National Federation Party leader Biman Prasad remains silent about a statement published by his provisional candidate, Hiroshi Taniguchi.

Mr Taniguchi, in a statement published in his website, had outlined his plans to “expel” 20 per cent of the civil service workforce, Hiroshi Taniguchi drama continues amongst other controversial views ranging, from land ownership to the use of the American dollar as a currency here.

The Japanese educator claimed that Government was quite “chubby, compared with that of most other countries”.

He also said: “…it was unfair for landowners to receive huge amounts of money for their land making them rich without doing any job.”

Mr Prasad, when contacted yesterday, he said: “Sorry, I do not talk to the Fiji Sun.”

However, the party leader uploaded a video on the official NFP Facebook page, addressing the issue of civil servants, but made no reference to Mr Taniguchi’s earlier statement.

National Federation Party provisional candidate, Hiroshi
Taniguchi

Instead, he took a swipe at FijiFirst and claimed that FijiFirst was “spreading lies about the NFP’s position on civil servants in this country.”

“Let me assure the civil servants and let me state this very categorically – the NFP never had any plans to reduce the size of the civil service nor reduce civil service salaries,” the NFP leader said in the video.

Mr Prasad also made no comments concerning the controversial statement made on landowners by one of his provisional candidates.

People’s Alliance Response

The People’s Alliance leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, said proposed plans pointed out by Mr Taniguchi in his statement, were not in line with the party’s manifesto, it hoped to release soon.

He is calling on NFP’s leader to deal with the matter.

“Comments such as this can affect our bid to win the General Elections, so I am asking the party leader of the National Federation Party leader to be mindful of that,” Mr Rabuka said.

“Just as we had to bring in some of the corrective measures and asked our provisional candidates to tone it down after the opinion piece was published by Liliana Warid-Pareti.

“We will not be releasing any aspects of our manifesto until the date of the election is known and the writ is issued.”

Mr Rabuka is expected to have further talks with Mr Prasad about the statement made by Mr Taniguchi.

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