Person Of The Year
Testing His Faith
Methodist Church Hierarchy Sacks Spear in Its Side
The Reverend Akuila Yabaki, 60, a minister of the Methodist Church of Fiji, enjoys a quiet beer. In February he had a couple aboard an Air Pacific jet on the way home from Iran. He had a few more at the Holiday Inn in Suva on March 1 with supporters of the Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF), of which he is executive director, he was celebrating a historic ruling in which the Fiji Court of Appeal declared that the liberal 1997 Constitution, claimed by the army after a coup in May 2000 to have been abrogated, remained in place.
It was an epic victory for the CCF, a vigorous and internationally supported civil society concerns organization that has had an influential role in the restoration of democratic government lost in 1987 and last year
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Those beers had consequences for Akuila Yabaki that makes him Pacific Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001. They were used by the church, for 150 years a massively influential part of Fijian society, as an excuse for exorcising a biting critic from its body.
 |
|
|
Since 1987 Yabaki has been a spear in the side of reactionary Methodist Church leaders who then, and last year, supported the overthrow of democratic government by Fijian racial supremacists. The trouble with his church, he says, is that its leadership is dominated by the past and Fijian cultures at a time of dwindling support for it as new rival churches capture Fijians from it.
“It is still very much village-based and will guard center of its territoriality with tooth and nail,” he said. “It resists any incursion from other religious groups. When you have no answer to the questions of modern life all you can do is fortify yourself. The church leans more to the protection of culture and is not very mindful of its responsibility on issues like, say, the constitution.”
As he downed those beers Yabaki was being watched and reported on to the church’s then president, the Reverend Tomasi Kanailagi. In May a former president, the Reverend Manasa Lasaro, in years after the 1987 coup against the country’s first Indian-dominated government a notable advocate of indigenous Fijian supremacy, had attacked the CCF and Yabaki’s role in it as a sinister foreign-financed (one donor being the Methodist Church in Britain) conspiracy dedicated to the suppression of Fijian interests.
On June 11 Yabaki got a telephone call from the church’s secretary, the Reverend Lai Ratabacaca, asking him to come to the headquarters office. Yabaki asked: “What is it for?”
“He put me to the president who said ‘for drinking alcohol.’ I said I want that in writing. I also raised with him the issue of his support for George Speight (the May 2000 coup leader) and he reacted defensively and slammed down the telephone.
“I picked up the phone and spoke to General Secretary Tabacaca and I said I need something in writing. So I did get something I writing, and I also expressed my disgust about the president’s telephone rudeness.”
On June 29, a standing committee of the church decided secretly to sack Yabaki from the church, allegedly for being a drunkard. Yabaki’s enemies followed that move up two months later by having that sacking confirmed by the annual Methodist Church conference.
On September 13 Yabaki, at his request, saw Kanailagi, Ratabacaca and a third critic, the Reverend Jioni Langi, in the Methodist Church office in Suva. He wanted to give his side of the story, something he hadn’t been asked for.The reason for his dismissal was political, with alcohol used as an excuse, he protested. Later in the week Yabaki received a letter of dismissal. “The word used was ‘vakacegui’ — retired.
“So I wrote back and said if the word is intended to mean that I should be retired from the ministry, then I have no wish to observe it, but if you wanted to have my name removed from the Methodist ministry then may I point out the following; that I came to the ministry through primarily having said yes to a call. This call was tested; this is what the church does.
The church does not call you. It tests the call and proves it to be authentic through prayer and self-explanation. So I was admitted to the ministry 35 years ago. This call cannot be undone.”
Another of Yabaki’s opponents is the Laisenia Qarase-led government, which after being formed as a caretaker administration after last year’s coup, was converted to respectability in September by a democratic election.
Last June, the government struck the CCF from the list of registered charities because, it said, it engaged in political activity contrary to the Charitable Trust Act under which it had been registered “by mistake.” Qarase, frustrated in his attempts to maintain the caretaker regime for at least two years, denounced the CCF as “constitutional zealots.”
Pacific Magazine spoke to Yabaki in the CCF office a hop and step away from Suva’s Government Buildings. He’s not the sole voice of dissent in admonishing one of the monolith institutions of Fijian society to move with the times. Two of its recent presidents preached a message of reconciliation and repentance in hoping to repair the image of an institution damaged internationally when in 1987, in concert with the toppling of a new Indian-dominated government by army Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka and defeated Fijian politicians, scores of Methodist ministers thundered support for entrenchment of permanent Fijian political supremacy from their pulpits.
Yabaki, married with three children, is from Kadavu Island, 70 km south of Suva. He became a Methodist priest, he says, because he was drawn towards social questions rooted in the theology of the church’s founder, John Wesley, concerning social holiness.
“Methodists were raised by God to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land. That to me is a sacred text. I feed on that. Scriptural holiness is about applying the word of God to people who live in their contemporary situation.”
Yabaki’s varied career as a churchman includes an appointment with Student Christian Movement during 1970-74 largely based at University of the South Pacific and as part time chaplain. He worked as minister for a church in London during 1979- 80 at the request of British Methodist Church
“That made me realize that the whole world is becoming multiracial and multicultural. Wherever you go in the world you cannot escape multiculturalism, and the best thing is to learn the positive things about living alongside people. That is part of the work of the church. It is very close to the heart of the gospel; how Jesus dealt with people from other cultures. That to me is very important for the church to bring this out.”
In 1986 he became communications secretary for the church in Suva with the main job of editing a bilingual paper. It was then he ran foul of the Fiji church’s deep conservatism. “My paper was taking a position against Rabuka’s coup and how the church was accepting that as God-given. Because I was speaking for the minority, I was not speaking with the voice of the church.”
Disapproving church leaders encouraged him to leave to become secretary for the Pacific Conference of Churches. Later he returned to London as world church secretary for Asia from 1990 to 1999. He returned to Fiji just before the 1999 election gave the country its first Indian prime minister. A year later there was another coup.
Yabaki has asked the churchmen who condemned him to adopt recognized disciplinary procedures “not so much out of judgment but out of grace. This is an appeal for good practice. Second, I wanted to appeal to the courts against processes lacking in natural justice because I was not heard.”
What was his detractors’ response? Yabaki chuckled. “They said ‘you had better come back to the church’.” What next? “I have a lawyer looking at these things. I don’t feel a loss of anything. The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. I am quite satisfied. I’ve led a fairly true life. In terms of my faith, as I’ve said before, it is the application of the Christian faith into practice. I feel I’m leading a full life.”
Photo: Robert Keith-Reid
