When the Qarase govt was working on its Media Bill I made both written and oral submissions. I was appalled that our government would even consider curtailing our freedom of speech – a fundamental human right.
Indeed, John and I were among the earliest members of the Yellow Ribbon Movement which was set up to protest against the racist and discriminatory Bills being proposed at that time – and proudly wore our yellow ribbons and drove about with a yellow flag fluttering from our vehicle.

Therefore, when Commander Voreqe Bainimarama ousted Qarase and his government in December 2006, (having warned repeatedly that he would ‘clean up’ government if Qarase did not do so) promising to ensure the equality of all races in every way possible: to initiate a fair and equitable voting system: and to bring about a fair and equal Constitution – although slightly uneasy, I decided that I had to support him.
Improvements were made, especially in respect of our long-neglected grass-root citizens. But almost imperceptibly, many of those freedoms precious to any democratic peoples began to be eroded.
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To Grey Power Editor

During the past week the AG has (on Australia Broadcasting Pacific Beat) accused the pensioners who are fighting to have their long standing legal pension contracts honoured by the FNPF, as doing so for political reasons, which is clearly utter nonsense.

To compound the error the FNPF CEO in a National broadcast stated the only people objecting to pension reforms were wealthy business people who had withdrawn more money than they deposited. The simple fact is that regardless of the total equity an individual has in the fund, if he or she signed for a pension at 25% and lived in excess of four years, they would have withdrawn more than they deposited.  However Aisake Taito has failed to state that the equity of any person who signed to accept a pension but died within the first four years was kept by the fund and not the members beneficiaries.

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