Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama has stated that Mr Roth had been deported after it was found he’d been acting in a manner prejudicial to good governance and had been intefering in internal affairs.
The reality was that Mr Roth disagreed with the plans of the Government to charge an “Enviromental Charge” on all water extracted from the Fiji Water plant at Yaqara.
His crime was to lobby against this proposal as he would have been expected to in his hometown USA. He arranged meetings with oposition water companies to update them on the proposals and rallied support from the local mataqali who own the rights to the water. As recipiants of substantial aid from Fiji Water they put their support behind the company and approached the Government to stop the proposed levy.
The Government has reverted to its normal method of dealing with any opposition by intimidation and deportation.
Fiji Water will not make any statement about the issue until My Roths family is out of the country and this itself says a lot about the level of intimidation under this regieme.
Fiji Today FijiTodays Open Forum Blog 
Lets have a look at Fiji Water. On each bottle you can read what it is: Rainwater with a bit of silica in it. The rest is the stupidity of Americans who can be bamboozled to buy anything with an expensive marketing campaign that suggests you become a Hollywood celebrity if you buy a bottle of rainwater. Now, for Fiji this gig has been a good thing, free advertising etc. Mr Roth did what the owners expect him to do: To protect the interest of their investment. The regime on the other hand does not negotiate. My way or the highway has always been Aiyaz’ attitude. Now sit back and watch what will happen next: As rainwater is not a scarce resource, why not move to the whole thing to a destination where there is rule of law and an independent judiciary able to resolve conflicts. Why not bottle water in New Zealand and use the new Hobbit movie as a vehicle to launch the next cool Hollywood drink? Fiji Water will die as soon as the marketing machine stops and no matter how much noise Aiyaz will make, the game will be over. A couple of hundred people without a job, a couple of hundred million of lost foreign exchange revenue. And a very, very strong signal to foreign investors, their lenders and their executives: Aiyaz determines your flight schedule!
May be the government can bottle real Fiji pani de na qona and sell it in America. Your call Cranky but it should be worth a try…to replace sugar.
Good riddance.
Bye bye Tevita.
I mite share some sympathy for Roth’s expulsion if he had lobbied for a quick return to parliamentary representation and democracy for the people of Fiji INSTEAD of using his paid dumb stoogies (ganiluas & naulukaus) to keep all his freeby arrangements with the IG. As for the sponsorships they’ve done around the country, my neighbour tells me that is peanuts and loose change for them.
I don’t give a fart who or what this Rothy guy did. As long as it was done within the law that is ok by me. But this bludy useless government is fond of falunting the law and throwing people out for daring to make comments opposed to their view. What a lousy lot the as oles.
“Enviromental charge” eh? Unlike mining, extracting water does not produce any enviromentally detrimental by products or wastes. Theres no smoke from chimneys or chemical or other enviromentally damaging pollutants from bottling artesian water. So the intended ‘charge’ is questionable. The only pollution from this product are the plastic bottles themselves. But this should be levied to all bottling companies equally across the board. This is more about milking more money out of a successful company without consideration of any ramification of such action like sending wrong signals to investors. Or should we say right signals since it is obvious the IG has no respect for investors and would kick them out at the drop of a hat and any flimsy excuse to do so. I can see a golden goose getting killed over here. I suppose there are more sinister reasons for this which is kept from public knowledge for it would be unsavory for the ig if it became known.
The winds of change….
investors and expatriates and former fiji citizens beaware of the draconian and brutal dictatorship, no one is safe and no investment is safe, go elsewhere and dont take the risk in fiji
since no water in fiji taps the junta needs the fiji water for fiji people what a joke
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