Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian

A place to share my thoughts and reflections

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  • A wise speech from Beijing — but what does it mean for Fiji and the Pasifika?

    When Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing addressed the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing this past Wednesday, he delivered what may be the most thoughtful speech on statecraft heard in the region this year. It deserves to be read carefully here in Suva, because the principles he outlined speak directly to the delicate position Fiji and our Pasifika neighbours now occupy.

    Chan’s central question was this: how do we strengthen our own security without weakening the security of others? It is a question that resonates across the Blue Pasifika, where we are being courted, pressured, and pulled by competing powers — Australia, the United States and the West on one side, China and India on the other.

    His answer drew on a well-known insight in international relations: the “security dilemma.” One country’s efforts to make itself safer almost inevitably make others feel less safe, triggering a spiral where everyone ends up more insecure. For small states like ours in the Pasifika, this is not an abstract theory. It is our daily reality.

    Consider what has unfolded in just the past few months

    In July, Fiji signed the Ocean of Peace Alliance with Australia — our first mutual defense treaty. Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese formalised what is now called the Vuvale Union, under which the two nations agreed to consult each other over any “security-related development” which may threaten their sovereignty. Australia committed $1.5 billion over ten years. In response to questions in Parliament, Fiji’s Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted the pact would not affect our relationship with China.

    Around the same time, China test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a submarine into the South Pasifika. At the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Palau earlier this month, Pasifika leaders expressed “concern” and called on all states undertaking such tests to provide at least 24 hours’ advance notification. Naoero dissented.

    Days earlier, Australia and the United States announced a combined $580 million in funding for Pasifika nations, explicitly framed as part of their competition with China for influence in the region.

    These are the dynamics Chan warned about. Each action, taken in isolation, may seem justifiable. Collectively, they produce exactly the spiral of insecurity he described — and it is the Pasifika that feels the effects.

    What Chan got right

    The Singaporean minister’s most powerful insight was his redefinition of “winning.” To him, winning is not about “outgunning or outlasting a rival.” It is about winning others over through “the power of our example,” not “the example of our power.”

    He quoted the ancient philosopher Mencius: “Power may compel others to comply. But in the end, it is trust that truly wins others over.” This is the distinction between what Chinese strategic thought calls badao — the hegemonic way of force, which is brittle and unsustainable — and wangdao, the kingly way of virtue, where others follow voluntarily.

    For Fiji, this is a welcome framework. We have long insisted on an independent foreign policy. We are friends to all and enemies to none. We do not wish to be conscripted into anyone’s alliance. We have repeatedly rejected the idea of hosting a permanent Chinese military presence, and just as firmly rejected the notion that signing a defense treaty with Australia means we are taking sides against Beijing.

    Chan’s emphasis on “strategic patience” also deserves attention. “Not every capability needs to be advertised,” he said. “Not every advantage needs to be immediately pressed. Not every provocation demands an immediate response.” A great power that feels compelled to respond to everything is, in effect, letting its rivals set its agenda. A confident power can afford restraint.

    And his final principle — “first, do no harm” — is one we would ask every partner to embrace. Trust, he said, “is built by being consistent, but lost in a single instant.” Every unnecessary provocation, every military test without warning, every dollar of aid that comes with strings attached is a withdrawal from a trust account that is very expensive to fill.

    Where the speech falls short

    Yet for all its wisdom, Chan’s speech was delivered from the perspective of a confident small state that has found its equilibrium. Fiji’s position; as well as most Pasifika island states, is more precarious.

    The security dilemma Chan describes is not something we can solve through statecraft alone. It is an external condition being imposed upon us. When Australia and the US announce half a billion dollars in funding explicitly as a measure to “battle China for influence,” we are not participants in that rivalry — we are the terrain on which it is being fought.

    More troubling is the silence at the heart of the speech. The Pasifika’s own security agenda — as articulated in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and the Boe Declaration — identifies climate change as “the single greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of Pacific peoples”. Yet climate change barely features in the frameworks the major powers bring to our region. Their security is defined by military competition; ours is defined by survival.

    Chan’s speech does not grapple with this. Its conception of “winning” remains strategic and economic, not ecological. For a Fijian, any definition of security that does not prioritise the survival of our islands is fundamentally incomplete.

    What Fiji and the Pasifika should take from this

    Chan Chun Sing’s speech is a valuable contribution to a conversation the Pasifika needs to have. Its emphasis on redefining winning, building trust, and exercising restraint offers a genuine alternative to the zero-sum logic that too often dominates great power discourse.

    But its principles are those of a confident state speaking to other confident states. For Fiji and the Pasifika, they are aspirations to hold our partners to, not descriptions of the world we live in.

    The true test of the statecraft Chan describes is not whether great powers can articulate wise principles. It is whether they can subordinate their rivalries to the existential security needs of the region they are courting.

    Until they do, the “spiral of insecurity” will remain a lived reality for the Blue Pasifika — not a theoretical warning from a comfortable lecture hall in Beijing.

  • The Undying Incumbents

    On Political Addiction to Power and Leaders Who Cannot Let Go

    US Senator Mitch McConnell returned to office this week after a 3-month absence following a fall and a subsequent illness. At 84, the Senator appeared in a wheelchair and cast his first vote since June, helping advance the nomination of a federal judge. His return was presented as an act of determination. McConnell himself described his recovery as “a long and often frustrating process,” complicated by the lingering effects of childhood polio. 

    There is something undeniably human in that perseverance. But there is also something institutionally troubling in the fact that the return of a single elderly senator can become a matter of national political consequence. In a closely divided chamber, one member’s presence—or absence—can affect the government’s ability to conduct its business.

    The question, then, is not whether McConnell should be admired for returning to work. It is whether a political system should become so dependent on any one individual that personal health becomes a governing variable.

    McConnell’s case is not unique. It is a symptom of a broader problem that stretches across the democratic world and beyond: political leaders who cannot, or will not, make way for the next generation.

    The problem is not age. It is the attachment to power beyond the point of usefulness—and the systems that make departure difficult.

    When Power Becomes a Lifetime Possession

    Consider President Paul Biya of Cameroon.

