A little over eight months ago, I applauded Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.
The launch of Fiji’s first-ever National Security Strategy (NSS) felt like a genuine watershed moment. It was a 129- page confession that security was no longer about rifles and borders, but about the dignity of a family with food on the table and the resilience of a community weathering a cyclone. It was, we were told, a “blueprint for action.”
On Wednesday, I watched the news feeds from the Grand Pacific Hotel with a sense of dread rather than hope.
There was the Prime Minister again, standing before another lectern, launching another triad of initiatives: the Ministry of Policing and Communications Strategic Plan, the National Cybersecurity and Resilience Strategy, and a new cybersecurity website. The rhetoric was flawless. We heard about “coordinated leadership,” “collective responsibility,” and the need to protect “digital systems” and “institutional integrity.” The massive drug busts—the 4.15 tons of meth, the 2.5 tons of cocaine—were cited as proof that the government is fighting back.
But as I watched, the question that kept gnawing at me was brutally simple: Where is the action?
We are witnessing a dangerous pattern emerging from our halls of power: Strategy Launcher’s Syndrome. It is a political malady where the act of launching a document, is mistaken for the act of governing. It is the belief that a press release, a podium, and a perfectly framed “Kodak moment,” are substitutes for the grubby, difficult, and unglamorous work of implementation.
Let’s rewind to the NSS launch last August. That document was specific. It wasn’t just vague aspirations; it contained timelines and mechanisms. It promised a formalized National Security Council (NSC) and a Senior Officials Committee (SOC) within 3 to 12 months. It mandated the overhaul of archaic laws like the RFMF Act (1949) and the Police Act (1965) within 18 to 36 months. It created a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Unit to track progress publicly.
Eight months ago.
Has the National Security Council met? If so, when? Who sits on it? What decisions have been made? If it is operating in secret, why? The NSS explicitly called for transparency and public reporting to Parliament. Where are the quarterly progress reports from the MEL Unit? Where are the “90-day actions” that were supposed to kickstart legislative reform and personnel vetting?
Instead of updates on the NSS, we are treated to a rebranded launch of its component parts. The “National Cybersecurity and Resilience Strategy” launched Wednesday is likely a crucial piece of the puzzle—but it was already listed as a deliverable within the NSS framework. Launching it now, in isolation, feels less like progress and more like an attempt to distract us from the fact that the mothership—the NSS itself—appears to be drifting, abandoned in the doldrums of bureaucratic inertia.
The Prime Minister warned yesterday of “increasingly sophisticated threats.” He is right. The criminals aren’t waiting for us to finalize our strategic plans. The cartels moving meth through our waters, don’t pause for a website launch. They exploit our “porous sovereignty” every single day.
The government points to the drug seizures as evidence of success. And yes, the seizures are significant. But a 4.1-tonne interception is also an indictment. It tells us that our waters have become a preferred transit route for transnational crime. It tells us that the networks are emboldened. Seizing drugs is damage control. Preventing them from entering our domain in the first place—through the maritime surveillance and joint enforcement centers promised in the NSS—is the actual strategy.
This brings us to the uncomfortable question: What is the vision here?
Are we witnessing the steady implementation of a long-term national security overhaul? Or are we watching a government that has discovered the political utility of “tough on crime” press conferences, as we inevitably creep toward an election cycle? The launch of a plan should not be a substitute for the plan’s execution. Every time a minister stands at a podium to unveil a new strategy without explaining how the last strategy is tracking, they erode public trust a little more.
The people of Fiji—the fishermen in Vatia who reported the cocaine, the villagers destroying marijuana farms, the parents terrified their children will fall prey to drugs—don’t need more blueprints. They need patrol boats on the water. They need police officers with the modern legal tools to arrest cybercriminals. They need to see the National Security Council actually councilling, not just existing on paper.
The Prime Minister spoke of “collective responsibility.” That responsibility begins with his Cabinet. It requires ruthless political will to reallocate budgets, to overhaul the bureaucracy, and to demand accountability from permanent secretaries and ministers alike. It requires them to tell us, honestly, why the NSS is gathering dust in the Ministry of Defense’s bottom drawer while they roll out the next glossy brochure.
We were promised a “blueprint for action” last August. Since then, we have received more promises. The window between rhetoric and reality is closing. If we do not see the National Security Council convened publicly, if we do not see the draft bills for police and military reform tabled in Parliament this year, if we do not see the budget reallocated from sacred cows to maritime surveillance, then we will have our answer.
These are not just plans. They are a test. And so far, Fiji’s political leadership is failing it.
