and international news that paradise has a needle in its arm?

  Tourists are not fools. They will forgive a temporary, targeted, visible crackdown on criminal networks. They will not forgive a government that lets the poison spread because it was afraid of a bad quarterly report.

  Consider also the wider context. The turmoil in the Persian Gulf is already driving up airline tickets and hotel rates. An external slowdown in travel is coming whether we act or not. So why not use this window—while global attention is fragmented, while competitors are also struggling—to do what Fiji desperately needs? To clean house. To send a signal. To say: we are serious.

  A State of Emergency is not a panic button. Used wisely—with precision, with sunset clauses, with a focus on intelligence-led operations rather than blanket restrictions—it is a scalpel. It cuts out the cancer without killing the patient.

  The Existential Threats Are Converging

  I have said before that Fiji faces three existential threats: the drug crisis, HIV, and the impending energy crisis.

  They are not separate. They are the same fire burning in different rooms.

  The drug trade brings money. Money corrupts. Corruption compromises our health system, our police, our borders. Compromised borders let in more drugs. More drugs fuel addiction. Addiction fuels the spread of HIV through shared needles, through the sex trade that follows the narcotics economy, through the collapse of family structures that once protected our youth.

  This is not alarmism. This is epidemiology. This is criminology. This is what every country that walked this road before us has learned at unbearable cost.

  The Tui Nayau’s proposal for empowered village constabularies, for communication equipment and fuel, for a genuine partnership between the Vanua and the state—this is the only model that works. Because the state cannot be everywhere. But a grandmother in a village on Moce who knows every boat, every stranger, every change in the rhythm of her community? She is surveillance that no cartel can evade.

  Unless she has no radio. Unless she has no boat. Unless she has been told, by years of neglect, that no one in Suva cares what she sees.

  What “Start in Jerusalem” Means

  Real leaders start where the fire is hottest. They start in Jerusalem.

  Jerusalem is not Suva. It is not the Cabinet room. It is not the Tourism Fiji boardroom.

  Jerusalem is Lau. It is the child on Moala who finds a floating package and does not know what it contains. It is the young iTaukei man offered a sum of money that would feed his family for a month, asked only to “watch” a boat. It is the police post on an outer island with no fuel for patrols, no working radio, no backup for hours or days.

  Start there. Not with a press release. With boats. With fuel. With authority for village constables to act. With a coast guard presence that is sustained, not symbolic. With a State of Emergency that targets the networks, not the symptoms.

  The Cost of Delay

  South Africa did not wake up one morning with Mexican cartels operating four major meth labs on its soil. It happened slowly. One compromised official at a time. One isolated farm at a time. One prosecution that fell apart because a witness was “unavailable” at a time.

  The Tui Nayau is telling us that the same pattern is visible in our waters. He is offering partnership. He is offering the Vanua as a first line of defense. He is asking for the tools to protect his people.

  What possible justification is there for denying him?

  If we wait until the drugs are in every secondary school in Viti Levu, until our HIV rates rival the worst in the Pasifika, until a tourist is murdered in a deal gone wrong, until the ABC and the BBC run the story we cannot outrun—then no State of Emergency will save us. No PR campaign will restore us. No apology will bring back what we lost.

  A Challenge to the National Security Council

  The Tui Nayau is right. The National Security Council must take responsibility for this crisis. It cannot remain a coordinating body that produces reports. It must become a command structure that produces results.

  The Prime Minister must consider to do three things immediately:

  First, accept the Tui Nayau’s proposal in full. Not a pilot project. Not a feasibility study. Implementation. Boats, radios, fuel, training, authority. Now.

  Second, declare a targeted, temporary State of Emergency focused exclusively on maritime drug trafficking and the corruption that enables it. Sunset it in six months. Make it renewable only on evidence of results.

  Third, request immediate technical assistance from partners like the Australian Federal Police, the DEA, and the New Zealand Customs Service—not for them to do the work, but to help Fiji build the intelligence capability we desperately lack.

  The Generation at Stake

  Tourism will come back. Resorts can be rebuilt. Reputations can be restored. But a generation lost to addiction and criminal networks? That is permanent.

  Every young Fijian pulled into this trade is not a statistic. They are someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s hope for a future that is not defined by poison, by needles, by the slow death of everything their ancestors built.

  The sea has long sustained our people, the Tui Nayau said. It must not be allowed to deliver poison to our children.

  We stand ready to assist, he said. We ask in turn to be given the means to do so.

