New book gives interesting insight into making of charter
John Samy gives an interesting insight into the background of the writing of the Fiji People’s Charter in his new book just released.
The book, the Fiji Peoples Charter – My Role on a Better Fiji for All, records the drama, the tension and clash of ideas among various levels of the national conversation.
This is the first time that Mr Samy has come out publicly to disclose in details with excerpts of communication with a number of leaders what went on.
It is compelling reading and provides the complexities of Fijian politics and the challenges that it provided then and now as we move forward to the future.
Mr Samy says he “played a pivotal, proactive lead role” in the initiation of the People’s Charter initiative and was deeply involved in its formulation until the Peoples Charter for Change, Peace and Progress was formally submitted the President on December 15,2008, two years after the military takeover.
The charter was the forerunner to the 2013 Constitution and the democratic elections in 2014.
After he was unceremoniously dumped as Permanent Secretary of Finance in the 1987 military coups, Mr Samy took up a senior position with the Asian Development Bank.
He returned to Fiji in 2006 for a visit and subsequently accepted an offer to help draw up the charter after then Minister of Finance
Mahendra Chaudhry introduced him to then interim Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.
He says the legacy of Mr Bainimarama is of a non-racial Fiji, a country which now recognises the importance of furthering national unity and of according to the equality of rights to its citizens.
“However, for Fiji and all its citizens, in moving forward now, much more remain to be done and to be achieved,” he writes.
“Fiji can ill afford to persist with the failure of leadership, this both at the level of communities and its political governance at the national level.
“Fiji and its people have to liberate themselves from the insular, inward-looking tendencies that focus on the ‘differences’ among its communities and on fear-amongering.
“It is imperative that that due recognition is given to the fact that the vast majority of Fiji’s people, particularly in the two major ethnic communities, have much more in common than they have by way of ‘differences’.”
Four decades ago, Fiji and other Pacific Island countries were characterised as living in a situation of benign blissfulness, with a tradition and a culture marked by communalism, caring and sharing for the individual, for the family, and for the clan or village. Fiji was being depicted as “The Way the World Should Be’’.
Mr Samy says Professor E K Fisk of Australia described the situation of the indigenous people in Fiji as being one of “subsistence affluence.”
He adds that today there is a sharp contrast.
The overall developmental situation that has emerged over the last few decades is markedly different and of grave concern.
“An ADB Report in 2004 on Hardship and Poverty in the Pacific concluded that Pacific Island countries were characterised by overall poor economic performance, political instability, lack of employment opportunities, out-migration and increased dependency on aid and remittances.”
Mr Samy notes that by 2006, Fiji’s overall situation had deteriorated precipitously, heightened by massive corruption and lawlessness, severe erosion of confidence and an economy on the brink of total collapse.