Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher, once wryly observed that “it is because of the hopeless that we are given hope”. He was referring, of course, to the task that responsible citizens must allot to themselves when faced with injustice or in the case of Fiji – the misrepresentations that seek to normalise the unbridled greed of those who govern us.
The import of his words gradually dawned on us as we read, with morbid fascination, about moves by Parliament’s emoluments committee, headed by the government members, to increase salaries right across the board – within the parliamentary chambers.
In so doing, government members seem to be doing away with one of the great divides that they once raised to differentiate themselves from the government they eventually replaced. What really struck us was the absence of any form of embarrassment on both sides of the house when they run to each other’s embrace only when it comes to increasing their pay. They all believe that they have earned it.
Has this Government forgotten the criticisms they levelled against the last government on this very issue?
When pressed on the matter, our Honourable Prime Minister seems to suggest that the mooted increase is driven by the need to increase the salaries of the ordinary members of Parliament. In the current setup, this means the Opposition members as every member on the government side is either a minister or an assistant minister.
It is hard to fault him for his logic. The ordinary member currently earns $40,000 as base pay. This is then topped up by committee allowances. Times are, indeed, hard when the shoe is on the other foot.
However, one cannot then use the same logic to justify an increase in the salaries of government members who are already earning well by comparison. It seems disingenuous to use the financial plight of ordinary members of Parliament as the basis for self-enrichment for members on the government side.
In fact, it never ceases to amaze us how seemingly altruistic plans put in place for the benefit of others often strike at the heart of the orchestrators self-interests. In this instance, it is like boomerang politicking that reminds us so much of the Bainimarama government — a time when there was always an ace up someone’s sleeve.
Let us be clear, the figures are not shocking in themselves. It is, rather, the duplicitous nature of the transaction that is worrying. In other words, they cannot pay themselves hefty pay rises and at the same time maintain the travesty that they are on the same side as the ordinary members of society fighting to put food on the table. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.
What makes the new recommendations bizarre is that it was not too long ago that the members of the current government voluntarily took a pay cut in a show of solidarity with all hard-working Fijians in their daily struggles.
Just six months ago, on the 22nd of November 2023, an act of Parliament spearheaded by the government, reduced all travel allowances for all parliamentarians starting from the Prime Minister down to ordinary members.
It took effect on the first of December 2023. Yet a mere six months later they are planning to replace this with more favourable terms. It seems that whatever they give away with one hand they take back, with interest, in another.
Have they given up identifying themselves with the ordinary Fijian? Have they abdicated on the arduous task of uplifting the livelihoods of those that they swore to serve and have decided, instead, to confine their best attempts to enriching themselves first?
Why did they give themselves pay cuts in the first place if they were going to reverse it a few months later? Was it false modesty that has become too painful to maintain? Indeed, in light of the latest developments, those pay-cuts sounded more like the sort of charades that con artists would use for entrapment. Now the distinctions between the Bainimarama government and our current one are falling like dominoes.
The chair of the bi-partisan emoluments Committee, the honourable Tabuya maintained that the pay rise is needed if we are to attract the best and brightest into those august chambers as well as retain existing expertise within its walls. In other words, as the late MP Militoni Leweniqila pointed out, “if you pay peanuts you get monkeys”.
The question then must be asked of the chair of the emoluments committee: does the current parliamentary pay structure mean that we already have monkeys masquerading as politicians in our august assembly? Or are our politicians simply engaging in monkey business since they view their current pas as peanuts?
What we need to keep in mind as we chart through the next few weeks is that Fijians are struggling daily as a result of years of bad governance. This struggle will only be worthwhile if Fijians are convinced that their government is sharing this burden with them.
The onus is on government members, therefore, to honour the people’s sacrifice by restraining their base instincts.
Nearly a hundred years ago, the English novelist George Orwell wrote a novella that rocked the world with the simplicity of its message: the base instincts of the power-hungry in any society endanger the most noble of plans.
What the government, through the emoluments committee, is proposing is a replay of the Orwellian nightmare so reminiscent of the last government. In this lurid vision of a false dawn, only the pigs get to make their marks.
We need this Government to keep to their promise that they are different. We need them to be sensitive to the plight of ordinary men and women – just like they promised.
Failure to do this will mean that they have reneged on their promise and that they are in fact telling us they are no different from their predecessor. If that is the case, then we are right back to where we started.
- Dr Tui Rakuita teaches in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Otago
- Sevanaia Sakai teaches in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific
