HIS EXCELLENCY RATU EPELI NAILATIKAU
CF, LVO, OBE (MIL), KSTJ, CSM, MSD
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF FIJI
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ADDRESS AT A FUNCTION ON HIS STATE VISIT TO NAURU
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Menen Hotel
Nauru
Wednesday 12th February 2014
7.00pm
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Your Excellency Baron Waqa, President of the Republic of Nauru,
The first lady, Madam Louisa Waqa,
Honourable Speaker,
Honourable Ministers,
Your Excellencies the High Commissioners and Ambassadors,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen

Bula vinaka, good evening and mo yebum

I bring you the warmest greetings of the Fijian people and the Fijian government.

It is indeed a great honour for me as Head of State of Fiji and for my wife Adi Koila to be making this official visit to Nauru. And it is an even greater pleasure to be amongst friends – indeed, one can almost say family. Because you, President Waqa, have a special connection with Fiji. And in more ways than one, so to speak.

I am well aware that your grandfather came from the province of Tailevu on the main island, Viti Levu. So your antecedents are Fijian even if your roots are now firmly planted in Nauru. Your wife, the first lady, also has her origins in Savusavu, on our second biggest island, Vanua Levu. And a large part of your education took place in Fiji - first at the Nasinu Teachers College and then at the University of the South Pacific.

It is a privilege for Fiji to have this special connection.

Mr. President, you impressed everyone at the Pacific Islands Development Forum in Nadi last August, not just with the quality of your contributions but with your beautiful singing. As I said at the time: “Of course, he is a good singer. After all, he has got a good Fijian voice”.

The point is that we are in harmony as individuals and as nations across a broad front. We are Pacific Islanders first and foremost. Together, we face many of the same challenges. Together, we are working to meet those challenges. And I want to express my sincere thanks to you, Mr. President, for your regional leadership and your support for Fiji. Under your government, our relationship has strengthened and expanded.

Our relations with Nauru have been excellent. You have understood the particular challenges we have faced in Fiji and the new course we have set for ourselves.

We especially appreciate your strong support for the Pacific Islands Development Forum – the PIDF – and Nauru’s work as a member of the governing council. Together, we are building a new regional structure to give ordinary Pacific Islanders a bigger voice.

The PIDF, unlike the Pacific Islands Forum, includes representatives of civil society groups and businesses. This means that the views of the grassroots are being heard as never before. And unlike the Pacific Islands Forum, the PIDF is a genuinely Pacific Island grouping, relatively free from outside influence.

Together, we are also making the Pacific voice heard in the great forums of the world.

The Pacific Small Island Developing States – with both Nauru and Fiji playing leading roles – are placing the issues that matter to us, like climate change, before the United Nations and its various agencies. It is the best opportunity that we have of getting our needs and concerns heard and addressed.

These are partnerships that benefit all our people. Because only by working together closely and speaking with one voice can we hope to be heard above the competing interests of other nations.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I am visiting Nauru as part of Fiji’s effort to bring us even closer together. In my meetings, I will be explaining about the huge strides we have made and are making in Fiji to produce a nation that is fairer, more just and provides better opportunities for every Fijian.

Before the end of September, we will hold the first genuinely democratic election in our history, of equal votes, of equal value instead of the racially weighted formula employed in the past.

We have a new constitution that establishes a common and equal citizenry, guarantees a range of civil and political rights and provides ordinary Fijians with an unprecedented array of social and economic rights, such as the right to education, housing, and clean water.

This year, we have achieved a wonderful breakthrough in being able to provide our young people with free primary and secondary school education and a tertiary loans scheme so that poverty is no longer a barrier to higher studies. Our national infrastructure - such as our roads and ports - is also being upgraded to encourage investment and create jobs on which the ultimate fortunes of every Fijian depends.

And all over Fiji, rural and maritime communities are finally receiving basic services such as electricity and water that have been continually promised over the years but never delivered.

This social, economic and political revolution over the past seven years will soon deliver a genuine democracy in Fiji that meets the highest international standards.

We are determined that our general election before the end of September will be free and fair and express the genuine will of the people. Fiji already stands proud and tall in the world – having forged an independent foreign policy based on the fundamental premise of being friends to all and enemies to none.

We have hundreds of Fijian troops serving as peacekeepers with the United Nations and the Multi-National Force and Observers in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world and protecting vulnerable ordinary people.

