Issue No: 885; 26 June 2001

The lecture came from the Australian High Commissioner to Fiji Susan Boyd when she addressed the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha's annual convention in Ba over the weekend.

Boyd stated: "It is important that the community as a whole recognises the validity of the new Parliament and is prepared to work through that". Boyd also stated that Australia had "used all the persuasive means at our disposal to encourage the holding of early elections and to limit the period of undemocratic political limbo".

She said: "The key to ensuring that these elections in fact provide the basis for the ongoing, peaceful and democratic development of Fiji lies with Fiji's political leaders and the decisions they make in the next weeks".

Boyd also stated that people expressed outrage at injustice: "we all have a deep sense of social justice. And this is accompanied by a deep sense of outrage when we feel the precepts of social justice ignored".

Referring to ethnic relations in Fiji. Boyd stated: "While there has been much publicity about the needs and aspirations of the indigenous Fijians during the past year, much less has been said publicly about the rights, needs and aspirations of the Indo Fijian community who make up some 44% of the citizens of Fiji. And not enough has been said about the significance of [the ethnic Indian] community or about its importance to the modern Fiji".

The weekend's Boyd speech is believed to be the strongest speech Boyd has made since 19 May last year when the terrorists took over the Parliament Complex with the assistance of defeated politicians, sections of the military, and ethnic Indian businessmen.