Former Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) vice president Anare Jale claims that dismissed Cabinet Minister Aseri Radrodro was an obstacle to the SODELPA negotiation team in the wake of the 2022 General Elections as he tried multiple times to influence the party’s management board into coalescing with the FijiFirst party (FF).
Speaking to The Fiji Times yesterday, he said Mr Radrodro was now, again using the party to further his individual interest.
“The working committee has published the three positions it had made,” he said.
“One of it is to open negotiations with the FijiFirst party. Obviously, the negotiation is to conclude an agreement to form a Coalition Agreement.
“In 2022, I led the SODELPA negotiations team that met both PA (The People’s Alliance party) or NFP (National Federation Party) and FijiFirst party in order for SODELPA to decide the best party/parties to form a coalition with to run the government for four years until the next general elections.
“Aseri Radrodro was an obstacle to the efficient progress of my negotiation team and did not hide his preference for the FijiFirst party.” He said when his team presented its report to the SODELPA management board, Mr Radrodro had disputed that the report was not the work of their team and claimed that it was written by Lynda Tabuya.
“How insulting can someone be?”
Mr Jale said the SODELPA management board, however, were not swayed by Mr Radrodro despite several meetings initiated by him to influence the board into forming a coalition with FijiFirst.
“Despite Aseri’s endeavours, in further meetings of the SODELPA management board, to sway the board to form a coalition with FF party, the Board decided to form a coalition with PA or NFP.
“Aseri had benefitted a lot from the Coalition Agreement reached with PA/NFP. For the last year, 2023 he had been sitting pretty with the position of Minister for Education, receiving a higher salary than most of his former fellow ministers.”
In response, Mr Radrodro said it was unfortunate that Mr Jale was sharing information pertaining to their SODELPA Management Board meetings that was supposed to be confidential to the party.
“He knows the reasons why some comments were made the way they were,” said Mr Radrodro.
