Good and bad politics
BULA readers and welcome once again, as we move in full force into campaign mode for the 2022 election. Political parties have literally just over four weeks of campaigning and promoting left to do in support of their desired party.
The public will be bombarded with photo opportunities every day leading up to the elections of maybe the opening of a bridge, opening of an office and maybe even a washroom as political parties look for that photo opportunity to promote themselves and tell the people, look what I have done.
Even with advertising, you will be bombarded with billboards and newspaper adverts daily, I was interested to see a few adverts and then comments made, one saying change is coming, one saying we are the change and the last one saying if this is the change we don’t want it.
This type of positive and negative advertising will happen going forward, but it does seem the electorate may have already made their mind up on what they want and who they will want to govern the nation come December 14, 2022.
The most important lesson to take away from this election is to make your vote count as your vote will decide who will lead the nation for the next four years. My hope is we have a record number of voters turning up on Election Day to have their say at the ballot box. This would truly show people’s power and who the citizens of Fiji want to lead the nation.
Turning to this week’s events, it has been a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly, so let’s begin with the good.
The good – the good news is the very positive feedback and reception that the public are giving to political parties, I cannot speak on behalf of everybody, but would assume from what I am seeing that the public want to know and are asking questions about issues that concern them.
What that proves to me is that public participation in this election is higher than I have ever seen, people aren’t so fearful anymore or so worried, and caution is finally being replaced by optimism as parties move throughout the country to meet the public. When I attend meetings our policy is to respect the public at all times and listen to their concerns and make notes on what they want and also what is urgent for a future government to implement to make the public’s lives more tolerable.
The bad – the bad is listening to our public servants, who we the taxpayers pay their wages ordering the citizens of Fiji to obey them and their orders only. I have a lot of respect for Dr James Fong, and I believe he is doing a credible job under the meager resources given to him under the current government. The question here is the dictatorial way he addresses the public and I quote “The health system is to be left alone, it should not be touched, nobody should talk about it, and nobody should undermine it”. This is a sad and unfortunate statement regarding a struggling health system, you can do better than this Dr Fong.
The ugly – the ugly is having to deal with various individual attacks and racial slurs by individuals on social media for supporting a political party. Who makes these comments, I doubt we will ever know as most of these people seem to have fake accounts and whoever is creating these fake profiles needs to be bought to justice. I have heard there is a team tracking the IP addresses and locations of these fake accounts and let’s hope once the information is gathered with screenshots and locations of posting the messages etc, prosecutions can be made.
Debating on topics such as the state of the nation, government’s ability to have a good health system, running water and constant electricity supply should be at the top of the agenda, but unfortunately we run into personal attacks and racial abuse, which is a sad reflection of the society we live in today.
On a personal note, it doesn’t bother me as being in the public eye like many of my colleagues you have to expect this kind of negativity occasionally, but nevertheless it is disappointing that we have to lower ourselves to this type of gutter politics.
As elections are getting closer, be warned, it does seem that these types of negative opinions may get a lot worse before it gets better, so if you are in the political arena, belt up and be ready for a bumpy ride. If you are an observer of Fiji politics, be vocal and also be rational in your comments when discussing various topics.
Finally, I think the saying “We may have different views, but we can still be friends” which I adopt as my personal mandate, may unfortunately have to go out of the window for the next few weeks as many individual and groups seem to be gripped with hate and vengeance as the race towards election heats up and the pressure builds.
From my personal view, I have no malice towards anyone, but personally believe that unfortunately after 16 years of rule with crumbling infrastructure, potholed roads, health and education in tatters, water cuts and electricity cuts all the time, not to mention a huge government debt level of billions upon billions of dollars is certainly not a good indicator of a successful government, some individuals may fully agree, some may partially agree and some by disagree, I fully respect that, as this is democracy in action.
Adios amigos until next week.
■ AJAY BHAI AMRIT is a founding member of The People’s Alliance party and is also a freelance writer. The views expressed in this article are his and do not necessarily reflect the views of this
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