Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he would have to cancel a visit to China after tripping and falling down a flight of stairs while looking at his telephone. As evidence, he highlighted his blood-spattered shirt and a small plaster on his head.
(Bloomberg) — Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he would have to cancel a visit to China after tripping and falling down a flight of stairs while looking at his telephone. As evidence, he highlighted his blood-spattered shirt and a small plaster on his head.
In a minute-long video filmed at the prime minister’s residence in Suva and posted on Twitter, Rabuka said he anticipated there would be “a lot of speculations” after the announcement of his accident. It’s not the first time that the Fijian leader has snubbed Beijing.
“I’m sure there will be another invitation later on and I hope I will be able to honor that invitation,” Rabuka said in the video posted late Tuesday.
In April, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu visited Fiji for talks with the Pacific nation’s leadership, only for Rabuka to send his deputy to meet with Ma instead. At the time, the Fijian government said Rabuka was taking leave to mourn a close family member who had passed away.
The latest incident comes as competition between China and the US heats up in the southern Pacific, as each side tries to establish influence among island nations that haven’t had much superpower attention since the end of World War II.
The Fijian leader, who took power in December 2022, has also floated the possibility of canceling a policing agreement that the previous government signed with China. Earlier, his government also allowed Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Fiji to change its name to include “Republic of China” and restored diplomatic privileges. It reversed that decision in June, according to Taiwan’s state news agency CNA.
Finally, Rabuka has also moved to restore ties between the Pacific Island Forum and Kiribati, one of the nations closest with Beijing, to try to bring it back into the regional fold.
Responding to Rabuka’s fall, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Wednesday at a regular press briefing that Beijing understands and respects the decision. China extends “our sympathies and wish him a speedy recovery. We’ll stay in touch with the Fijian side on matters regarding his visit.”
The Chinese embassy in Fiji wrote on Twitter that Beijing was willing to invite him again.
The Rabuka government is trying to recalibrate the Pacific nation’s relationship with China and create some distance from the warm ties established by former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, according to William Waqavakatoga at the University of Adelaide.
As a former leader from the 1990s, Rabuka is more at home with Fiji’s traditional diplomatic partners like Australia and the US, said Waqavakatoga, a former Fijian journalist. However, he added that Rabuka had made a series of domestic political missteps recently and was likely to have to adjust his position with China.
“The longer he stays in office, the realization will hit that he needs to take a more pragmatic approach,” Waqavakatoga said. “What he wants and what is necessary are two completely different things that he has to accept.”
–With assistance from Philip Glamann.
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