Lobbying against the negative perception about Fiji will be my biggest challenge, says Berenado Vunibobo, Fiji’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

Despite mounting pressures from much-developed and powerful neighbouring countries like Australia and New Zealand, Vunibobo asserted he would bank on his network established from past diplomatic postings to lobby against these negative perceptions.

He highlighted the pressure launched on the UN and British government in particular, by critics of Fiji’s political situation, to stop recruitment of soldiers for peacekeeping duties, including that of British Army soldiers.

“The biggest challenge for me, looking at our current situation, is to try and update various people of the developments here in our country,” Vunibobo told Fijilive.

“We lack the resources our critics have and we can see that these critics are putting pressure on the UN and British government not to recruit peacekeepers from Fiji,” he said.

“And interestingly enough in the papers, (former Fiji Police Commissioner) Andrew Hughes was talking about wanting more Fijian policemen.” He added he was willing to work closely with Hughes, who now works in the UN, to explore employment opportunities to this respect. 

Vunibobo said these were the sort of things he hoped that once in New York, he would assess the opportunities there are to the various representatives who deal with the governments of South East Asia and from the Caribbean.

“One of the things interesting is if we follow what has happened in our country, our friends in South East Asia, none of them had made any public statement. But you can see the network of western countries, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, US, trying to lobby Japan and Malaysia that they should not be cooperating with us (Fiji),” he revealed.

“The Western governments we interact with have a very strong sense of arrogance that they alone have the things sewn up such as democracy. Then, when we look at what’s happening in Iraq for instance, the inability of the Western governments to go into… the issue of Darfur (Sudan), it has been four years now.

“So, it makes one wonder about the claimer for democracy and the selectivity it tend to adopt when their interests are involved,” he said.