‘Treachery’ and our vote What’s going through the heads of FijiFirst?
AT the apex of all the idiotic electoral campaigning rhetoric that the poor voters have to endure, being rudely labelled as “treacherous” if they don’t vote for the ruling FFP has to take the proverbial keke (cake) for being the most arrogant and insulting.
It is nearing their standards of stupidity of previous elections campaigns where the FFP general secretary told everyone on Stanley Simpson’s interview about his circumcision status. Seriously, how was that relevant to the price of draunimoli (lemon leaf tea) in the makete (market), and who cares? (kon pucho?)
Then of course that insidious threat during the 2018 election campaign period where he threatened voters in Samabula that if they didn’t vote for Bainimarama, it would be like putting a dagger to their own necks! Can you believe the audacity? Threatening people who they work for, and from whom they are supposed to be seeking a mandate?
The insults: fast and furious
The FFP has not been content with the public backlash against insulting verbal savagery against Dr Rajni Chand, claiming that she was employed by the University of the South Pacific not on merit but through nefarious means.
Dr Chand is of course the professionally esteemed head of flexible learning at USP, and wife of the NFP leader, Prof Biman Prasad. A professional woman of her own standing, a gracious wife and loving mother to two children, who are themselves highly qualified with their own glowing career paths.
In an era where women’s empowerment and misogyny is continuously decried, the leader of the FFP just does not get it. He never did and he never will. So women, please ask yourself if he is going to defend your rights in Parliament as a lawmaker, let alone as the head of Government!
Then the notorious twosome, posing together in a new instalment of “togetherness” billboards, rev up the vicious words and attack bhajania or traditional and religious Indo-Fijian folklore singers.
If that wasn’t enough, the FFP leader swerves to TikTok to denigrate other political parties and slams his phone on his chair, to grumpily and sternly acclaim that leadership is “serious business”.
If the FFP leader was so serious about leadership and whatnot, why has he not yet disciplined a senior minister in his line-up who racked up an obscene $16,000-plus mobile phone bill for the month of October 2022, as revealed by the NFP leader in Ba?
He must tell the voters as a “leader”, who this minister is and why on earth such an amount should be paid for by taxpayers.
In fact it just captures the sheer disdain that they have for us all. They don’t care any more what they do on our taxes and on our time. They simply go ahead and pull these infantile stunts because they can.
They have forgotten that they work for us. We don’t work for them. The FFP will be reminded in a resounding chorus of ticks,
If the FFP leader
was so serious about leadership and whatnot, why has he not yet disciplined a senior minister in his line-up who racked up an obscene $16,000plus mobile phone bill for the month of October 2022
– Leba Seni Nabou
crosses and circles on December 14, who really are the shot-callers in this nation.
It’s really hard to decipher what on earth is whirring between the ears of the FFP leader and his general secretary. It doesn’t make any sense as to why insulting and denigrating not only others, but also the voters, is a smart thing to do so close to the main polling day of December 14.
But then, we must realise that pre-poll voting begins next Monday, December 5, 2022 where the majority of the 77,000 or so prepoll voters are remote iTaukei voters.
Is the flooding of FFP merchandise and paraphernalia to the most remote villages like the hinterlands of Nabukelevu, who will be pre-polling next week, because no other party had been there yet, intended to elicit sympathy and votes?
Will next week be dedicated to FFPs schizophrenic “love and togetherness” and “caring leadership” vibe, intended to pacify angry Indo-Fijian voters in readiness for December 14?
The proof of course will be in the voting.
The most telling is how many FFP sulu and t-shirts are seen in public spaces well after their rent-a-crowd “smoke and mirror” events. How many people are proud to wear that label, apart from being paid to hang that branded banner at strategic points along the coast?
How much of the sudden social media engagement sprouting overnight especially on Tiktok and Facebook isn’t transactional, and not based on free will?
This is another lesson that FFP has not learned from 2018. Their razor-thin majority of 50.02 per cent of total votes cast, where they created the hype around a grand smoke and mirrors operation of public events, did not translate to votes.
The millions of dollars of FFP billboards, merchandise and paid-for actors (online and offline), did not translate to votes.
The aggressive words seeding fear and terror, did not translate to votes.
All this adds to the deep disappointment of voters especially over the past four years, and the brazen lies that insult the intelligence of the voters, will also not translate to votes.
Treachery
So when the FFP general secretary wails and whines that it will be treacherous if people who have received equal rights do not vote for them, or when he says that it will be a treacherous a cowardly act if someone stands up and says they want to vote for us at NFP, he clearly needs help.
The “reality of the matter” is that the FFP treachery has continued to rain down on us all as taxpayers and citizens ever since they took over in 2006.
The “reality of the matter” is that FFP does not define any of us, nor do they have any moral authority to cast us in little boxes as they think fit.
We the people own the words. We the people decide how these words will be applied.
So if I have to be labelled as treacherous simply because I willfully defy the label or the box that FFP want to put me in, then so be it.
I, and many others, will proudly be treacherous at the ballot box against the FFP leadership that has continuously betrayed our trust, and who has shown us nothing, but contempt and a brazen breach of the social contract.
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