Go Fiji GO!

Just heard some very exciting news.  David Seidler, the fellow who wrote "The King's Speech", used to live and work in Fiji where his job was ... Ratu Mara's speechwriter.

Surely I don't have to tell you that for over forty years Fiji's Ratu Mara was the most amazing leader; a giant among men; definitely in the Big League of truly great leaders of the world.  He was the most achingly beautiful soul: all so noblesse oblige and elegant and erudite and so tall and handsome - 6 foot 9 inches tall - and always so wise and fair and right.

But, being brutally honest here, it was when he went out into the world he really came into his own for us because he towered over all other world leaders making them look like very little people indeed, and so we Fijians were all so very very proud of him ... but also of ourselves because he was us; that at a transcendental level he was our presence out there in the world and dammit if that wasn't a very fine presence for us all to have.

Big Brother Gerald once, as a young boy, wrote a letter from his boarding school in England, saying he'd just seen Ratu Mara on the BBC news, with the Queen, and all the other boys had turned to him and said "That's your Prime Minister? Wow!" and Gerald remarked that he too suddenly felt 6'9" tall and so immensely proud to be Fijian.

GO FIJI! We may have been a tiny little country in the middle of nowhere, but, boy oh boy, could we ACE the world in all the ways that really counted.

When I was growing up, and possibly even today, in all Fiji high schools, Alan Paton's magnificent novel "Cry, The Beloved Country" was compulsory reading, and when you take everything else away, this book is fundamentally about the role of leadership and what it takes to make a Great Leader. While reading this novel, we used to discuss this in class, and decided the conclusions the books reached was that to be a true leader in any country you need The Heart, The Voice, and The Presence.

And when a leader has these, so does the country.

And when we had Mara, Fiji also had these things.

So this is something I grew up knowing: that at a transcendental level the Leader of any country IS that country, is the heart, the voice and the presence of the country. I guess David Seidler learned it from him as well because Ratu Mara was always very aware of that.

And it is because of Ratu Mara,  I have always expected no less from any Leader I've ever had and so I usually end up being most disappointed.  What a sniveling bunch of nobodies, with no real value whatsoever, they've all turned out to be!  Yes, I've known a truly great leader in Ratu Mara and so I KNOW what is is to be truly led.

And this great transcendental truth is something made so clear in the film "The King's Speech".  Have you seen it yet?  If you haven't, here's the trailer:



I am speculating here that David Seidler discovered through knowing Ratu Mara, the true role of great leadership, so I am proudly crediting FIJI with what is the true greatness of this film.

And I'm very serious about this! Do you recall back in 2001, during that fraught Tampa affair, when the Norwegian Prime Minister looked straight down into the international cameras and lied!  Yes, he actually LIED straight-faced to the international media like this was a perfectly acceptable thing for a leader to do.  I was so very furious, I couldn't stop ranting and fulminating about it, saying "If the Norwegians let that pass, I will forever think they are all a bunch of lying, cheating, vile scumbags!" so I was joyous when only about a fortnight later the Norwegians threw him out, letting him know that it wasn't OK for him to be this person, because THEY were not this person! Yayyy!!  GO NORWAY!

You know, what I have always loved about my Vanua Loma, Fiji, is that it always turns out that whenever true greatness happens anywhere in the world, there is always - ALWAYS - a Fiji connection!

So kudos to Fiji for once again showing the world the way it should be! And let's take a bow for whatever "The King's Speech" achieves in the upcoming Oscars!

GO FIJI!!!!