Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says he has heard a cynical few asking if he can continue governing and leading the country and adds these people must be joking.
He says the answer is yes.
While opening the Serua Provincial Council Meeting, Bainimarama says he has been to many places in Fiji since his return from Australia and has answered many questions everywhere he has been.
Bainimarama says he has every faith that the nation’s recovery will succeed just as his recovery has succeeded and we have accomplished a lot already but have a lot of work yet to finish.
He says in both cases, he intends to see it through. Bainimarama says they refused to let the pandemic destroy the measures of social safety they built over years to aid Fijians including the elderly, rural pregnant women, children, those with disabilities, and those that had lost livelihoods.
He says they placed all of these Fijians at the heart of every part of their pandemic response and kept them from falling into life-threatening destitution. Bainimarama says they focused and re-directed government revenues towards social support and secured funding assistance from key development partners and negotiated highly concessional loans.
He says they succeeded because those governments and multilateral development banks trust the FijiFirst Government to manage that money well.
The Prime Minister also says nothing was going to stand in their way to aid people and put Fiji on the path towards recovery, including his opponents who fought them at every turn.
Bainimarama says these people opposed the vaccine mandates, the businesses reopening, the international border reopening and the decision to re-open schools.
He says it is obvious to everyone now that the critics were wrong each time.
Bainimarama says when the nation faced a historic crisis, his opposition showed themselves to be timid fools and we should not let them forget it. He says what distinguished their strategy from the demands of the opposition was that the government saw further than the opposition ever could.
Bainimarama adds they had a vision while the opposition simply played to the emotions of the day.
The Prime Minister says they saw a future of our recovery while the opposition only saw their desire for attention and power.
