Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and National Federation Party MP Parmod Chand.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has hit out at controversial comments attributed to National Federation Party MP Parmod Chand.
He also criticised the NFP for moving away from the vision of the pioneer leaders of the party.
The vision included equality and unity not the politics of division. He was responding to comments people alleged Mr Chand made at a political meeting in Labasa.
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The alleged comments included anti-Muslim and anti- South Indian sentiments. Because of the seriousness of the allegations, Mr Bainimarama said he had called on Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho to investigate Mr Chand.
Brigadier-General Qiliho confirmed yesterday that Police had started their investigations.
Mr Bainimarama said he told the Police Commissioner to visit the families in Labasa for fear that they may be threatened.
“I applaud their bravery and courage to come forward with those reports,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“NFP is going about saying what they have not been saying, but the three who have spoken out proves otherwise.
“The party members are saying something else in parliament and something else out of parliament and I think the Police Commissioner should start an investigation about the report that came out in today’s Fiji Sun.”
Mr Bainimarama said for an Indo-Fijian-based party, he was surprised about the alleged comments.
“That means they are not supposed to be trusted, there is quite a significant difference between this NFP and the previous NFP.
“The previous party heads of NFP wanted everything that we have been talking about here, everything to be equal.
“This party is just carrying the name but not the values, it shows by the way they are going around using racist comments and separating the Indo-Fijians.”
Among the issues they claimed Mr Chand told the people include:
- Fiji has taken a lot of money from Iran and Iraq and that Fiji will be taken over by those countries and Fiji will become a Muslim state.
- FijiFirst Government is a “Musalman” (Muslim) and “mandraji” (South Indian) party.
- Mr Bainimarama had the keys to the Republic of Fiji Military Forces armoury in 2000 and people should question where George Speight got the guns from, implying Mr Bainimarama backed the George Speight coup of 2000.
- If FijiFirst is voted in again, there will be another coup and this time the target will be Hindus who voted for Mr Bainimarama.
When Parmod Chand was approached for comments, he refused to comment stating that, “I will not speak to the Fiji Sun.”
NFP leader Biman Prasad declined to comment last night.
Edited by Percy Kean
Feedback: losirene.lacanivalu@fijisun.com.fj
