People who voted for change hoped for a transition to open, clean, democratic, and people-based governance, and they were committed to upholding the rule of law and good governance, but they haven’t received the transparency and accountability they wanted from the government.
This was highlighted by Fiji Labour Party Leader and former Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry during the party’s Annual Delegates Meeting in Nadi.
Chaudhry says the coalition government’s failure to honour their election promises; and to ignore the bread and butter issues is affecting people, coupled with its dismal record of governance in the past 2 years, have created a crisis of confidence and trust in the leadership.
He says strong, clean, open, good governance and visionary leadership are crucial to the progress and well-being of any nation.
The FLP Leader says the leadership of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara in the 70s and early 80s is a good example of how a country can thrive under firm, competent and caring leadership.
He says Fiji is in urgent need of credible leadership.
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He says the government made many promises to counter the suffering of the poor and to right the wrongs inflicted on the people under the FijiFirst rule.
Chaudhry says in the past two years we have watched it blunder from one crisis to another in a series of shocking scams that have literally rocked the nation.
The FLP Leader further says they have shown a worrying lack of vision and commitment to addressing critical problems faced by the nation.
Chaudhry says in their first National Budget the coalition government had imposed a 15 percent VAT on goods and services – increasing the cost of living and said this was necessary to pay the $10 billion debt from the previous government.
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He says in 1999 the Labour government reduced the VAT on staple food items as a relief to the needy in our society.
Chaudhry says even Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka had admitted in May 2023 that 15 percent VAT was too high, unfortunately, he later caved in to pressure from his Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad and the Chair of the Fiscal Review Committee.
Chaudhry says the second factor that makes the 15% VAT unacceptable to the people was the huge increase in parliamentary pay and allowances of the MPs.
He also questions if the ministers are motivated by personal greed and not the common good.
He adds the public perception today is of leaders who are self-serving, devoid of ethics and integrity, and oblivious to the needs and aspirations of the common people.
While responding to our questions, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad says he wants to make it clear that there are three rates of VAT.
Professor Prasad says there's zero percent VAT on 21 basic food items and they have not only maintained that but also added prescribed medication in the list, making it 22 items.
He adds that additional revenue has gone to the needy and poor in the form of increased social welfare, back to school support, subsidies to farmers, increases in prices of sugar and rice, increase in the civil service pay and increase in minimum wages this is to assist the need of low income people.