And we are sending our civilian volunteers, including teachers and health workers, into our Pacific neighbours to boost their capacity and improve the lives of their people. I am pleased to say that some of these volunteers are in Nauru and I look forward to meeting them and witnessing the impact that they are having.

We have plans to considerably boost this program in the coming months and years. So while we stress the notion of serving our people at home, we also stress the need to serve our fellow Pacific Islanders and the global community in whatever way we can.

We are especially keen – with working closely with Nauru - to lead and assist our joint effort to persuade the rest of the world to finally take decisive action on climate change. I have just come to Nauru from Kiribati, which along with Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, is facing catastrophe because of rising sea levels caused by global warming. It is simply not acceptable for the world to stand by and watch these Pacific Nations sink beneath the waves.

Fiji is using every possible means at the United Nations and in its agencies to draw attention to their plight and the selfishness of the big carbon polluters in putting their own interests before those of us who suffer the most in the Pacific. Our recent leadership of the biggest voting bloc at the United Nations – the G77 plus China – gave us a unique opportunity to advance this cause. We sit on the main United Nations committee on climate change.

And by recently taking the Chair of the Governing Board of the United Nations Development Program, we are also in a position to push our collective agenda forward. This matters not just to the people of the four islands I had earlier mentioned but to every Pacific Islander.

In Fiji, we have already moved one village altogether out of the way of the rising sea and a second will soon be also relocated. But we have identified a further 676 communities throughout our nation that are threatened in some way, including 42 that will need to be moved in the next five to ten years.

Of course, all this pales into insignificance beside the catastrophe facing the citizens of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. I carried a message to Kiribati that Fiji would stand shoulder to shoulder with Kiribati as it faced this crisis, as well as doing everything possible to try to avert it.

I also repeated the assurance given by our Prime Minister that in a worst case scenario and if all else fails, some or all of the people of Kiribati may have to be resettled in Fiji. They will not be refugees. They deserve to be able to migrate with dignity. Their spirit will not be extinguished. It will live on somewhere else because a nation isn’t only a physical place. A nation – and the sense of belonging that comes with it - exists in the hearts and minds of its citizens wherever they may be.

I also come to Nauru repeating the message that we must all do more as Pacific Islanders to take charge of our own affairs. We need a fundamental change in our psyche – in our mindset - and in the way we see the world.

We need to take ownership of our problems, to acknowledge our own roles and responsibilities instead of seeing them as someone else’s.

When someone once asked the great Singaporean Statesman Lee Kuan Yew: “What are you going to do for me?”, he replied: “What are you going to do for yourself?”.

This carries a very important message for us all. We need to stop looking for donors and start looking for development partners.

And we need to stop asking those partners, “What are you doing for us?” but “What can you do to help us to help ourselves?” We need to abandon our tendency to seek handouts and ask for leg ups.

There is certainly an urgent need for every one of us in the Pacific to start taking charge of our personal surroundings – to dispose of our rubbish properly; to keep our coastal areas clean; for every man, women and child to pick up the litter, the plastic bags and the empty bottles that are despoiling our beautiful surroundings. It means everyone accepting personal responsibility for the state of our environment. It means everyone always remembering and accepting that our coastal areas and the seas around us are our food source.

We need to preserve and protect our island homes not only for ourselves but our children and for our future generations of Pacific Islanders.

We must also do more – a lot more – to tackle the appalling rates of Non-Communicable Diseases such as diabetes, heart and respiratory diseases that are prematurely killing our people. We need to eat more fresh food. The ocean around us is teaming with life. So why do so many Pacific Islanders prefer to reach for a can-opener, to consume tinned fish, when they could go fishing and catch the real thing?

We need to take responsibility for our diets and those of our families and build more exercise into our daily routines. We owe it to ourselves and our families to live longer and more productive lives. And we owe it to our nations to reduce the crippling burden of NCD's on our health systems, while ensuring a growing, capable workforce. Health is definitely an area in which the people of the Pacific can share knowledge and build capacity, with a view to strengthening our collective self-reliance.

And of course we all have to greatly lift our national efforts in our response to HIV and AIDS – the greatest scourge that has confronted mankind – and genuinely invigorate the use of protection to save the lives of our 14 to 29 and 30 to 39 age groups commonly referred to as the youth groups - the most sexually active, the bulk of the education and working population and the most vulnerable.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I look forward very much to the rest of this visit to Nauru, of meeting more of your people and strengthening the ties of friendship between our countries.

Thank you for the wonderful warm hospitality you have shown me and my wife and my delegation.

Vinaka vakalevu and tu bwa