    In June, at the age of 93, Biya left Yaoundé for what his office described as a “brief private stay in Europe.” That brief stay became a 73-day absence. He returned from Geneva in August, but his limited public appearance did little to settle questions about his health or the exercise of presidential authority in his absence. Opposition figures described the country as operating on “autopilot.” 

    The controversy was not simply about an elderly president taking time away. It was about the uncertainty surrounding the continuity of government in a highly centralized political system.

    Cameroon’s constitutional arrangements had previously placed the president of the Senate in the line of succession if the presidency became vacant. In April 2026, parliament approved a constitutional amendment reintroducing the office of vice president, abolished in 1972. The new VP would be appointed and dismissed by the president and would assume presidential duties in the event of death, resignation, or permanent incapacity. Supporters described the reform as a measure for continuity. Critics argued that it concentrated even more power in the presidency. 

    The reform also intensified speculation about succession. Some observers raised the possibility of a dynastic transition involving Biya’s son. The broader concern remains legitimate: when succession depends primarily on the preferences of an incumbent, institutional continuity can become inseparable from personal rule. 

    Biya has governed Cameroon since 1982. Much of the country’s population has known no other president. In a nation where young people constitute a substantial share of the population, the distance between the age of the leadership and the age of the governed raises an unavoidable question: when does continuity become stagnation?

    Different Systems, Similar Dependence

    McConnell and Biya are not equivalent figures.

    One is a senator in a constitutional republic with established institutions, competitive elections, and a defined term of office. The other is an authoritarian ruler who has governed Cameroon for more than four decades. Their political circumstances, powers, and responsibilities are fundamentally different.

    Yet their cases illuminate a common institutional vulnerability: the tendency to treat political authority as a lifetime possession rather than a temporary public trust.

    In McConnell’s case, the concern is not that he returned to the Senate. It is that the narrow balance of power can make the presence of one aging lawmaker disproportionately consequential.

    In Biya’s case, the concern is more profound: the concentration of executive authority, the uncertainty surrounding succession, and the absence of transparent mechanisms for ensuring continuity when the president is unavailable.

    These are different problems. But both invite the same question: What happens when institutions become too dependent on individuals?

    A Global Pattern

    The phenomenon is hardly confined to Washington or Yaoundé.

    Across the world, political systems struggle with entrenched incumbency, aging leadership, dynastic politics, and the reluctance of established parties to make room for successors.

    In the US, the advanced age of several senior lawmakers has prompted recurring debates about congressional renewal and the transparency of politicians’ health. In countries with weaker institutional checks, long-serving leaders have sometimes blurred the distinction between the state and the individual who governs it.

    Elsewhere, political families continue to dominate public life. In such systems, leadership can become a form of inheritance, with public office passed from one generation to the next as though it were a family asset.

    None of this is entirely new. But the persistence of these patterns raises concerns about political renewal, accountability, and the capacity of institutions to adapt.

    A healthy political system should not depend on the indefinite survival of a particular leader, family, or political faction.

    Why Leaders Refuse to Let Go

    Why does political power become so difficult to relinquish?

    The reasons are both structural and psychological.

    Incumbency brings name recognition, donor networks, media access, institutional influence, and a considerable advantage over challengers. Political parties often protect familiar figures because they appear safer than untested alternatives. Supporters, too, may fear that a change in leadership will threaten their interests.

    There is also the psychology of power. After decades in public life, office can become more than a job. It can become an identity, a source of status, and a shield against irrelevance.

    For some leaders, stepping aside may feel like surrender. For others, it may raise uncomfortable questions about their legacy, their influence, or their future.

    And for political parties, succession can be dangerous. A strong successor may eventually become a rival. So the incumbent remains, the alternatives are weakened, and renewal is postponed.

    In Fiji, we have our own expression for the instinct to cling to what one has: vesu mona—the attachment to what is familiar, secure, or already possessed. In politics, that instinct can become especially powerful when office offers not only influence but protection, prestige, and access to resources.

    The result is a political class that can reproduce itself while insisting that it is indispensable.

    The Cost of Staying Too Long

    The consequences are not merely generational.

    When leadership becomes entrenched, younger talent struggles to emerge. New ideas are filtered through old political calculations. Succession planning becomes an exercise in loyalty rather than merit.

    Institutions may begin to revolve around the leader rather than the office. Decisions become slower, accountability weaker, and public administration increasingly vulnerable to personal influence.

    The risks become especially acute when a leader’s health deteriorates.

    First comes the walking stick. Then the wheelchair. Then the questions: Who is really governing? Who makes the decisions? Who has access to the leader? What happens if the leader can no longer perform the duties of office?

    These are not questions that should arise only during a medical crisis. They should be answered by institutions long before a crisis occurs.

    A political system that has failed to prepare for succession can turn a private matter of health into a public emergency.

    What Would a Healthier System Look Like?

    The answer is not to purge older leaders from public life.

    Experience matters. Institutional memory matters. Political wisdom often comes with age. A democracy should not confuse youth with competence or longevity with failure.

    But transition must become normal, and succession must be institutional rather than personal.

    That requires several reforms:

    * Clearer term limits and retirement arrangements, where appropriate, to prevent the indefinite accumulation of power.

    * Transparent and constitutionally sound procedures for dealing with incapacity and ensuring continuity of government.

    * Appropriate health and financial disclosure requirements, balanced against legitimate privacy concerns.

    * Stronger safeguards against political dynasties and conflicts of interest.

    * Political parties that cultivate successors rather than suppress potential rivals.

    * Electoral reforms that widen participation and reduce the advantages of entrenched incumbency.

    * A political culture that values departure as much as achievement.

    The goal is not to discard experience. It is to ensure that experience is passed on rather than used to justify permanent occupation of public office.

    The Courage to Leave

    McConnell’s return to the Senate is a reminder of personal determination. Biya’s long absence from Cameroon is a reminder of the risks that arise when a political system becomes too closely identified with one individual.

    Neither story, by itself, proves that an elderly leader should leave office. Nor should age alone determine a politician’s fitness to serve.

    But both cases invite a larger reflection on the relationship between leadership and institutions.