  He has done his part. He has spoken with courage and clarity.

  Now the question is whether the rest of us—the Prime Minister, the National Security Council, Parliament, every Fijian who reads these words—will do ours.

  The tide is rising. Not the salt tide. The poison tide.

  We can act now. Or we can explain later to our grandchildren why we did nothing while the sea brought ruin to their shores.

  Choose.

  2026.06.08

• Borrowed Time – Tough Choices Fiji Can’t Keep Putting Off

  While President Trump insists “talks with Iran are going well,” the US attacked a fuel tanker near Kharg Island. Iran retaliated against targets in Bahrain and Kuwait. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut. And here in Fiji, we are beginning to feel the painful threshold of the coming fossil fuel crisis.

  Trump lives in a Washington bubble where words still matter. But Hormuz doesn’t negotiate. Oil tankers burn or sit idle. The only thing that will reopen that strait is an Iranian decision—not a White House press release. And certainly not an Israeli foreign minister’s spin about a war that Israel nudged the US into, selling it as a quickie. But quickies never provide any satisfaction.

  For Fiji and the Pasifika, this is no longer a foreign war. It is a domestic energy emergency.

  Our Pasifika neighbours face the same vulnerability. No regional fuel reserves, no strategic buffer. If shipping lanes are disrupted further, the entire Blue Pasifika feels the pain together. But Fiji, as the regional hub, must lead. Not with speeches, but with action.

  A major newspaper warned last month that the world is on “borrowed time” because of the growing energy crisis. Seventy-six countries have already taken emergency action. Fiji isn’t on that list—yet. But if we wait until we are, only damage control will be left.

  Global oil demand is far outpacing supply. Stockpiles are draining fast. Fiji has no real fuel reserves. Our economy is fragile. Our power grid already struggles at peak times. Already, families are paying double for bus fares. Market vendors are raising prices because transport costs have exploded. Small businesses are one blackout away from closing for good.

  Government must get off its high horse. The National Security Council (NSC) should now be meeting weekly, track global oil markets, and issue binding orders. Silence right now is negligence.

  Here is what the government must consider seriously—before the crisis forces its hand:

  1. Mandatory work from home – All non‑essential public workers should work from home at least three days a week. Private sector should follow. Every car kept off the road saves fuel immediately.

  2. Cut traffic aggressively – Alternate day driving based on odd/even licence plates; bus lanes on the Suva‑Nausori corridor with cheaper fares; restrict fuel sales for non‑essential trips if shortages hit; vehicle pool mandates for government fleets, including ministers.

  3. Planned power cuts, not random chaos – EFL must prepare load shedding now. Publish a clear rotating schedule in newspapers, on social media, by SMS. Example: “Your area loses power 8am–6pm Tuesday and Thursday.” Hard, but predictable. Hospitals, water pumps, and the airport must be exempted. Predictability saves lives and food.

  4. Government must lead by example – Every ministry: AC at 24°C minimum, lights and equipment off after hours, shift work to daylight hours. You can’t ask families to sacrifice while government lights burn all night.

  5. Four‑day work week for non‑essential sectors – Work four longer days, shut down completely on the fifth. No commuting, no lights, no AC.

  Outer islands and rural areas – Fuel shipments to Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Lomaiviti, Lau, Kadavu, Yasawa, and Rotuma could become irregular. Pre‑position fuel and essentials now. Every district needs a local emergency plan, not waiting for Suva.

  Tourism – Hotels must publish backup plans. Tourists will cancel if they hear of chaos. Acting now protects jobs and foreign income.

  State of Emergency – The mix of energy, drugs, HIV, and NCD crises now calls for a State of Emergency. Not military rule, but legal power to act fast: work‑from‑home mandates, driving limits, load shedding schedules, conservation orders—without parliamentary delays. We did it for COVID. This is just as urgent.

  What ordinary Fijians can do now – Start vehicle pooling. Turn off appliances at the wall. Freeze water bottles—if power goes, they keep your fridge cold for hours. Talk to your neighbours. Community preparedness is our secret weapon.

  Beyond individual action, consider the economic ripple: every week of delayed action pushes more families into poverty. The cost of diesel for fishing boats has already doubled in some areas. If we wait for a full-blown shortage, the price of fish, root crops, and imported rice will spiral beyond reach for thousands of Fijian households. Acting now is not just about lights—it is about food security.

