The FijiFirst government’s biggest issue was telling us how great the country was doing while the reality was the complete opposite.
Renowned local lawyer and Fiscal Review Committee chairman Richard Naidu did not mince his words when he relayed the real situation facing the country, and the Coalition Government being forced to address the previous administration’s economic hangover.
When asked why international lending agencies and development partners did not inform Fiji of the precarious financial position the country was in, Mr Naidu said they had done so but the information was not relayed to the Fijian people.
“Now in fact, these agencies have been telling government these things for years. But government has not been telling us,” he said during an interview on The Fiji Times online news portal The Lens@177 yesterday.
The Fiscal Review Committee is appointed by the Government.
“People will say that some of us are relatively friendly to the new government, but we are independent and it was our job to bring this information out and tell everybody.
“This is what the previous government did not do. It just ran away from bad news, did not tell us what was going on, pretended everything was fine.
“And it’s only now that we are finding out that that’s not the case.”
Mr Naidu said that was why openness and transparency was critical.
“How are we all as a country going to solve our economic problems and our social problems when we don’t know what’s going on.
“And that’s why I think for us, it’s been so important to get this information out, and then listen to the feedback.”
He also said Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad had been revealing key aspects of the budget over the past few days.
“One thing, I think that the Minister of Finance has done really well is that he has not kept the budget a secret. He’s telling us be ready for what is coming. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
“We’re trying to put information out there so that people can say, look, ‘this is wrong, that’s wrong, fix this, fix that’.”
He said in order to fix critical problems, dialogue and debate and forums such as the National Economic Summit were important.