    A government should not depend on the physical endurance of one person. A nation should not have to wait for a leader’s final departure before beginning to prepare for the future.

    The deeper problem is not that old leaders remain.

    It is that political systems sometimes make them too difficult to replace, too powerful to challenge, and too central to survive without.

    And when that happens, personal frailty becomes a public crisis.

    The true test of leadership is not merely the ability to hold power.

    It is the wisdom to know when power must be shared, when successors must be prepared, and when the time has come to let go.

  • Respect in a Time of Toxicity

    Fiji, we have a problem.

    It is in our phones, our comments, and, increasingly, our homes. Fijians are hurling abuse at fellow Fijians they have never met. The anger is palpable. Some seem to wake up each morning determined to find someone to attack.

    I feel sorry for them—and for the families who must live with the consequences of that bitterness.

    Behind a pseudonym, people sometimes become crueler than they would dare to be in person. Anonymity does not conceal the spirit; it reveals how we choose to use our freedom. Perhaps some of this anger is rooted in old wounds, disappointment, or unresolved trauma. But trauma is not a licence to wound others.

    And this is happening at a critical moment in our nation’s life.

    We are rebuilding trust, debating our constitutional future, trying to recover economically, and attempting to heal from decades of division. At such a time, unchecked anger is not harmless. It spills over into our institutions, our communities, and our homes.

    We have seen a former Prime Minister publicly humiliate a former comrade and fellow MP. We have witnessed the former leader publicly abuse a journalist. We have endured the condescending arrogance of a former Minister who seemed to claim authority over everything.

    And yes, we continue to live under the 2013 Constitution, shaped by the long shadow of military strongman culture—a legacy many believe diverted our nation from a more promising path to prosperity.

    When leaders behave badly, followers learn that such behaviour is acceptable. When those in authority normalise contempt, it becomes easier for everyone else to do the same.

    When outrage becomes the currency

    Our social media algorithms reward outrage. They draw us into petty disputes, turn neighbours against neighbours, and amplify the most provocative voices.

    An insult attracts more attention than a thoughtful solution. A threat travels faster than the truth.

    This is not merely a matter of bad manners. It erodes trust. It teaches our young that politics is synonymous with abuse. It discourages decent people from entering public life. It divides families and communities. And ultimately, it damages our reputation, social cohesion, and economic prospects.

    But we cannot blame social media alone.

    We must also look in the mirror.

    Have we shared an insult because it made us laugh? Have we amplified a cruel post? Have we remained silent while someone was bullied? Have we mistaken humiliation for strength and aggression for courage?

    The Fijian way is not this.

    We have veiwekani—our bonds of kinship and relationship. We have veidokai—mutual respect. We have veilomani—care and compassion for one another. We have vakarokoroko—humility and reverence.

    These are not merely words from our cultural inheritance. They are values we must actively practise, especially when we disagree.

    Respect is not weakness. It is one of the foundations of a strong nation.

    Reclaiming our decency

    What can we do?

    First, pause before posting. Ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Not every thought deserves an audience.

    Second, refuse to feed the outrage machine. Do not share toxic content simply because it is entertaining or confirms what you already believe. Every share gives it more power.

    Third, hold our leaders to higher standards. Criticise policies, decisions, and conduct—but do not strip people of their dignity. Accountability and cruelty are not the same thing.

    Fourth, create digital talanoa spaces where respect is non-negotiable. We need conversations that welcome disagreement without permitting abuse, threats, or humiliation.

    Fifth, support genuine truth and reconciliation. Healing cannot take place if we continually reopen old wounds for political advantage, personal gratification, or online engagement.

    We can be angry and still be decent.

    We can disagree profoundly and still recognise one another’s humanity.

    We can challenge authority without abandoning respect.

    And we can defend our principles without destroying our relationships.

    The screen will reflect what we choose to feed it. If we feed it outrage, it will return more outrage. If we feed it truth, respect, and hope, perhaps we can begin to change the tone of our national conversation.

    This is not just about social media. It is about the kind of Fiji we want to leave to our next generation.

    Let us choose courage over cruelty. Accountability over humiliation. Dialogue over abuse.

    Let us reclaim the values that have held our communities together—and make them visible again in the way we speak, disagree, and lead.

    For our families. For our communities. For Fiji’s future.

    Vinaka vakalevu.

  • The Demographic Suicide of Aging Nations

    From Washington to Brussels to Canberra, aging powers are repelling the workers they need — and calling it policy.

    Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt asks: “Can America continue to prosper even if it veers into indefinite depopulation?” For the first time since the Great Depression, population decline looms. It could arrive before a baby born this year enters high school, Eberstadt warns, and America is “not well positioned to pass the stress test that depopulation will unforgivingly impose.”

    Washington’s response is the opposite of what the moment demands.

    In 2025, US population growth was just 0.5%. Net international migration fell from 2.7 million to 1.3 million. In 2026, net immigration could range from a gain of 185,000 to a loss of 925,000 — enough to shrink the population by over 400,000, a decline unseen since 1970.

    This is arithmetic. The native-born population is aging, fertility is at record lows, and deaths increasingly outnumber births. Immigration is the only variable that can meaningfully change the trajectory — yet Trump administration policies are sharply reducing net migration and accelerating decline.

    Europe is trapped in the same contradiction. It needs immigrants to sustain its economies and welfare systems. An internal EU report predicts a decline of nearly two million working-age people annually to 2040; migration is already slowing natural decline. Yet anti-immigrant politics is rising, with right-wing parties capitalizing on cultural anxiety. Europe needs immigrants but treats them as threats.

    China faces a starker cliff. After its disastrous one-child policy, it has one of the world’s fastest-aging populations. Its working-age population, once around one billion, could fall to 300 million by 2100. Beijing has loosened birth limits and pivoted aggressively to robotics. By 2024, China installed more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined and accounted for 90% of humanoid robots shipped globally. The logic: if you cannot replace workers with babies, replace them with machines. But robots do not pay taxes, consume goods, or build communities. They are a stopgap, not a solution.

