Last month Fiji’s Acting Prime Minister and Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, piously explained in the Fiji Parliament that “academic freedom means that an academic can comment on anything whether they support government policies or not”.
That correctly defines academic freedom, for what it’s worth.
But Mr Sayed-Khaiyum then went on to say “we have publicly lamented the fact that in Fiji not only academics but professionals like accountants and lawyers don’t have a culture where they can come out and say this Bill has come out and we agree with 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 but we don’t agree with these ones because of these reasons”.
Any newcomer to Fiji hearing this for the first time would think “Wow. What a progressive liberal government this is, wanting to encourage a culture of critical thinking and public debate among academics and professionals”.
But anyone whose memory of events in Fiji goes back just 10 years must be shaking their heads in absolute astonishment.
What about the Bainimarama Government’s withholding of its financial obligations to USP to try to get rid of vice-chancellor Pal Ahluwalia, who had been uncovering irregularities in the USP’s administration?
This was just a couple of years back so I need not remind the Fiji public of this atrocious pressure on USP, which led to V-C Ahluwalia and his wife being picked up from their home in the dead of night and deported from Fiji.
But what about the role of the Bainimarama Government 10 years ago in putting financial pressure on USP to get rid of a certain Professor of Economics who was then publicly disagreeing with the Bainimarama Government’s arguably illegal plan to slash existing FNPF pensions?
Since 10 years is a long time in Fiji, let me just remind the Fiji public what happens to dissident academics who disagree with the policies of the current Government.
A dissident professor in 2011
In 2011, after winning a long and exhausting battle taken to USP Council to get my normal three-year extension of contract (another story), I escaped on a six-month sabbatical leave to Kagoshima University in Japan.
But the then Dean of my school (and now Opposition Parliamentarian Professor Biman Prasad) soon forwarded me a disturbing email (dated May 29, 2011) from the deputy chair of USP Council (the late Ikbal Jannif), to the then vice-chancellor of USP (Prof Rajesh Chandra), also copied to the chair of USP Council (Dame Fiame Mata’afa, now the Prime Minister of Samoa).
Mr Jannif’s email to the vice-chancellor said, “Further to the conversation we had in Rarotonga … (I suggest) you should write to Wadan expressing USP’s concern at the wild and unsubstantiated accusations he makes against the Fiji Government and ask him to refrain from this practice”.
Within weeks, I was ordered to return to Suva for a meeting with USP senior management.
This meant travelling from Japan to Fiji for a meeting which, for reasons nobody could explain to me, could not apparently be held by video conference with me in Japan.
I asked for the then president of the University’s professional staff association to attend the meeting.
He did not appear.
I was told at the meeting with USP management that the university’s finances and its financial future were being jeopardised by my criticisms of the military government.
I was told that the Fiji Government was already withholding six months of payments of its required contributions to USP (just as they were to later withhold their contribution to express their displeasure with V-C Ahluwalia).
It was suggested to me at the meeting that I should apologise to the Prime Minister and Attorney-General and formally agree to write only “professorial” academic analyses, not the “journalistic” pieces I had (allegedly)
been writing and which had appeared on blogs.
I indicated that I would not apologise to people who were, in my view, doing great harm to Fiji and its people.
I gave concrete examples of huge military overspending, harm to vital institutions like the FNPF, and a lack of accountability to the taxpayers of Fiji for government spending and deals on Fiji’s resources.
I said that I would continue to write for the ordinary people of Fiji and the USP member countries, whose taxes paid my salary; that I had a different view of what taxpayers wanted and needed from USP “professors” in terms of publications and policy advice.
Nor, I said, would I compromise my basic human right to freedom of expression.
It will not surprise you that we could not come to an agreement.
Totally exhausted after my previous long battle for my normal three-year contract renewal and the sudden recall to Fiji, I saw the writing on the wall and resigned with some compensation.
The costs of academic freedom
After Kagoshima, I lay low for another six months in Cairns, Australia as Adjunct Professor (without salary) at The Cairns Institute, James Cook University.
Upon returning to Fiji in 2012, I was taken in for questioning by the Police Criminal Investigation Department.
While in the company of my lawyer a friendly CID officer (a well-known name today though no longer in his position) showed me my CID file.
That file had a record of preliminary meetings about me.
The meeting participants were well known in prosecution circles.
The CID took away my computer and phone, but eventually failed to lay any charges.
Some of my professorial colleagues continued to quietly work at USP for more than 10 years after I was forced to resign, forever reminding me of the great long-term financial costs that come with academic freedom.
Academic censorship continued
The Bainimarama Government continued to trample on basic human rights in Fiji, including freedom of speech, with the collaboration of some media owners, except The Fiji Times which desperately tried to keep its head
above water, despite the draconian prosecutions against publishers, editor and journalists.
In that period, no Fiji journalist dared to ask for details about what the government was doing with the valuable rights over mahogany forests, mining agreements, shares in Yasana Holdings and Fiji TV, hundreds of millions
of FNPF assets and large infrastructure road projects.
No lawyers’ conference ever made an issue about the late David Burness’s legal challenge to the reduction of FNPF pensions being thrown out of court by a military government decree.
No accountants’ or auditors’ congress ever made an issue that five years of Auditor General’s Reports were suppressed until after the 2014 Elections under a 2013 Constitution imposed by the military Bainimarama Government, but never passed by any Parliament.
Not just university academics, but also lawyers and accountants struggled for freedom of expression, despite the many vital issues requiring public debate in their areas of expertise.
After his resignation from USP, this Professor of Economics continued to write critical articles for The Fiji Times as he was advised to do by a lawyer friend.
The hypocrisy today
How utterly astonishing is it that the very people who created this oppressive era of intimidation after 2006 are today lamenting that Fiji’s academics, accountants and lawyers are failing in their duty to the public to engage
in public debate.
How utterly astonishing that one of the most powerful Ministers in Bainimarama’s Government accuses the Opposition parliamentarians of lasulasu and jooth, when the public can readily see that not just economics professors, but university vice-chancellors, solicitor-generals, government statisticians, military and career police officers, public enterprise board members, and many others, can be sent packing with the stroke of a pen.
But this hypocrisy would not be surprising to any decent historian who knows how undemocratic governments have worked through history.
And no such governments hav ever been friends of academics and other professionals who criticise them.
- WADAN NARSEY is a former Professor of Economics at The University of the South Pacific. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of The Fiji Times.
