20 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Articles & Reports
Do yourself and all the children of Fiji a favour Dr. Sharma, read the information in the following link and then rescind the dangerous and ridiculous legislation that forbids the sale of Non Fluoride toothpaste in Fiji.
19 Tuesday Mar 2013
18 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Articles & Reports
The Chief Justice Anthony Gates said he believes there will be a full set of rights in Fiji in time but he says people who are calling for judges and magistrates to resign should know that the courts need to remain open to hear cases. .
Chief Justice Gates made the comments after recent criticisms from the International Bar Association.
While speaking in a mediation workshop, he stressed that it is important to carry out the important work of the judiciary and they should not have to walk away just because of criticisms from some organizations.
We ask when will that be Anthony Gates?, after all the current Fiji Pensioners are dead and buried; is that when their case will be heard in the Fiji courts ?
By “Full set of rights” do you mean Basic Civil Rights and the right to be heard by a fully independent and totally impartial judiciary?
It is easy for you to talk the talk now, but posterity and your peers will surely judge you for what you failed to do, which will be infamous , unlike your Chandrika Prasad ruling made in a fully independent impartial court.
The path to infamy is a very slippery slope indeed, and unfortunately it appears you could be heading that way. Only time will tell…
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Articles & Reports
A prominent Australian legal figure says the dismissal of an appeal against Fiji’s political parties decree was legally wrong.
The appeal by Fiji’s political parties against the decree was thrown out by Justice Anjala Wati on the basis such decrees cannot be challenged in the courts.
John Dowd QC, president of the Australian branch of the International Commission of Jurists, has told Radio Australia’sPacific Beat the courts in Fiji are independent and should not allow their role to be undermined by the coup-installed military government.
“The judge should have found that the decree was invalid and that she could therefore deal with the matter,” he said.
“Jurisdiction remains independent and any independent judge, in my view, could not have come to this decision.”
Fiji’s Administration of Justice Decree states, among other provisions, that no court has jurisdiction to hear any challenges or applications for judicial review of decrees made by the President.
Mr Dowd says Fiji’s “undemocratic regime” cannot displace Fiji’s constitution and has purported to exercise a power they don’t have.
“This law, even if you accept that the regime is entitled to pass laws, cannot remove the judiciary’s power to deal with matters independently,” he said.
Mr Dowd says Fiji’s claim other countries around the world behave in a similar manner is “absolute nonsense”.
“Normal countries don’t do this,” he said. “In countries right throughout the world we have the judiciary independent of the government.”
“Once the executive takes over the judicial role, there’s no administration of justice at all.”
Mr Dowd says Fiji’s judges need to look very closely at how independent they can be in their jobs as judges.
“If they’re not, then they have to look at whether they should be judges at all,” he said.
A simple fact is, that if the Court had approved this appeal, the way would then be open for the decree that deprived Fiji Pensioners of their civil rights and the right to obtain redress through the courts for the loss of their pensions, to be overturned.
The question must be asked, “Who is really guilty of scandalizing the judiciary” ?
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Quotations
“A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment … is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.”
–author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Articles & Reports
Computerization 20 years forward, information 30 years backward
Islands Business, 15 March 2013.
By Professor Wadan Narsey
The public readily engage in a heated debate on politics, while ignoring changes silently taking place in something as mundane as the “public availability of information”. Yet the latter can be far more important for our people’s welfare than exciting politics.
In every Pacific country, computerization (both hardware and software) has charged ahead over the last two decades. Computer prices have plummeted; processing power and storage capacity has increased a billion times; a small lap-top is the equivalent of a roomful of computers forty years ago; there are amazing software applications; and the Internet and mobile revolutions give access to the world’s libraries and information.
Word-processing allows reports to be written, corrected, formatted, spell-checked and printed.
Spread-sheets, with more than a million rows and 16 thousand columns of data, make complex mathematical, financial, logical and graphical functions, so easy, menu driven, requiring just a few clicks.
Database software allows for the easy menu-driven processing of massive amounts of data, once the domain only of bureaus of statistics and armies of statisticians who had to write complex programs.
All this “firepower” is available for the price of a good TV set or a gold necklace or a holiday abroad.
So why is it that for most government departments,
(a) the real information provided has gone backward s– in some cases by more than 30 years?
(b) their websites are colourful and glossy, but provide very little real information?
(c) already printed public information, is not provided through websites in a ready-to-use form?
The Fiji examples I give here (some bad and some good) are relevant for other PICs as well, as also may be an initiative I suggest.
Ministry of Labour
A few years ago, as part of my ECREA study on Just Wages for Fiji, I read through 40 years of Annual Reports by the Ministry of Labour. I was dismayed by one unexpected aspect – the massive deterioration over the four decades of real information provided.
In the (colonial) sixties and post-independence seventies, the Ministry of Labour (and most Government ministries) did not have access to their own computers for analyzing data, tabulating or report writing.
Data was analyzed using calculators, while Annual Reports were typed on manual typewriters, by “typists” (remember that extinct species?).
Yet those early Annual Reports were full of useful comprehensive data and analysis.
Not any more. Have a look at recent Ministry of Labour Reports (they are all available in the Fiji National University Library).
The actual production of most government Annual Reports are now outsourced to private companies, who take whatever data and text they are given by the Ministry, and turn out beautiful glossy reports.
They are full of strategic plans, visions, missions, philosophies, etc., but devoid of any real information, which the public really need to understand what is happening in that area, or to assess the ministry’s work by their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Like all government departments, Labour also has a glossy website, full of corporate plans, press releases, speeches and photos of Ministers, and wonderful enunciations of “spiritual values”.
But this website contains little useful information pertaining to the terms and conditions of work actually done by Fiji’s employees which is what the Ministry of Labor should be concerned about.
