Opposition Leader Voreqe Bainimarama claims the coalition Government has set out a plan to destroy Constitutional democracy in a modern, inclusive and progressive Fiji, put together by the FijiFirst Government.
While responding to the President’s speech at the Opening of the 2023-2024 Session of Parliament, Bainimarama said: “The Fiji that I speak in today is not the Fiji of 55 days ago. Today’s Fiji doesn’t care to follow the rule of the law.”
He said that it is a Fiji where the Prime Minister, his Attorney-General and his Ministers do not follow the Constitution which brought them to this Parliament in the first place.
Bainimarama said that they make their rules and disregard the law as and when it suits them.
“We have a Parliament where the Speaker without following the standing orders, without debate, has decided that parliamentarians can speak in languages other than English and say a Christian prayer excluding those of other faiths. A complete defiance of the standing orders and the spirit of the Constitution. We have a judiciary where the sitting Chief Justice has been suspended for frivolous matters,” Bainimarama said.
The Leader of Opposition also highlighted how independent Constitutional officers forced to resign or suspended without due process or independence.
“We have intelligent, diligent and professional civil servants, removed, terminated, suspended and sidelined without rhyme or reason or due process.”
“We have our regulatory processes being eroded, and illegal directives are issued because ministers, their political cronies and newly appointed civil servants believe that their interests supersede the law,” he added.
He said that Prime Minister almost every second day stating how he will remove the Constitution and thinking of circumventing the proper procedures laid out in the Constitution itself.
