A date with destiny
SO now we can talk? As the Mongoose Muppet Mob of Deepest Flagstaff wanted to know this week.
Like about 37 times an hour. As if you could shut them up anyway. Like the new Fiji election would make a major difference to their primary school age lives. Well yes, of course it could. Just not through them holding strong opinions on everything from axolotls to x-rays.
There was a certain amount of muttering about human rights for children and what about democracy for Year 3.
We had made such a family hoot and holler when the date of the new election was finally announced we seem to have neglected to explain to the junior generation that they would not be in it. Not even as voters. I was feeling grumpy about it being so late in the year anyway.
It's the sort of thing that makes you so suspicious. Why so late? The people who plan the timetable should have been able to do a better job than a last minute scramble between end of the school year and trying to manage holiday bookings.
We are now faced, I believe, with various problems while as a family we wait for travel documentation that was applied for so many weeks ago for our first big family holiday all together.
It was like we had been in a bureaucratic traffic jam. Perfectly nice people were giving perfectly nice smiles but some things were just not happening.
Do I blame the government? The situation bears the hallmark of so many other mishaps and mashups. I could become quite cross if I think about it too much. I suppose there are reasons for this timing of the end of school, changing air fares and elections, but I have yet to hear a good one. As I say, it seems suspicious. Or at least unnecessary.
There have been some excellent arrangements starting some way back for voter registration and so forth which was all good and fine if you approved of the system. It is a system which no longer allows us to have local representatives working as a local council. So no, I don't approve of it.
After being battered by coups, disillusioned by their consequences and fed up with being bossed about by people I didn't want and didn't think were suitable even to represent a small street in Suva, let alone the entire country, try to understand why I am so grumpy.
Even I can see that while on this disagreeable journey there have been some good people dedicated to doing their best for the country, lots of them. There are also many people who understand grabbing a quick handout to vote for the most cashed up party is not really the way to go. It's your money getting handed out anyhow.
Let me not whine about the goahead at last.
And of course people are free to express themselves. They more or less always were, as I explained to the Mongoose Muppets. It wasn't my fault that they didn't feel free to speak out. It was, um, just a general feeling of repression. I mean I wouldn't have written in quite the same style a few weeks ago. I was really trying to be careful. Didn't always work.
The thing was, I said to the senior Mongoose Muppet, you should feel free to say anything in acceptable language -- and not those words you could possibly earn a note home to parents for. Not that the little darlings do such things, it must have been some sort of hearing mistake, they say.
But make no mistake about the forthcoming elections.
It becomes your opportunity and duty to elect us a decent, reasonably good government. Have your say – and not just in the newspaper this time.