  The war is at a stalemate. The ceasefire shows no sign of moving to the next stage. Negotiations are checkmated. Tit‑for‑tat attacks illustrate the chaos that will return without serious goodwill on both sides. Iran has geography and time. The US has the watch and its midterm elections.

  Fiji must act like it. We are living on borrowed time. The only question is: will our government make these hard decisions before the lights are flickering and the pumps are dry?

  Act now. Because borrowed time runs out faster than anyone expects.

  2026.06.08

• Fiji’s Silence is a Sentence: Why We Must Follow PNG’s Lead on the Porn Crisis

  We call ourselves the “Happiness Capital of the World,” yet behind our closed doors, a silent pandemic is devouring the innocence of our children. Fiji has a shameful, unspoken secret: a sexual abuse crisis so rampant that it has become normalized. And while we bury our heads in the sand, Papua New Guinea is actually doing something.

  PNG’s regulator has moved to block over 1,000 explicit websites. Love it or hate it, Port Moresby has admitted a truth Suva refuses to utter: that the fire hose of violent, hardcore pornography is fueling the epidemic of assault.

  Before we clutch our pearls about “freedom,” let’s look at the forensic evidence in our own police dockets. Just this week, “a teacher from a prominent boarding school has been convicted on six charges of rape involving students.” The court heard that he “lured them to his residence on various occasions and forced them to perform sexual acts.” This is not an outlier. This is a pattern. Year after year, the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre reports that the majority of rape victims are children. Children. Often abused by someone they trust.

  We wring our hands about discipline, about family breakdown, about alcohol. But we refuse to discuss the 24/7 online classroom teaching predators how to dehumanize, and teaching boys that violence is intimacy. Where did that teacher learn that his authority extended to his students’ bodies? We may never know. But we do know that in virtually every child sexual abuse material case prosecuted in the Pasifika, unlimited, unfiltered access to porn was the gateway. It normalizes the abnormal. It turns vulnerability into a genre.

  PNG’s move is not a silver bullet. Blocking websites is like locking a door while leaving the window open—determined users will use VPNs. And yes, the public supports it, but support is not a strategy.

  However, the courage of the move is what Fiji lacks. PNG is willing to look uncomfortable. Fiji, meanwhile, hides behind “tourism-friendly” optics and a culture of respect that too often silences victims to protect the powerful. Judge Justice Usaia Ratuvili found the complainants “to be credible witnesses” and ruled that “their evidence was consistent and reliable.” That a judge had to explicitly affirm the credibility of schoolchildren testifying against their teacher tells you everything about the wall of doubt victims face here.

  We cannot arrest our way out of this. We need prevention. And prevention means admitting that the pornography available to any Fijian child on a $50 smartphone. If a parent won’t sit their child down to talk about consent, the internet will. And the internet is teaching rape.

  It is time Fiji got serious. Not by blindly copying PNG, but by launching a national, multi-pronged war: digital literacy in every school, a public health campaign on porn’s neurological harm, and yes—regulating the digital sewage flooding our islands.

  Until we treat online explicit content as the public health hazard it is, we are not a happy country. We are a crime scene waiting to happen. The teacher from Tailevu is now a convict. How many more will follow, raised on a diet of virtual violence before committing the real thing?

  The question isn’t whether blocking 1,000 sites will save PNG. The question is: why hasn’t Fiji even tried to save one?

  2026.06.08

• The Fall of the Old Guard and the Emergence of a New West Asian Order

  The post–World War II order is dead. What rises in its place will be shaped by conflicts still raging, diplomatic gambits still unfolding, and economic policies still being written. Nowhere is that truth more stark than in West Asia, where the Iranian regime—by sheer geographic presence and the endurance of a disciplined civilization—has survived the US-Israeli war and retains control over the Hormuz Strait.

  Less than a decade ago, Western strategists could sketch West Asia’s power map with reasonable confidence. Egypt commanded the Arab world’s political weight. Saudi Arabia and the UAE anchored the Gulf’s economic might under an American security umbrella. Iraq and Syria were containment zones for Iranian influence. Today, that map has been tossed aside. The region’s center of gravity is no longer in the Arab heartland. It sits in Ankara and Tehran. The Gulf monarchies that Washington counted on as pillars of a “rules-based” order, have been exposed as brittle dependents—caught in a conflict they did not choose and could not control.

