PRIME Minister Voreqe Bainimarama allegedly told the 2013 Constitution Commission chairman Professor Yash Ghai that he would “put him on a plane” after a disagreement in 2013, The Fiji Times was told yesterday.
Prof Ghai made the accusation when responding to the PM’s claim at a political meeting last week that the draft constitution proposed by his commission was racist.
In an email to The Fiji Times from London, Prof Ghai claimed that the PM was “rude and threatening” him during the 2013 Constitution review process.
He said although he had been invited to Fiji to chair the commission, Government gave him no money to pay for its operations and he had to ask foreign governments for financial help.
Mr Bainimarama told a public meeting in Labasa last week that he came to dislike Prof Ghai because Prof Ghai wanted to consult people in Australia about the draft constitution.
But Prof Ghai said this was not true. “I certainly had no need to learn from Australia about Fiji.
By then I had made a considerable study of Fiji’s constitutional history and published several articles.
“I certainly did not take a trip to Australia for such purpose. In fact, I never left Fiji during the entire process.”
Prof Ghai claimed that his contact with the Australian government was only because of the PM and the A-G.