The Golden Parachute for an Acting Ghost

Just when Fiji thought the FICAC soap opera had exhausted its plot twists, along comes the sequel nobody ordered: the possibility that an illegally appointed acting officer might be eased out not with a firm constitutional handshake, but with a taxpayer-funded farewell gift.

You almost have to admire the creativity.

The President, we are told, is “still waiting” on the Judicial Services Commission. Waiting, in Fiji’s modern political dialect, has become a wonderfully elastic concept. It can mean prudence. It can mean caution. It can mean careful constitutional reflection. But increasingly, to the weary public, it sounds suspiciously like the national sport: strategic foot-dragging in dress uniform.

And now, floating quietly into the conversation like a well-padded life raft, comes the severance question.

Let us pause and appreciate the sheer elegance of the proposition. The emerging logic appears to be:

Step 1: Appoint someone unlawfully.

Step 2: Confirm the appointment was unlawful.

Step 3: Debate whether the unlawfully appointed acting officer deserves a soft financial landing.

In the ordinary world, the one inhabited by nurses, teachers, farmers, and civil servants who actually read their contracts, severance is paid when a lawful employment relationship ends under qualifying conditions. It is not typically issued as a consolation prize for constitutional misadventure.

Even more awkward is the small technical detail that the role in question was acting. Acting, in public service language, is supposed to mean temporary. Provisional. At-risk. The bureaucratic equivalent of “don’t unpack your bags just yet.”

But in our political theatre, acting roles are beginning to look remarkably… cushioned.

One almost expects the next public service manual to read:

Acting Appointment: Temporary position, terminable at any time — unless, of course, it becomes politically inconvenient, in which case please see Annex B: Comfort Arrangements.

If an appointment is unlawful from the start, the orthodox legal position is brutally simple: you cannot build a golden parachute on a runway that legally never existed.

Salary for work actually performed? Fair enough. Nobody disputes paying people for days worked.

But severance? That is where the legal ice begins to crack — and the political optics fall straight through.

Because to the ordinary Fijian watching from the outside, the emerging storyline is dangerously easy to summarize:

The institutions argue.

The lawyers debate.

The Constitution is “considered.”

And somehow, somewhere, the cheque book quietly opens.

Meanwhile, the President waits.

Always waits.

One cannot entirely blame the public for developing a mild allergy to the word. Fiji has seen enough “waiting” in the FICAC saga to fill a parliamentary calendar. Waiting for advice. Waiting for clarification. Waiting for processes to mature like fine wine.

At this rate, the only thing not waiting is public patience.

To be fair, the President may genuinely be trying to avoid another legal pothole after the Malimali embarrassment. No head of state enjoys being reverse-parked by the courts. But constitutional leadership is not measured by how elegantly one pauses. It is measured by how clearly one acts when the law is settled.

And here, the law at least in orthodox Commonwealth thinking is not especially mysterious.

If the appointment was unlawful, the foundation is cracked.

If the role was acting, the tenure was always conditional.

If severance now enters the chat, the burden of justification becomes… heroic.

Because Fiji is no longer just managing a personnel issue. It is managing credibility — of FICAC, of the JSC, and increasingly, of the Presidency itself.

In the end, the real risk is not legal. Fiji’s courts can untangle most knots given time.

The real risk is reputational.

Every additional day of “waiting,” every whisper of a negotiated soft landing, feeds a public suspicion that in Fiji’s accountability system, consequences are firm for the small players…

…but for the well-placed, there is always one more cushion being fluffed just offstage.

Tick-tock, State House.

The country is still watching.