Fact Checking Sitiveni Rabuka
Mr Rabuka called the 2020-2021 Budget doomsday yet provided no alternatives. In fact, he provided no suggestions. He assumed that it is a normal hunky-dory situation.
Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) caretaker leader and Opposition leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, deliberately misled the Fijian public on average decade growth rates.
Was it because of his lack of understanding of economics or an attempt to politically point score? Here are a few examples of what Mr Rabuka got wrong:
1. He is using 2011 to 2020 as the decade instead of 2010 to 2019. Since, 2020 is a large contraction, he has conveniently used it to show lower average growth rate.
2. Anyone familiar with statistics will not use 2020 as it’s an outlier year. Its 1 in 100-year event. (Also refer to table 1 below)
The flip-flop
On the night of the Budget address, Mr Rabuka had this to say: “We have to look at the implications and gains in this recovery and see how much of a recovery we can have from the budget.
“We have to be positive when we talk about the measures that have been announced today.
“It’s a courageous budget and it’s up to us to critique is properly and hopefully the nation can get behind it and go and achieve the goals they believe they can achieve to get the economy back.”
Compare this to what he had to say in Parliament on Monday
“Mr Speaker sir, coming back to the Budget, I term it as irresponsible, rudderless and a deceiving budget.
“While this Budget is terribly expansionary, it provides the policymakers least direction in terms of how those expenditures are to be implemented to achieve the desired objectives.”
What changed? Is it the speech Mr Rabuka read out in Parliament, was not written by him and did not, in any way, reflect his own uncensored and forthright views? This contradicts what Mr Rabuka said immediately after the Budget announcement.
This begs the question – was Mr Rabuka lying then or lying now? Or were his comments in Parliament shoved upon him by those pulling the strings behind the curtains in SODELPA?
Reserve Bank of Fiji
Time and again, Mr Rabuka questioned the independence of the Reserve Bank of Fiji. He did it again on Monday. But, he then goes on to quote the RBF’s figures to prove his own point.
How does Mr Rabuka reconcile the lower economic contraction by Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc to the independence of RBF when the forecast by Macroeconomic Committee is larger? Shouldn’t it be the other way round?
Mr Rabuka also said that the Fijian economy had not been growing in the past four to five years. Fact: Despite the monster storm
TC Winston, the Fijian economy has grown above our historical average in the past five years.
This was validated by both ADB and IMF. Mr Rabuka should ask his economic advisor to verify the data and not write speeches with lies and make the Leader of Opposition look silly.
Mr Rabuka called the 2020-2021 Budget “doomsday”, yet he provided no alternatives. In fact, he provided no suggestions. He assumed that it is a normal hunky-dory situation. Imagine him being the Prime Minister in this crisis? What would he have done?
He would take on board suggestions from the likes of his fellow SODELPA MP, Mitieli Bulanauca, and would not have enforced social distancing and curfews which were vital in curbing transmission of coronavirus.
Had Mr Rabuka been at the helm of Government during these very uncertain times, he would focus on fighting his own battles to keep his hold on SODELPA.
And given the dangerous utterances from SODELPA MPs, one can only be thankful that he is occupying the Opposition bench.