Dictator Frank Bainimarama’s game plan is a failure

The game plan behind no-school Frank Bainimarama’s “roadmap to nowhere” is easy to see.

In his “strategic framework” speech the dictator deliberately put the drafting of a new constitution on hold for three years.

First, it’s a means to consolidate his power. Second, it was a ploy to enable him in the future to blame nations such as Australia and New Zealand for not helping Fiji.

He knew all too well that the governments of Australia and New Zealand would not accept his five-year timeline, particularly if it included a three-year wait before work started on a new constitution.

Yet by making a call for engagement and re-engagement with our traditional international partners, the dictator was clearly hoping those countries might reverse their position and accept his terms.

But such crude gambit was never going to work.

For one thing, member nations of the Pacific Forum are not going to easily forget their bitter experience of Frank Bainimarama making solemn promises and then going back on his word.

For another, the wider international community, including the European Union, the United States the Pacific Forum and the Commonwealth, are at one in their insistence that Fiji must have elections sooner, rather than later.

In a word, the dictator’s game plan is a failure, which leaves him even further isolated from much-needed sources of financial support.

Unfortunately for us, the people of Fiji, we are condemned to share that isolation with him.

We are the innocent hostages of a dangerous fool.

Fiji Democracy Now