Lying Patrick Wong finds it hard to fool people

That Fiji Visitors Bureau chair, Patrick Wong, now realises that his cooked-up tourist arrivals figure he whipped up last week wasn’t a very good lie to have flung at the general public. And it sure has hit him back in his lying face. His hyped-up tone has mellowed down to one of great concern with his latest statement saying that visitor arrivals concern him and Tourism Fiji. And this is only a few days after he and his interim minister Khaiyum and Dixon Seetoo tried to con the people into believing that tourism is humming again in Fiji. So why the sudden change of tone Patrick? Is it because we have exposed how screwed up your arrivals figures are?

He says visitor arrivals were hard to predict. Of course he will say this considering that it was he who promised his tyrant boss Frank Bainimarama that he can bring in 571,000 tourists in 2008. Now that 2008 has come and gone, reality has proven that only 532,000 people (not tourist because the figure includes returning locals) visited Fiji which is 39,000 short of what shorty Patrick promised. That’s a big error percentage in Patrick’s prediction which now color his flawed prediction as nothing but a big lie.

He goes on to say that the largest growth in arrivals came from India and China at 19%. But what is there to cheer about with these Asian arrivals who have taken advantage of Frank regime’s no visa policy to Fiji  for all Indian and Chinese nationals. Do you see them at the resorts? Hardly ever we are told. How sure is Patrick that these visitors are really just visiting and not doing some blackmarket job along Suva’s chinatown. Or how sure is Patrick that these Chinese visitors are not the 100 odd Chinese workers brought in by the Chinese Embassy to build their new chancery in Suva denying local contractors and construction workers from participating in their project.

Ok Patrick and Aiyaz, now that you have your double up budget of $28million of taxpayers money, can Fiji really look forward to an increase in tourist arrivals of 100% to 1million “real” tourists in 2009? Huh, you’ll be lucky to get 500,000 tourists with the way you guys are going? Oh perhaps your latest gloomy concern Patrick is another cover up by you and Aiyaz to justify another pending announcement that your overly optimistic forecast for 2009 will have to be revised downwards to less than 600,000? If so, why increase the FVB budget by double if your end result is less tourists than what FVB use to attract with half the money? But let’s wait and see how successful these two will be in converting the 100% growth in their budget to a 100% growth in visitor arrivals. We can guarantee you they will fail. That’s a sure shot.