RATU JONI MADRAIWIWI

Corruption undermines public confidence in our country and institutions. It is a huge cost to the economy. Combating it will take courage, determination and perseverance. The most effective means of doing it is by creating a climate not receptive to corruption.

Not five generations distant, Fijians were cannibalizing each other. The missionaries and the colonial administration imposed a veneer of civilization on their native subjects. However, it is not apparent that they imparted to them any profound understanding of the process involved in the maintenance and upholding of the law.

One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.

When national leaders address the people of Fiji in specifically Christian terms, whatever the occasion, nearly half of our people are excluded. When prayer in mixed company is uttered in terms of a purely Christian God, we unintentionally omit and diminish others present of different faiths.

There will necessarily be a tension between the church and tradition on one hand and human rights on the other.

We need to move forward and beyond the point where we endlessly pursue the demons bequeathed us by our history.

Ultimately, the best guarantor of the rule of law is not the state and the branches which comprise it but the recognition by people of its value and their willingness to fight for, and uphold it.

It is easy to decry the nature of ethnic politics in this country. We are hostages to history and the ethnic compartmentalization that began in the colonial era

Not five generations distant, Fijians were cannibalizing each other. The missionaries and the colonial administration imposed a veneer of civilization on their native subjects. However, it is not apparent that they imparted to them any profound understanding of the process involved in the maintenance and upholding of the law.

Ultimately, the best guarantor of the rule of law is not the state and the branches which comprise it but the recognition by people of its value and their willingness to fight for, and uphold it.

One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.

When national leaders address the people of Fiji in specifically Christian terms, whatever the occasion, nearly half of our people are excluded. When prayer in mixed company is uttered in terms of a purely Christian God, we unintentionally omit and diminish others present of different faiths.

Corruption undermines public confidence in our country and institutions. It is a huge cost to the economy. Combating it will take courage, determination and perseverance. The most effective means of doing it is by creating a climate not receptive to corruption.

There will necessarily be a tension between the church and tradition on one hand and human rights on the other.

We need to move forward and beyond the point where we endlessly pursue the demons bequeathed us by our history.

It is easy to decry the nature of ethnic politics in this country. We are hostages to history and the ethnic compartmentalization that began in the colonial era