    Australia offers a warning. Without immigration, it is a generation from the same decline as Europe and the US. It depends increasingly on Pasifika workers, especially from Fiji, under programs like PALM. Canberra calls its relationship with Fiji “Vuvale” — family. Australians can enter Fiji visa-free; Fijians cannot do the same in Australia. As one Fijian commentator put it: “In the Vuvale family, one sibling is trusted with the house keys while the other is asked to wait outside until Immigration finishes checking their references.” Australia welcomes Pasifika labor for orchards, hospitals, and aged care, but closes the door when those workers want to visit relatives. This is not partnership. It is exploitation dressed as family.

    Pasifika nations are not passive. They see the contradiction: needed as labor, rejected as visitors. They see remittances — Fijian workers in Australia send home about $2,010 monthly — but also visa rejections and waiting rooms. Australia’s demographic future depends on the Pasifika, yet its politics treats them as temporary conveniences. That cannot hold.

    The US is closing the door entirely. The Supreme Court’s expansion of deportation powers, reduced temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands, and the chilling effect on legal immigration all point one way: a nation of immigrants repelling immigrants. This is demographic suicide dressed as border security.

    Eberstadt warns that America has developed “undesirable new habits — political, social and economic” that steady growth masked. Depopulation will expose them. A shrinking population means fewer workers paying into Social Security and Medicare, fewer consumers, fewer entrepreneurs, fewer communities sustaining schools and hospitals. It means a smaller, older, poorer nation — not because of enemies, but because it refuses to see arithmetic.

    Can America still prosper as it depopulates? Eberstadt says yes. Human ingenuity and adaptability enriched the world during the population explosion; they can during decline. But that requires policy, practice, and behavior to change. It requires recognizing immigration not as a threat to national identity but as a lifeline to prosperity — and treating would-be immigrants as future citizens, not temporary labor or security risks.

    Australia calls Fiji family while keeping it outside. Europe decries demographic winter while voting for parties that worsen it. China bets on robots to replace the children it told people not to have. And America — built on the idea that anyone can become American — is building walls.

    Eberstadt asks whether a depopulating America can still prosper. Yes — but not if it keeps slamming the door on those who could help it do so. The arithmetic is unforgiving. The politics are worse.

  • Fiji is Sleepwalking Towards a Maritime DisasterThe Vanuatu tragedy must be a wake-up call.

    The sinking of the MV Matui off Vanuatu last Friday is a gut-wrenching reminder of what happens when maritime safety is treated as a bureaucratic inconvenience rather than a sacred duty. One person is dead, and more than thirty are missing. The search for survivors has largely been called off, with efforts shifting to the grim task of recovering bodies. A nation of islands, where ferries are not a luxury but a lifeline, is in mourning.

    That this occurred just days after the High Court in Suva ruled against Fiji’s Minister for Transport, Ro Filipe Tuisawau, is a coincidence that should not be ignored.

    The High Court ruling and the safety questions

    The ruling, delivered by Justice Anjala Wati, found that the Minister failed to act on a recommendation from the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF) regarding Goundar Fast Ferry’s MV Captain Inoke. The delay of over six months, the court said, contributed to the vessel’s registration being held up.

    On the surface, this looks like a straightforward case of bureaucratic inertia. The vessel had undergone five safety and technical assessments and completed a four-hour sea trial. Thirty-eight of thirty-nine identified defects had been rectified. MSAF’s former CEO had reportedly concluded the vessel was “safe, technically fit and seaworthy”.

    But the “39 technical faults” figure is not a detail to be glossed over. It is a flashing red warning light.

    One fault—compass swinging and calibration—remained outstanding because, as the report itself noted, Fiji lacked qualified compass calibration experts. A ship’s compass is not a peripheral accessory. It is the most fundamental navigational instrument a vessel possesses. A ferry that cannot reliably determine its heading is a ferry that cannot guarantee it will not end up on a reef—or, as in Vanuatu, on the ocean floor.

    The Minister’s caution was not obstruction. It was the minimum standard of diligence.

    Goundar’s troubling safety record

    This is not an isolated incident of overzealous regulation targeting a struggling operator. Goundar’s safety record, as documented by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), is deeply troubling.

    In 2021, ITF inspectors revealed that Goundar had registered the MV Lomaiviti Princess III at 14 metres shorter and with a significantly lower gross tonnage than its previous registration in Canada. The implication was stark: by understating the vessel’s size, the company may have avoided critical maintenance and crew requirements mandated for a ship of its actual dimensions. The ITF’s inspector asked the obvious question: “Did the ship shrink? How does a ship lose 14 metres on the trip from Canada to Fiji?”

    The allegations did not stop there. ITF inspectors reported that at least one radar device and depth-measuring echo sounders were non-operational on a Goundar vessel—equipment essential for avoiding grounding. Crew members alleged that fire and protective equipment was not functioning. Former MSAF CEO Joeli Cawaki’s own report, while recommending registration, acknowledged that only 38 of 39 defects had been rectified.

    The Minister was being asked to sign off on a vessel that had failed its safety inspections repeatedly, that had a history of documentation irregularities, and whose operator had been accused of endangering passengers by falsifying safety records.

    The Vanuatu mirror

    Vanuatu’s tragedy is a mirror Fiji must look into.

    The MV Matui sank in rough seas, and the Vanuatu government’s own statement acknowledged the loss “appears to be the result of strong winds and marine warnings not being heeded, and possibly of negligence including overloading of the vessel”.

    The parallels are uncomfortable. Overcrowding has been a persistent complaint against Goundar’s services. Passengers have reportedly been forced to sleep on decks near toilet facilities. Hygiene and sanitation have been described as dire. These are not the hallmarks of a company that treats passenger safety as its paramount concern.

    Vanuatu’s response has been telling. In the wake of the sinking, the Prime Minister’s Office took direct control of the Vanuatu Maritime Safety Authority, transferring it from the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs to the Prime Minister’s portfolio, citing “questions being raised over the enforcement of maritime safety requirements”.

    That is what accountability looks like. When an agency fails to keep people safe, the highest office in the land takes responsibility for fixing it.

    The danger of judicial overreach

    The High Court’s ruling, while legally sound in its finding of administrative delay, risks setting a dangerous precedent. By framing the Minister’s caution as an unreasonable obstruction, the court has, perhaps inadvertently, elevated commercial timelines above safety verification.