The last Annual Labour Report on their website is for 2007 (five years ago), and even that, astonishingly, gives you just the front cover!
Yet the Ministry of Labour (and all its branches throughout Fiji) is full of computers, software and data, all available for analysis.
It has dozens of staff with degrees, diplomas and certificates, which should enable them to analyze the data and present solid analytical useful reports for the stakeholders. Yet they don’t. Their regional data is not even collated centrally despite their usefulness.
Does this Ministry of Labour think that taxpayers who pay their salaries, are not entitled to such relevant information? This is certainly not what I would expect from the current Minister, a former CEO of TPAF and a good USP graduate.
Researchers could do a PhD analyzing the “empty” KPIs in the Ministry of Labour’s Corporate Plans.
They are a typical example of “managerial revolutions” that nearly all Fiji’s government departments have been taken through in the last two decades (often by donors), converting genuinely productive technical people into paper shuffling and meeting-attending “managers”, of this and that.
Many other such departments
Have a look at the Department of Police, which also does not put on its website any real time series information on crimes, suicides etc., although press releases often selectively quote some statistic or two.
The data is all there of course, within the Department, but sitting on someone’s desk or computer.
Even when requested (as I recently did for information on suicides and attempted suicides in 2010 and 2011), why do those in power refuse to give the data to the public, let alone make it freely available to anyone who wants it, on their website? The frequent response is: Sir, what do you want it for? I will have to ask my superiors. I will call you back. (They never do.)
Are decisions being consciously made by those in power, to deny the public the relevant data, in case it throws their performance in a bad light?
Or are they simply unaware that giving the public all relevant data (that does not divulge individual information) is a necessary condition for their government to claim to be open, transparent and accountable to the tax-payers?
There could be several PhD theses, examining the websites of all government departments, for their usefulness, transparency and accountability, given the information that they all have or should have, that the public should be made aware of.
The Fiji National Provident Fund
The Fiji National Provident Fund is another sad example of a public organization which has gone backwards as a provider of data and useful information. This regression has even more serious implications for public welfare, given the centrality of FNPF to Fiji people’s lives and economy.
Once upon a time, the FNPF Annual Reports and website used to have numerous useful data series on the operations of the FNPF – its membership profile, contributions, investments, earnings, etc.
It is dismaying that most of this information has now been removed from the FNPF website and most are not even available in their Annual Reports.
Why has the FNPF removed all this information from their website, in a period when massive restructuring of pensions and fund investment is taking place, with major implications for the welfare of FNPF contributors and pensioners?
Was it a decision by the Board or the management? Or both, given how their functions have been astonishingly merged in recent years? (another PhD).
This trend of deliberate reduction of information for the public, suggests that the FNPF is being very frugal with the truth when it claims to be transparent and accountable to their members. Continue reading
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Daily Humour
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows
The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other and then throws the milk away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has died.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you do not know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
Nobody believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows but at least you are now a Democracy.
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.
A GREEK CORPORATION
You have two cows borrowed from French and German banks.
You eat both of them.
The banks call to collect their milk, but you cannot deliver so you call the IMF.
The IMF loans you two cows.
You eat both of them.
The banks and the IMF call to collect their cows/milk.
You are out getting a haircut.
12 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Articles & Reports
There have been a great many adverse comments made about the number of Ministerial salaries being paid to Frank and his right hand man. And whilst one has to agree it is more than a little on the nose (stinks) and under the counter (hidden from the public) so to speak, we should carefully consider who created the opportunity for them to do this.
Many years ago Sir Ratu Kamisese Mara managed the govern our country with 16 or less Cabinet Ministers.
Then along came Laisenia Qarase who not only had a Cabinet larger than Australia or New Zealand had ever had, he even created ministerial positions for his friends who had been jailed for criminal offences and accumulated over 30 ministerial positions.
It is not unusual for a Minister in any Government to hold more than one portfolio, after all it is the Permanent Secretaries who do the work and carry the burden of responsibility when things go wrong, but it is unusual for those Ministers to receive multiple salaries.
Of course the bottom line is that all the major players here are equally guilty even though Laisenia Qarase started the rot.
We know that Frank and his Friend can Talk the Talk, but it is time they did the honourable thing and Walked the Walk
11 Monday Mar 2013
11 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Health Hints
Gout is a disease that is caused by uric acid build-up in the body. Uric acid is formed when the digestive system breaks down purine’s in our food. A diet low in purine’s helps by allowing excess uric acid to be flushed out in the urine.
Here are some foods that prevent gout.
2.Ginger
Ginger is a powerful anti-inflammatory that has been found reapeatedly in clinical studies to reduce chronic inflammation. One study in mice found that a compound in ginger may help to reduce the inflammation associated with uric acid buildup.
3.Turmeric
Turmeric has long been recognized as an anti-inflammatory by many cultures and has been proven in several studies. Some experts recommend a daily dose of turmeric to reduce the inflammation associated with gout.
4.Cherry Juice
Cherry juice has been used to alleiviate gout symptoms for decades. Small studies in Italy and the United States have reported sucess with cherry juice as a gout treatment, though scientists are not certain what mechanism is active in producing this result. Cherry juice does not appear to lower uric acid levels directly but research suggests that its antiinflammatory properties may play a role in reducing gout attack occurrence from 3-4 times per year to about once a year.
5.Hot Peppers
Hot peppers are rich in vitamin C which has been shown to reduce uric acid levels.
6.Watercress
Watercress contains moderate levels of vitamins and minerals and is reputed to be very beneficial to the kidneys. It may help to rid the body of excess uric acid.
7.Lemons
Studies have found that the higher a person’s vitamin C intake, the lower the incidence of gout. Try adding lemon to your water every day to alleviate gout symptoms.
Fiji Pensioners 