Epeli Ganilau Quotes

We cannot afford to ignore HIV/AIDS. We can only ignore this battle at the cost of being regarded by future generations of Pacific Islanders as lacking the will, the foresight, the understanding to tackle this issue, which threatens our very future.

I am making a very personal commitment myself. This is a war I am not accustomed to but it is a global war and we are in a global army, fighting against a global enemy - HIV/AIDS.

No nation would refuse to fight an invading army because some expert argued it would be cheaper to invest in defenses against future invasions. It is not a matter of prioritising lives now over lives tomorrow.

To all the families out there without their fathers they must remember that our eternal Father in heaven will be there for us at all times and we should celebrate because of that.

The danger … is that unscrupulous politicians have continued to preach their racially divided visions for Fiji.

Touted as a legislation that will promote unity, it has done exactly the opposite. It has divided this country, apparently and sadly along racial lines. (on the government's controversial Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, which Ganilau opposes).

We should not allow ourselves, individually or our ethnic communities to become easy tools for politics of race that will continue to segregate us mentally and emotionally.

What I would like to see is a greater degree of interaction that will lead to a much better cross-cultural understanding than what we have in Fiji today.

We pay lip service to multiracialism but we fail to put it into practice because we continue to see most things and ourselves from our own ethnic perspective. So long as the personal attitude persists, we will not see us one people of Fiji and our future will not be secure.

As a people, we have not been able to chart a clear map toward a common destiny. We will not be able to do this if our leaders continue to promote sectional and separate development.

As a country, we have not started to see how much we can achieve as a nation and we will not have any idea of our strength if we continue to deny ourselves the opportunity to come together as one people. We have not been able to pool the resources and talent of our people and exploit them for our common good. It will continue to evade us if we continue to stress our ethnicity and group differences.

We need to marshal and direct our energy toward building this nation into a peaceful, prosperous and proud bequest to our children.

For our people to have lived together for one and a quarter century it is difficult to believe that at a personal level so little cultural transfers have taken place.

I would like to offer for the unity of our people, the adoption of multiracialism as the core ideal in searching for a clear way ahead. We need to get out of our comfort zones, our ethnic boxes and truly embrace multiracialism.

Government seems unaware that the more race-based measures it tries to put in place the faster that time bomb burns to detonation point.