    Justice Wati warned against delays “particularly where investors bring their investments into Fiji to serve citizens”. But what service is rendered to our citizens if the ferry they board is not seaworthy? What investment is protected if the first voyage ends in tragedy?

    Goundar Shipping provides a necessary service to maritime communities. But necessity is not a licence to cut corners. The people of Kadavu, Lomaiviti, Lau, Vanua Levu and Taveuni deserve safe, reliable transport—not a monopoly operator that has repeatedly been accused of endangering lives.

    The Minister’s decision to prioritise verification over speed was correct. The court’s ruling may force his hand. If it does, and if the MV Captain Inoke is registered and begins operating with unresolved safety issues, the responsibility for any future tragedy will rest not just with Goundar, but with every authority that allowed it to happen.

    What must happen now

    The MV Matui’s sinking should serve as an urgent call to action. Fiji’s maritime safety regime needs more than a judicial review; it needs a fundamental reassessment of how safety is verified, enforced, and prioritised.

    First, the High Court’s decision should be appealed or urgently reviewed. A technical fault rate of 39 identified defects, even with 38 rectified, is not a green light. It is a yellow warning that demands independent verification before any passenger boards.

    Second, the government must strengthen MSAF’s independence and capacity. The fact that Fiji lacked qualified compass calibration experts—a basic maritime competency—is an indictment of the regulatory infrastructure itself.

    Third, there must be a clear, enforceable mechanism for passengers and crew to report safety concerns without fear of retaliation. The ITF’s findings were based on testimony from seafarers and passengers who had the courage to speak out. That courage must be met with action.

    Finally, the Vanuatu government’s decision to place maritime safety under the Prime Minister’s direct oversight illustrates that Vanuatu is serious about this matter. When lives are at stake, the buck must stop at the top.

    Conclusion

    Minister Ro Filipe Tuisawau was right to stand firm. The court has ruled against him, but our seas have not yet passed judgment on the consequences of that ruling.

    Vanuatu’s tragedy is a warning. Our maritime travellers deserve better than to be the next lesson the region learns the hard way. The time to act is before the next ferry sinks, not after.

  • The Hinge, Not the Hand: 9/11 and the Acceleration of Decline

    Twenty-five years ago, the twin towers fell. For a brief moment, the world stood still. NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time. Le Monde declared, “We are all Americans.” It felt like a rupture—a before and an after. And in the quarter-century since, the question lingered: Was 9/11 the watershed that hastened the decline of the American empire and the West?

    The honest answer is yes—but not in the way most people imagine. 9/11 was not the cause of decline. It was an accelerant. It was a hinge that opened a door history was already pushing against. The unipolar moment was never going to last. The rise of China and India was already underway. The rot in American institutions predated the smoke of Lower Manhattan. What 9/11 did was tempt the United States into a series of choices that turned a manageable relative decline into a costly, self-inflicted detour—and in doing so, it hastened the arrival of a more multipolar world.

    Consider what followed. In the name of fighting terror, the US launched two long wars I saw up close and personal, expanded a global surveillance architecture, built a detention camp at Guantánamo that became a legal black hole, and embraced torture under euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation.” Iraq was invaded on false pretenses, destroying whatever moral authority the war on terror still possessed. Afghanistan dragged on for twenty years, only to end with the Taliban back in Kabul. The financial cost ran into the trillions. The human cost—US, Iraqi, Afghan, and beyond—is incalculable. And while Washington was fighting the last war, China was quietly becoming the world’s factory, India was liberalizing and growing, and the center of economic gravity was shifting back to Asia.

    This is the crux. The decline of American hegemony was not caused by 9/11. It was already baked into the structure of the post-Cold War order. The unipolar moment of 1991 to 2001 was a parenthesis, not a destination. The United States accounted for roughly forty percent of global GDP after World War II; today it is closer to a quarter. China joined the WTO in 2001, the same year as the attacks. India’s economic reforms began in 1991. The tectonic plates were already moving. What 9/11 did was distract the United States from managing that transition wisely. Instead of investing in infrastructure, education, and alliances, it poured blood and treasure into the Greater Middle East. Instead of adapting to a multipolar future, it tried to arrest history with firepower.

    The West, too, was fractured by the response. The Iraq War split Europe—old versus new, France and Germany versus the United States and Britain. NATO’s Article 5 solidarity gave way to bitter recriminations. The moral capital the West had accumulated over decades was squandered at Abu Ghraib and in the drone strikes that killed innocent civilians. The “rules-based order” began to look like a slogan rather than a principle. Meanwhile, China and India offered the developing world something different: investment without lectures, infrastructure without invasion, sovereignty without conditionality. The West’s model lost its monopoly on attraction.

    Domestically in the US, 9/11 fed the politics of fear. The Patriot Act normalized surveillance. Islamophobia became a vote-winning tactic. The security state grew. And the seeds of MAGA —the idea that America was being betrayed by its own elites, that the country needed to be taken back—were watered by the forever wars and the financial crisis that followed. The 2008 crash, not 9/11 alone, was the hammer blow to faith in Western institutions. But 9/11 set the stage: it concentrated power in the executive, normalized emergency politics, and made permanent war a background condition of American life.

    Yet to say that 9/11 hastened decline is not to say it caused collapse. The United States remains the world’s most powerful military, its largest economy, and the center of a web of alliances that no rival can yet match. The West is not dead. Europe, despite its dysfunctions, is still a regulatory superpower and a democratic anchor. The decline is relative, not absolute. It is the loss of unipolarity, not the end of relevance. And much of that loss was inevitable. The rise of China and India is not a rebellion against history; it is history returning to its older shape. For most of recorded time, Asia was the center of the world economy. The past two centuries of Western dominance were the anomaly. What we are witnessing is a reversion to the mean.

    So was 9/11 the watershed? It was a watershed in the way that a heart attack is a watershed for a patient with clogged arteries. The disease was already there. The attack did not create it. But it forced a crisis, triggered bad decisions, and accelerated the underlying condition. The wars, the debt, the surveillance, the torture, the polarization—these were choices. They were not inevitable. A different response—restrained, multilateral, focused on rebuilding legitimacy—might have allowed the United States to manage its relative decline with grace and remain a leading power in a multipolar world. Instead, it exhausted itself in the pursuit of primacy.