  The war that backfired

  The US-Israeli war against Iran, supported tacitly by the GCC, was supposed to cripple Tehran’s power. Instead, it has hastened a slow-motion transition that strategists had been tracking for years: the emergence of Iran and Turkey as West Asia’s indispensable powers. Worse, the same miscalculation has diminished the Quad as a meaningful counterweight to China and accelerated Beijing’s rise as Asia’s pre‑eminent power. A war intended to restore American deterrence has done precisely the opposite.

  Let’s be clear about what was already happening before February 2026. The regional redistribution of power was visible. The Gulf states—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE—had leveraged their hydrocarbon wealth into a model of economic integration: advanced technology, logistics, tourism, finance. That “Gulf model” offered a post‑oil future while keeping Washington invested in their security. But it rested on a fragile assumption: that American protection would remain reliable and that the Gulf could insulate itself from geopolitical storms. The war shattered both assumptions.

  As Tehran retaliated against American bases across the Gulf, the very facilities designed to shield the GCC became magnets for attack. Gulf states found themselves in a security trap—unable to join the war offensively for fear of escalation, yet unable to prevent their territory from becoming a battlefield. Their strategic restraint, born of necessity, signaled to every regional actor, that the American security guarantee is conditional at best.

  Western commentators warned that if the Iranian regime survives and retains even limited control over the Hormuz Strait, it would amount to a strategic defeat for the US, Israel, and the Gulf states. After months of war, the regime has not fallen. Tehran has demonstrated it can punish Gulf economies at will—targeting energy facilities, disrupting the Strait, launching sustained drone and missile campaigns—while Washington struggles to articulate a political endgame.

  The unintended rise

  The war’s most consequential effect has been to accelerate the ascent of Iran and Turkey as the region’s indispensable powers. For Iran, survival is victory. Despite relentless airstrikes, the regime has retained control over the Strait, through which a fifth of global oil passes. More importantly, Tehran has shown it can impose costs on the Gulf directly, forcing a reconsideration of alignment with Washington. The GCC, through their restraint, have signaled that they now view Tehran not as a regime to be eliminated but as an unavoidable permanent stakeholder in any future regional order. That is a profound shift: the Arab Gulf’s long‑term calculation now includes Iran at the table, not just as an adversary to be contained.

  Turkey’s rise has been quieter but equally significant. Ankara welcomed the ceasefire and warned against steps that would destabilize Iran, recognizing that instability in Iran would immediately sharpen Turkish anxieties about Kurdish militancy, refugee flows, and border security. By positioning itself as a stabilizing power and a diplomatic interlocutor, Turkey has enhanced its regional standing while avoiding the costs of direct involvement. In a multipolar West Asia, Ankara’s strategic autonomy—its ability to move between NATO, Russia, and regional actors—has become a valuable asset.

  The Quad’s quiet fade

  These shifts have not occurred in isolation. The same American resources consumed by the Iranian war have been drawn from the Indo‑Pasifika, with direct consequences for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Since his return to the White House in 2025, President Trump has refused to participate, leaving the Quad leaderless and degrading its geostrategic value. The downgrade from a leaders’ summit to a foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi this week, was a stark indicator of waning US political commitment.

  The Quad is now diminished politically and strategically. Its erosion is not accidental; it reflects a deeper logic. China’s strategy of “managed equilibrium” seeks not to dismantle the Quad by force but to weaken its cohesion, lower its political profile, and encourage accommodation in Washington. As the US becomes preoccupied with West Asia and its European allies face their own pressures, Beijing’s diplomatic space expands. US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Shangri‑La Dialogue this week—calling for “partners, not protectorates” and warning that “the era of the United States subsidising the defense of wealthy nations is over”—sounded less like a reassurance to allies than a notice of retrenchment.

  China has been quick to exploit the opening. Where the Quad has stalled, Beijing has advanced bilateral arrangements—with Indonesia, with the Gulf states, across Central Asia—that quietly extend its influence without the confrontational rhetoric of a formal alliance. The war on Iran, as Chinese state media has noted, is undermining supply‑chain resilience across the Asia‑Pasifika and exposing the contradictions in Washington’s simultaneous pursuit of two distant theaters.

  No plan, no order

  The post–World War II order has come to an end. The war in West Asia has not merely confirmed that verdict; it has written the first chapter of whatever comes next. By launching an ill‑defined campaign against Iran without a credible political endgame, Washington has accelerated the very realignments it feared: the rise of Iran and Turkey as the region’s gravitational centers; the exposure of the Gulf states’ dependence on an increasingly unreliable protector; and the quiet fading of the Quad as Asia’s preferred counterweight to China.

