Issue No: 991; 1 August 2001

Only recently it announced the appointments for the Fiji Audio-Visual Commission. And within days of the appointment, the Board has advertised for the Chief Executive Officer's post. The advertisement deadline is also only 2 weeks from now. In Fiji the search for CEO's normally takes many months.

Fiji does not have any law on state appointments before elections. In the British Westminster tradition, it is assumed that civil servants and holders of public office are politically neutral. This has been found to be not the case in Fiji.

Prior to this, the Qarase regime made numerous other appointments on Boards. All there went to its cronies. Most of those appointed are now found to be supporting Qarase's political party the SDL.

The media has failed to highlight the appointments. This is in marked contrast to the media's attitude when the People's Coalition Government was making appointments to Boards. Under the People's Coalition Government, appointments made were on merit and showed a good ethnic and gender mix. The consequence was that many statutory boards were beginning to come out of their financial woes.

The Qarase regime has again taken the Boards to the SVT era when political appointees allowed the statutory organizations be run to the ground, and in the process giving the World Bank the excuse to demand that such bodies be privatised.

Meanwhile, renegade politician Tupeni Baba has also started promising statutory body positions to its political supporters. Today's Fiji Times quotes rugby player Waisele Serevi as saying: "I will assist Dr. Baba by heading up the taskforce that will be created within the Institute of Sports".