    Twenty-five years on, the lesson is not that America was brought down by terrorists. It is that empires often hasten their own decline by overreacting to shocks. The towers fell, and so did the illusion of invulnerability. But the deeper fall—the erosion of trust, the squandering of moral authority, the distraction from Asia—was self-inflicted. The empire was not killed on 9/11. It was given a reason to exhaust itself.

    The task now is not to mourn a lost unipolar moment. It is to build a sustainable role in a world that is returning to its natural, multi-civilizational shape. That world will not be dominated by any single power. It will be shaped by those who can adapt, who can rebuild their own foundations, and who can accept that history does not end—it only changes direction. 9/11 was a hinge. The door it opened leads to a different century. Whether the West walks through it with wisdom or resentment is still, for now, a choice.

  • Our Energy Is Wasted on the Wrong Battles While We Lose the War

    This past week, while Suva’s political class and its elite traded blows over whether the Hibiscus Festival should occupy Albert Park, I watched a nation’s attention span atrophy in real time.

    Let us be clear what we are arguing over: grass.

    In a tropical nation blessed with volcanic soil and humidity that makes vegetation explode with comical enthusiasm, some leaders have devoted oxygen to the existential threat of… lawn damage. Mow a field today and next week it looks like an abandoned rugby field. The idea that a week-long carnival could permanently scar Albert Park is as credible as claiming an afternoon shower will cause a lauqa.

    Meanwhile, our streets are drowning in meth. Our rivers carry sewage. Our beaches collect plastic. Our highways are rubbish dumps. The government has finally declared HIV a national crisis — better late than never. Our war on drugs appears to have paused. And Australia’s grip on our foreign policy tightens like a chokehold we have been convinced to call a hug.

    The Architecture of Dependency

    Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic: Fiji and Pasifika have received billions in development assistance over five decades. Bilateral grants. UN programmes. NGO taskforces. Climate resilience funds. Capacity-building workshops where expat consultants teach us what we already know.

    If money and expertise were the cure, we would have been healed generations ago.

    Why then do crises persist? Why do health indicators stagnate while aid flows increase? Why does each generation inherit the same structural vulnerabilities?

    The answer is not incompetence. It is design.

    What we call “the aid system” is not a safety net. It is a systemic cage — vendor lock-in for nations. Every sector is pre-wired to require perpetual Western input. Our budgets are negotiated in foreign capitals before they are ever debated in our own parliament.

    Consider the architecture:

    Debt and economy: IFI loans do not just transfer money; they transfer policy. Privatise assets. Deregulate markets for multinationals. Prioritise debt service over domestic resilience. Our sovereignty is mortgaged to lenders who profit from our perpetual “developing” status.

    Governance and civil society: Western funds cultivate a local elite whose careers depend on Western norms. They train our judges, bankroll our NGOs, script our reforms. The result is a generation of leaders unable to imagine indigenous or alternative paths.

    Climate finance: The most cynical layer. Labelled a grant, then buried in verification protocols, carbon audits, biodiversity reporting. We submit reams of paperwork; they submit the bill. They stay employed; we stay poor.

    Defence and surveillance: Training and bases in Fiji — the rent is paid via health grants and patrol boats. We host their chess pieces; in return they manage our crises just enough to prevent instability that would disrupt their supply chains. Take Australia’s MERIT system: ostensibly Fijian-run, yet its intelligence pipeline quietly routes enforcement through Canberra. Surveillance without recourse. Sovereignty without teeth.

    Viewed holistically, this is not development. It is a lease on our sovereignty.

    The Asian Century Is Here

    This is the Asian century, with China and India as its rising powers. Yet our politicians would rather debate Albert Park’s grass than confront this tectonic shift.

    China and India’s models are starkly different. They build, upgrade, install and supply without demanding we restructure land tenure or rewrite social policy. They treat us as sovereign clients, not wayward wards in need of moral rehabilitation. They do not pathologise our lifestyles in funding memos; they lay bricks.

    That is precisely why this alternative is treated as an existential threat in Western chanceries. It is not about “debt-trap diplomacy” — a phrase weaponised to delegitimise non-Western engagement. The West’s frantic pivot to Pasifika betrays the game. If Western aid were truly about our well-being, it would welcome burden-sharing. Instead, it frames it as a “values clash.”

    Why? Because a Fiji — a Pasifika — that can choose between multiple providers is no longer a captive market.

    The Question No One Asks

    Has the West ever wanted a healthy, independent Pasifika? Or does our ailing, indebted, perennially “aid-dependent” status serve as the perfect justification for perpetual guardianship?

    The West profits geopolitically from our chronic need. Solve the problem, lose the leverage. Perpetuate the dependency, keep the EEZ access and the military outpost. Addiction requires a dealer who profits from the cycle of withdrawal and relief.

    This is not conspiracy theory. It is incentive analysis.

    Break the Addiction

    The real revolution in Fiji and Pasifika sovereignty will not happen in parliament. It will happen in the boardroom where we decide, as a bloc, to treat Western aid as one option among many.

    If we accept aid from ten different sources, we have ten options. We can negotiate. We can reject condescension. We can build a hospital that uses Indian generics, a port financed by Japanese bonds, and a digital census funded by an Australian grant — without giving any one power veto over our internal affairs. We can demand that our intelligence infrastructure serves us, not foreign capitals.

    The West does not want us to have that menu. It wants us to have one menu: theirs.

    A patient with one doctor is a patient. A patient with ten doctors is a customer. And customers can walk away.

    Our perpetual “developing” status is not an accident of history. It is the price of monopoly. The moment we genuinely develop — economically, infrastructurally, intellectually — we cease to be a geopolitical asset and become a geopolitical equal.

    And equality is the one thing the Western aid empire has never been willing to export.

    The Grass Is Not the Problem

    So let us return to Albert Park. To the grass our leaders have treated as a national emergency while hospitals run short of medicines, while youth disappear into meth, while foreign policy is written in Canberra.

