Alternative routes
Manoa Kaleca
Nailuva
The creation of new routes would be a great way of easing the traffic congestion on our roads and maintain the flow of traffic.
The number of vehicles on our roads these days has more than quadrupled. Yesterday, half of the Tamavua-i-Wai bridge that links Suva and Lami was closed because of a crack on one of the beams. This in turn created a lot of problems for road users travelling to the capital and those heading to Lami and beyond. This bridge is also the main access road that connects road users travelling to the West.
If alternate road routes would have been created, I believe that this would create less traffic jams and avoid the chaos it creates. The situation yesterday was bad enough and I hope that the relevant authorities will take heed of this and action the necessary steps to avoid repeating the problem.
Can you imagine what would happen if the entire bridge was closed off completely?
Super Akbar
Tomasi Boginiso
Nasinu
During the welcoming of our Vodafone Fijian 7s heroes at Ratu Sukuna Park in Suva the Minister for Women, Rosy Akbar, appeared from nowhere.
When the 7s team members were called to sign autographs with the fans she was the first one in line and used the back of her dress for the players to sign on.
She was in a joyous mood. I noticed she even went over to the acting PM, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, to show him where the 7s heroes have signed. Again when the players were giving out rugby balls she even grabbed hold of one but eventually tossed it to the crowd.
But most surprising of all when a missing child was on the stage unaware of where her parents were she carried the child as attempts were made to locate the child’s parents. What a woman! Go Akbar, go.
Fiji first
Sukha Singh
Labasa
It will be the first time 7s rugby will be played at the Olympics.
Whoever is in the Vodafone Fijian 7s team will be the first lot of players.
Ben Ryan will be the first coach to take Fijian 7s to the Olympics.
I hope Osea Kolinisau remains the captain because of his experience and for staying with team even when he was dropped by other coaches.
There will also be so many other firsts with this team and I will let others write about which medal will be the first.
‘Men-bashing’ in our society
Dr Sushil K Sharma,
Lautoka
It is a pathetic monotone of ‘men-bashing’ in our society, which sounds like a ‘broken record’ by now. Men – grandfathers, fathers, sons – the entire masculine gender is being portrayed as ‘potential rapists’, ‘wife beaters’ and the like. Soon the women’s brigade will be asking that mother’s never leave their young ones with their dads, granddads etc. for fear of child molestation.
The very sanctity of family tree is now being needlessly shaken, in the hysteria of the current potential correctness, when it looks good as a politician or activists to men-bash or ‘climate-bash’ when quite often a person has not even a clue of what he or she is talking about.
In every society globally there are issues of one type or another – but this manner of type-casting against all men that some of Fiji’s prominent and leading politicians and mainly women activists is going to explode in their faces.
Quite simply if one does not value the family tree and its senior-most members, who are the building blocks of our society – then our existence as a people living in kinship and culturally unique breaks down for all intents and purposes. It simply means a ‘dog eats dog’ mentality and a world without cultural values, respect of the male or the family structure.
Today quite literally it is great for women or their sympathisers in any forum, meeting or press release to ‘men bash’ relentlessly when many of them are not experts, or have no training in the field, or not fully conversant with the local and global statistics of what they are talking about.
These so-called ‘experts’ are a menace to society and not-necessarily helping the cause. By aggravating matters, they are quite simply ‘type-casting’ men in our society – who should be the main architect with women on an equal footing to engineer solutions to problems, like violence towards women, men and children in our society.
Activists trying to work towards gender-violence against women should stop trying to get media publicity and good-photo opportunities with our newspaper publishers and TV channels, but instead sober up and deal with these issues in a wholesome manner.
For example have they seen the overuse and the impact of Domestic Violence Restraining Orders (DVRO) on men? Women can quite literally walk in a court registry, fill some forms, and the court usually will approve the same day by afternoon, a DVRO without the input and presence of the other party.
Once this is issued, women usually will ‘trap’ the man to commit a breach, which would empower the Police to put him in prison for a while, with a hearing in court some weeks or months ahead. Men languish in jail like this for needless reasons and quite often due to reprisals by calculating ‘husband-haters’.
Further do our men-bashers and men-haters even know that the Family Law is now mainly an extraction of the laws in existence in Australia and New Zealand – a country with a different culture and concept of ‘family’ , compared to our Pacific Islands?
Men are dispossessed of their children at a moment’s notice, as no-one listens to men. It is almost always a belief that women’s stories are always correct and men are liars and perpetrators of all ills against women.
Women and children are all perceived as “weak and helpless” in our society, which itself brings about disillusionment amongst men, who feel as if they are victims of society, the courts, politicians and NGO’s. This often leads to a ‘grapevine effect’ of violence and reprisals – with male partners continually and needlessly put behind bars.
It is no secret that ‘women’ continually use ‘children’ as weapons against their husbands/partners as bargaining chips, and exploit the men’s attachment towards their children.
Men are victims daily and suffer in silence, as culturally they have to be the head of the family tree — just like the Lion King Simba – not the lioness Nala.
This is not said with any disrespect or generalisation towards the many lovely family women who love and neuter their men as well as their children daily.
This is no time for ‘climate-change’ bashing and neither ‘men-bashing’. We all live on the same planet and do need to talk through these issues fairly and squarely, with a neutral unbiased legislation towards these issues.
I am resolute in the fact that men are victims on a much greater scale then politicians and women-activists even care to tell the public of– as they only look superficially at the ‘physical assault’ issues without regard to the long-term trauma and dispossession that women cause many good men in our society.
Editor’s note: This is an edited version of Dr Sushil Sharma’s opinion
Domestic violence
Amenatave Yaconisau
Suva
I refer to Joji Koroibanuve’s letter on the above topic printed on this newspaper on FS (25/5/16). His letter merely reinforces the religious values of man supremacy. Remember the Bible also commands that man to care for the woman.
I wish to express my distaste at the Speaker’s recent statement pushing the blame to women as causing violence perpetrated by men.
We all know that the role of the Speaker is suppose to be impartial and independent and anything spoken in public that compromises that objective must be discouraged.
As Speaker of Parliament she must be seen entirely within her independent role of rule and policy-making. At all cost she must avoid debates that are value ridden.
We cannot avoid a Speaker whose impartiality as a person is questionable and goes against the values of this country.
Rajendra Chaudhry
Simon Hazelman
Savusavu
Mahendra Chaudhry should first try and take control of his son before trying to get involved in anything to do with our nation.
Rajendra has been relentless through social media about everything and anything that is going on in Fiji.
How can Mahendra have a say in national issues when his son continuously uses vulgar words and comments about our nation?