  The new global architecture will not be designed in Washington, Riyadh, or Jerusalem. It will be contested in the Hormuz Strait, on the Turkish‑Iranian frontier, and in the boardrooms where Gulf investors decide whether to bet on the dollar or the renminbi. Geography has reasserted itself, and the lack of strategic thinking in Western interventions has merely hastened its return. The question now is not whether the old order is gone. It is whether anyone has a plan for what replaces it.

  2026.05.30

• The Civilizational Blind Spot: How the US and Israel Miscalculated Iran

  The war with Iran was sold as a quick decapitation—a replay of Venezuela, where a brittle regime would crumble under the first real shock. Instead, it became a strategic catastrophe. The US and Israel believed they were targeting a government. They discovered, too late, that they were confronting a civilization.

  Iran is one of the oldest, most resilient civilizations in human history. The Persians have fought wars for three thousand years, survived invading hordes, and revived every time. This insight—obvious to any student of history—was entirely absent from US and Israeli war planning.

  The False Analogy: Iran as Venezuela

  Weeks before the conflict, Netanyahu briefed Trump on a promise: a quick, easy war. Decapitate the leadership, the regime collapses, victory declared. Trump bought it. The premise was that Iran was a hollow shell like Venezuela. But Venezuela is a 19th-century nation-state. Iran is heir to Cyrus the Great and millennia of resistance. No invader has ever erased Persia.

  When decapitation strikes failed, Washington was surprised. Instead of weakening, Iran gained a powerful burst of energy. A civilization under existential threat does not send armies into hopeless battles. It strikes the global economy’s jugular: the Hormuz Strait.

  The Strait That Broke the War

  Iran had warned for years it could close the strait. The US and Israel bombed nuclear facilities while leaving this obvious lever unaddressed. Within days, Iran imposed de facto control. Oil prices spiked. Suddenly, Trump’s overriding concern—November’s midterm elections—became Iran’s primary bargaining chip. Iran is not waiting for a military knockout. It is waiting for an electoral clock.

  The Unraveling Alliance

  The US and Israel are no longer in unison. Trump, facing domestic pressure, desperately wants an off-ramp before November. Israel insists on finishing the job but cannot. This war is fundamentally between Iran and Israel. The US was dragged in by undue Israeli influence and, Washington embraced the Venezuela fallacy. You cannot decapitate a civilization. You can only bleed against it.

  Businessmen Negotiators

  The final insult: Trump appointed businessmen Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as negotiators. Their expertise is real estate, not Persian history or Shiite theology. They expected to out-haggle Iran. Instead, Iran holds the upper hand—because when a civilization feels existentially threatened, it does not negotiate from weakness. It waits. It plays the long game.

  As one seasoned observer put it: “Any other country would have surrendered from day one. Iranians didn’t surrender. In fact, they retaliated very strongly.” That is not bravado. That is three thousand years of muscle memory.

  Conclusion: The Cost of Forgetting History, Felt Even Here

  The US and Israel launched this war believing Iran would fold like a house of cards. Instead, Iran closed the Hormuz Strait, kept its economy afloat, and forced Washington to beg for a way out. The magnitude is undeniable: a civilization was underestimated, and the global order is paying the price.

  But this price is not paid only in Washington or Tel Aviv. Even here in Fiji—thousands of miles from the Persian Gulf—we are already feeling the direct effects, and we will continue to feel them long after the fighting ends. The closure of the Hormuz Strait has sent energy costs soaring. Imported goods, from food to fuel to manufactured basics, have become dramatically more expensive. Inflation presses down on every Fijian household. Our small island economy, already vulnerable to global shocks, has no shield against a war we did not choose and cannot influence.

  This should be a wake-up call. The era of stable fossil energy flowing through chokepoints controlled by distant powers is over—at least for now. It is time for Fiji to look seriously at alternative energy sources, as China has shown. Beijing understood years ago that strategic vulnerability follows the oil tanker. Today, China leads the world in renewable energy—not out of environmental idealism, but out of hard-nosed strategic, visionary calculation. Fiji can learn from that. What we lack is the political will to accelerate the transition.

  The Iran war has reminded every nation without its own oil fields of a simple truth: when great powers clash over civilization and empire, small countries get crushed by the wake. The only defense is resilience. And for Fiji, resilience means less reliance on fossil fuel. The Americans and Israelis miscalculated Persia. Let us not miscalculate our own future. The war will end. The lesson should not.

  2026.05.24