Fiji’s new Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has taken swift action against figures from the previous regime, comparing them to “cancer”.
He made the comment in an exclusive interview with 1News Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver.
Fiji’s new Government is facing the task of dismantling policies and in a country that’s had 16 years of first military and then authoritarian rule.
So far former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has been suspended for three years for sedition and insulting the President.
The former Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum has lost his seat due to taking up a different public post, the Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho and head of Prisons Francis Keen have been suspended and top figures in Fiji Broadcasting Corporation investigated and the Board replaced.
“Most of it has to be unravelled for us to be able to get Fiji back on even keel and move it forward it is not easy it is difficult,” Rabuka said.
Professor Steven Ratuva, who runs the Macmillan Brown Centre at Canterbury University, says politics in Fiji is often unpredictable and quite fluid.
“There was a lot of nepotism a lot of patriotism and bad governance taking place and this is just being unearthed it will take a bit of time for that to unfold,” he says.
Rabuka told Q + A that he must suspect there will be elements that deliberately try to destabilise his coalition but he has political support and a good relationship with the military.
While his last two months in office have been action packed, its clear there is more to come.
SOURCE: TVNZ/PACNEWS
