Good old Times
WHILE many have sent accolades and high praise to The Fiji Times on its 150th birthday this year, it is the stories of the role this newspaper played in the lives of everyday Fijians that best signifies how important the daily has been in Fiji’s history.
Stories like that of a 15-year-old boy who, more than five decades ago, waited anxiously for The Fiji Times newspaper to arrive at a Labasa store so he could search for his name as the external examination results were out.
It was the day Professor Brij Lal and other sugarcane farmers’ sons had all been waiting for.
At the time, The Fiji Times
was either a bearer of good tidings or gloom until the official results letters arrived from the Ministry of Education and cemented the academic future of most kids.
As Prof Lal looks back to his days of sweat and struggle, he thought of contributing a chapter of his success to The Fiji Times
as the region’s oldest newspaper celebrated its 150th anniversary.
“My favourite childhood memory of The Fiji Times
would be frantically flicking through the pages of the paper to that section which had University Entrance results,” Prof Lal said from his Australian home.
“The Fiji Times was the only source for that information until the official letters arrived later.
“Heart pumping, I searched for my name under Labasa Secondary School. When I found my name, I punched the air, looked again to see if I was not daydreaming and then told my parents. It was a moment like none other. I remember it vividly to this day — that emotion, that relief.”
Prof Lal and his wife Dr Padma Lal have been banned indefinitely from returning to Fiji.
Not being able to visit their country of birth has been heartbreaking and one of the few ways they keep in touch with their homeland is by updating themselves daily via The Fiji Times eedition platform.
The couple believe the values of democracy, the rule of law and the processes and protocols of constitutionalism are valuable to them and they believe that they should be allowed back into the country.
The 150-year-old newspaper allows the academic to keep abreast of the goingson in Fiji before their busy schedules take over in the Land Down Under.
Prof Lal, who prefers to be called a ‘kai Macuata’, said The Fiji Times was an ever present feature in their daily lives and their days would be incomplete without the paper.
“The Fiji Times covered all the major events of our lives for over a century — wars, the depression, industrial troubles, and our tentative moves towards Independence, the trials and tribulations of the postColonial era, as a detached chronicler but also as an interested party.
“Its long time editor, Leonard Usher, was an active functionary in the Alliance Party with definite views about what was good for the country. He was a quintessential establishmentarian.
“Still, The Fiji Times was the paper of record. It was later joined by the first Fiji Sun and in the 1950s, its strong rival was the weekly Pacific Review.”
Two favourite Times headlines
Prof Lal said the first one was the front page headline in April 1977 when then National Federation Party leader Siddiq Moidin Koya went to Government House to be sworn in as Fiji’s new Prime Minister by Governor General Ratu Sir George Cakobau.
“Assuming that to be a foregone conclusion, The Fiji Times rushed to publish a late edition of the paper with a large photo of Mr Koya with a headline along the lines of ‘Meet your new PM’.
“Soon afterwards, news came that Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had been appointed PM. The Fiji Times was redfaced. It quickly dispatched its staff to retrieve all copies of the paper! If someone has a copy of that issue, it would be a collector’s item now.” The exiled academic said the second headline of note was on May 15, 1987. The headline in large bold letters said it all. COUP. The once unthinkable had happened. “Suva was shuttered, and people anxious and afraid, trying to make sense of the unfolding events. People said a ‘coop’ had taken place. That is how innocent we were.
“We got a much better sense of the unfolding events when we read The Fiji Times the next day. It was an indispensable source of printed information.
“For its independence and audacity to print the ‘facts’ it was shut down by the military, plunging the country into darkness and to the departure of the paper’s first local editor, Vijendra Kumar - a sad loss.”
Times in Fijian history
Prof Lal shared that The Fiji Times was one of two institutions that helped bind the people of Fiji together and gave them a sense of shared space and a sense of community.
The other was the Fiji Broadcasting Commission which began regular broadcasting in 1954 in all the three major languages — English, Fijian and Hindi.
He said Fijians celebrated and mourned together as they had never done before as they listened to local music and read local stories.
“Some very fine journalists worked for the paper. Old-timers will recall Matt Wilson, the political journalist, and Robert Keith-Reid with his quirky sense of humour, both fine writers.
“And many of us will fondly remember Seona Smiles’ lovely pieces on the grind of daily life in Suva, utterly memorable anecdotes about ‘the Hope of the Side’.
“And some of us will recall Lai’s cartoons. I remember one in particular of Ratu Mara on a boat bidding farewell to Koya (in 1977) shouting ‘Wait for me, I am the Captain.”
Times and national memory
According to Prof Lal, The Fiji Times is Fiji’s indispensable archive of the country’s news and information.
No history books, he says, can be written without it, whether it is about politics or popular culture.
“Confidential information somehow found its way into its pages even as parties denied its existence.
“I am so glad that a hundred years of The Fiji Times is available on microfilm in several universities. I have read each and every issue of The Fiji Times from 1939 to 1984 for my books and research papers, and so can attest to the paper’s archival value.”
Times’ challenges
“The Fiji Times is now buffeted by challenges from all sides. First, there are the various websites, purportedly objective but with agendas and understandings of their own.
“Propaganda is peddled in insidious ways. It is a challenge all credible news media faces. And then there is the undeniably coercive media environment buttressed by a medley of laws that restrict robust reporting. Often self-censorship ensues which does no one any good.
“The challenge for papers like The Fiji Times is not to give in but to pursue the truth as public good. Truth triumphs in the end.
“I would like to see longer reflective pieces in the paper, of people and places and events that provide perspective and balance that counter disinformation peddled in the so-called ‘national interest.”
Prof Lal, a successful Fijian academic, who is now the Professor of Pacific and Asian History at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University, said the fourth estate (media) was always a pivotal part of a vibrant democracy.
He added the need for a free and fearless press was greater now than ever before.
“The challenges are formidable. As George Orwell says, ‘The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it’.
“Democracy dies without the oxygen of free speech and free press.”
“It is to The Fiji Times enormous credit that it has stood up when it counted, that it continues to hold the line.
“So, from across the horizon, Happy Birthday The Fiji Times. May you continue to flourish.”