    The grass will grow back. It always does. That is the nature of grass in Fiji.

    But will our sovereignty? Will our health system? Will our children’s future?

    Those do not regenerate on their own. They require intention. They require strategic vision. Courage. They require leaders who understand that the battles worth fighting are not about lawns, but about the architecture of our own liberation.

    Break the addiction. Diversify the portfolio. Choose the pharmacy that heals without the handcuffs.

    Because while we argue about grass, the war for our future is being lost in silence.

  • A World Grounded: Remembering 9/11 from an Airport Lounge

    Where were you on September 11, 2001?

    The question itself is a generational touchstone. For me, the answer is a blur of time zones and disbelief—a day that began with routine and ended in a world irrevocably changed. I was in transit, returning from a United Nations assignment in Algiers, Algeria.

    Following a week at a UN conference, my team and I were ready to head home. Our days had been filled with the meticulous work of high-level security: liaising with Algerian officials over probable threats and confirming meeting protocols. Between these demanding tasks, we stole moments to enjoy the city’s striking contrast of vibrant life against arid hills, savoring incredible Algerian cuisine with the Mediterranean as our backdrop. With the conference ending on the 10th, all that remained was our flight back to Nairobi on the morning of September 11th.

    That Tuesday dawned bright and cloudless as we left for the airport. Our route was circuitous: a short hop to Lyon, then to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, and finally, a direct flight to Nairobi. The first leg to France was uneventful. During the brief layover in Lyon, we retreated to the quiet of the Air France Lounge.

    I was headed for the bar when I noticed a crowd frozen under the TV monitors. “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” I said to the barman, nodding at the screen. “What’s going on?”

    His reply was calm, almost casual. “A small plane hit one of the Twin Towers in New York.”

    Drink in hand, I joined the silent spectators. A quick mental calculation: it was just after 9 am on the East Coast. An accident? It seemed improbable. Then, as we watched, a second plane carved a fiery gash into the South Tower. A collective, horrified gasp sucked the air from the room. “What the f***…” I heard someone whisper. This was no accident. This was a deliberate, monstrous act.

    Instinct and duty took over. I reached for my phone to contact my Desk Officer in New York. The line was dead. I tried another number. Then my in-laws. Then my friend, John Aaron. Nothing. A chilling silence had fallen over the world’s communications.

    Amid this unfolding nightmare, our boarding call for Amsterdam was announced. The disconnect was surreal—walking away from the horror on the screen to board a plane into a sky that suddenly felt menacing. As we taxied for takeoff, my mind raced through the implications. If they can hit the towers, what else is a target? The UN Secretariat… it’s a glaring symbol. An aircraft coming from the east could approach it undetected down the East River. Having had an office overlooking both midtown Manhattan and the East River, I knew a plane could cause massive damage to the UN Secretariat. The questions were endless, the answers unknowable.

    One certainty cut through the noise: the world was grounding to a halt. The moment the seatbelt sign flicked off, I was in the aisle, speaking in low, urgent tones to my team. “Listen up. Partner up. When we land, follow me directly to the KLM desk. Every flight will be canceled; hotels will be jammed. We need to move fast.” I gave the same measured warning to the diplomats traveling with us, masking my deep alarm with a veneer of professional contingency planning.

    At Schiphol, the captain’s announcement confirmed it: “All flights to North America are canceled. Other destinations may be affected.” We were the first off the plane, a determined convoy heading for the transfer desk. The airport was already descending into chaos. My fears were confirmed: all transcontinental travel was frozen, including our flight to Nairobi. By sheer persistence, we secured the last rooms at a downtown Amsterdam hotel.

    On the courtesy bus, I finally got a call through to our Nairobi office, then to my wife at our home in Runda. Her voice was strained. She had been watching the same horrific replays, desperately trying and failing to reach our family and friends in New York. She filled in the devastating blanks: both towers were gone; the Pentagon had been struck; a fourth plane had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania. The scale of the attack was beyond comprehension.

    We checked into the hotel, dropped our bags, and gravitated to the bar. There, surrounded by other stranded travelers, we sat in silent witness, watching the impossible images replay deep into the night.

    September 11th began in the calm of an Algiers morning, seared itself into my memory from a lounge TV in Lyon, and ended in the hushed shock of an Amsterdam hotel bar. We spent 36 tense hours there before the skies slowly, cautiously reopened.

    On this, the 25th anniversary, may all who perished from the events of 9/11 continue to Rest in Everlasting Peace.

  • The Robotic Dogs of Shanghai—and the Real Reason China Is Building a Mechanical Army

    The images from the World Humanoid Robot Games were designed to shock and awe: bipedal machines outrunning Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record, throwing punches in boxing rings, and gliding across dance floors with eerie precision. Yet, when the PLA Daily subsequently urged researchers to accelerate the transfer of these “combatants” from laboratory to battlefield, Western observers instinctively reached for their sci-fi scripts. Here, they muttered, is the birth of the Terminator.

    But to understand China’s frantic push into humanoid robotics, one must look past the martial propaganda and visit a place far less dramatic: a senior residential complex in Shanghai. Earlier this year, my wife and I toured such a facility, and we were struck by robotic dogs. These four-legged companions were gently guiding residents with mobility issues, sharing quiet moments, and helping carry shopping for the frail elderly. It was a moment of profound clarity. While the West sees a future of autonomous killing machines, Beijing sees a future of caregivers, assembly-line workers, and—only as a logical extension—soldiers.

    The difference in perspective is rooted in a single, brutal demographic reality. China’s infamous one-child policy, now a historical scar, has mathematically ensured that the nation’s workforce will shrink by roughly 35% by 2050. An economy cannot sustain its status as the world’s factory floor when its workers are retiring faster than they are being born. Nor can a welfare state support 400 million elderly citizens without a robust tax base. Western chancelleries are preoccupied with Universal Basic Income and the ethics of job displacement; Beijing, however, views the humanoid robot not as a job-stealing interloper, but as the only viable replacement for a generation that never arrived.

