PM, Tabuya and AG should stop playing games – Chaudhry

Fiji Labour Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry says Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Minister Lynda Tabuya and Attorney General Siromi Turaga should stop playing games with the people on the parliamentary pay issue.

He says the overnight gazetting of the pay increases has shocked the people.

Chaudhry says just the day before the Prime Minister had indicated that due process would be followed and a Bill on it would be published for public consultation before finalising the matter.

He says Labour is satisfied that the Tabuya motion calling for the approval of the increases recommended in the Emoluments Committee report was improperly introduced.

The FLP Leader says it was not on the Order Paper for the day but was sneaked into the proceedings just before Parliament adjourned on 24th May.

He says the Speaker should not have allowed it, more so, as he was to personally benefit substantially from its successful passage.

Chaudhry says as the acceptance of the Emoluments Committee report entails incurring additional expenditure, the matter should have been cleared with the Finance Minister, via the Cabinet, before being proposed in Parliament. He says the report itself is tainted because it originates from the very people who are to benefit from it handsomely, albeit unjustifiably considering the depressed economic conditions facing the nation and the people.

The former Prime Minister says FLP maintains that proper procedures were not followed and the increases were bulldozed in contemptuous disregard of the feelings of the people who are now doomed to pay for it.