Apenisa Waqairadovu 
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad and Opposition MP Jone Usamate
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad, has fired back at Opposition MP Jone Usamate’s claim that Cabinet is bloated.
Usamate says more than half of those in government have Ministerial roles.
“Normally you have maybe 20 to 25 percent minimum Minister, the rest backbenchers, this government is heavily bloated, top heavy in terms of leadership.”
But Prasad questions Usamate’s credibility, pointing to his past role in the interim military government.
“Honorable Usamate should be the last person moralizing about transparency, accountability, size of government. He went and joined the military government. He was part of the destruction of institutions, of, you know, transparency, good governance, accountability.”
Prasad says the three-party coalition is committed to transparency and good governance.
“We are a three-party coalition. We have, you know, another group that has joined us. And those are enlightened people who have moved out of… They realized that Fiji Fest was a disaster.”
He maintains the government welcomes scrutiny but will continue to remind the public of what he calls the Opposition’s 16-year legacy of mismanagement.
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