    The robotic dogs we saw in Shanghai are the vanguard of this ideology. They are not experimental novelties but practical, deployed solutions to a social deficit in elder care. By handling the repetitive, physically demanding tasks of monitoring and escorting, they free up scarce human nurses to focus on emotional connection. The Chinese state is effectively decoupling economic productivity from biological reproduction, treating steel and silicon as the logical heirs to a demographically hollowed-out workforce.

    This domestic imperative completely reframes the defense narrative. The PLA’s urgency to deploy “combatants” is born less of imperial ambition than of existential anxiety. If the conscription pool dries up, how do you defend a superpower’s borders? The military humanoid is a corollary of the factory shortage, not the primary driver. War-fighting is an extension of industrial policy; if you lack young bodies for the trenches, you build mechanical proxies. The 100 procurement notices and academic studies reviewed by Reuters are simply the martial shadow cast by a deeper economic struggle.

    The asymmetry with the West is stark. Western innovation is mired in rigorous debates over alignment, liability, and AGI sentience—debates that, while vital, slow deployment to a crawl. Chinese state-backed enterprises, operating with unified direction, face fewer such constraints. By prioritizing utility over safety in the short term, they can deploy humanoids immediately into state-owned factories and municipal senior centers. This rapid, real-world integration generates vast operational datasets at a scale Western firms cannot match, constrained as they are by privacy laws and public skepticism. This is the same playbook that vaulted China to dominance in solar panels and electric vehicles: mass deployment drives down costs and accelerates iteration while the competition hesitates.

    To frame this solely as a militaristic power grab is to miss the forest for the trees. The advanced humanoid that can navigate a cluttered battlefield is fundamentally the same machine that can navigate a cluttered nursing home. The robots that sprint today are the descendants of the mechanical dogs that gently nudged elderly residents toward physical therapy in Shanghai yesterday. China is not rushing toward a robotic apocalypse; it is running away from a demographic cliff.

    The West watches the humanoid race and sees a threat to humanity. China watches it and sees the only way to salvage its social contract in an era of plunging birthrates. When the PLA speaks of combatants, it is speaking a language of survival—a recognition that in a nation running out of children, even the army must eventually be automated. The robotic dogs of Shanghai are not a distraction from the military buildup; they are its very foundation. And that, more than any choreographed dance or simulated punch, is the true story of China’s robotic future.

  • The Unfinished Revolution in Nicaragua: A Personal Recollection

    “Yes, that is how long Daniel Ortega has been around.”

    This simple acknowledgment came when I read the piece captured in the screenshot below. In August/September 1989, I was a young military adviser at UNHQ in New York, and was part of a UN assessment mission traversing Central America—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica—nations scarred by ideology and violence. We moved carefully, deliberately, ensuring the anti-Sandinista Contras forces knew our schedule in Nicaragua, before we climbed into Sandinista MI-17 helicopters for low-altitude flights over territory where we could easily have been mistaken for targets.

    The irony was not lost on me. Only a few years earlier, Oliver North had become the face of the Iran-Contra Affair—secretly selling arms to Iran to fund Contra rebels, shredding documents, and lying to Congress. Now here I was, protected by the very Sandinista pilots, those weapons were meant to defeat, flying nap-of-the-earth through rugged Nicaraguan terrain, watching Sandinista commandantes demonstrate professionalism that commanded respect despite political differences.

    Those pilots were extraordinary. Their flying maneuvers through Contra-occupied territory were precise, confident, masterful. They kept us alive through sheer skill, navigating the same skies where American-funded rebels hunted below with stinger missiles. In those moments, suspended between US geopolitics and Nicaraguan reality, I understood something about how the world actually works—how ideology dissolves in the presence of competence, how enemies become temporary constructs when survival demands cooperation.

    And there was Daniel Ortega, head of the Sandinista government, a revolutionary leader who had once seemed destined to reshape Central America. To his credit—and I do not offer this lightly—he conceded power to Violeta Chamorro, the widow of the man his revolution had violently overthrown. I was privileged to meet her in Managua alongside UN Envoy Iqbal Riza, the evening she won the presidential elections in late February, 1990. She carried herself with a dignity born of profound loss, a woman who had endured assassination of her husband and years of political warfare, now ascending through the very mechanisms of democracy, that revolutionaries had once dismissed as bourgeois illusion.

    It seemed then that Nicaragua had achieved something remarkable: a peaceful transfer of power, a revolution’s quiet end, a nation choosing reconciliation over revenge. The Cold War was ending. The Contras were demobilizing. Democracy, fragile but present, appeared to have won.

    That was then.

    Now, more than 40 years after his first rise to power, Daniel Ortega remains. Not as the revolutionary who graciously stepped aside, but as something far more familiar: a leader whose time has passed but who refuses to relinquish control. He has transformed from the young Comandante who once promised liberation into a figure of intransigence, presiding over a Nicaragua that has become increasingly authoritarian, his wife serving as vice president in a dynastic arrangement that mocks the revolution’s early egalitarian rhetoric.

    We have seen this before. We understand the weight of leaders who mistake longevity for legitimacy. The pattern is painfully familiar across the Global South—the revolutionary who becomes the dictator, the liberator who becomes the oppressor, the young idealist who ages into cynical self-preservation.

    What strikes me most, looking back from the distance of the Pasifika, is not Ortega’s transformation—that seems almost inevitable now. What strikes me is my own youthful faith that 1989 represented a genuine turning point, that the world was finally learning to settle disputes through ballots rather than bullets, that even revolutionaries could become democrats.

    I was wrong. The MI-17 helicopters still fly over Nicaragua, but now they serve a different kind of war—one fought against the Nicaraguan people themselves, against journalists and protesters and anyone who dares to question the Comandante who forgot to leave.

    Daniel Ortega has been around for so long that it is difficult to remember a Nicaragua without him. But perhaps that is precisely the problem. A nation cannot move forward when its leader remains trapped in the revolution he once led, frozen in time while his people yearn for a future he will not permit them to build.

    “Yes, that is how long Daniel Ortega has been around.”

    It is both a statement of fact and a lament—for Nicaragua, for revolution, for the bitter lesson that power, once acquired, is rarely surrendered willingly, even by those who once promised to share it.