Manoa Kamikamica, left, says Sitiveni Rabuka is the right man to rebuild Fiji. Photo: Parliament of the Republic of Fiji/RNZ Pacific
One of Fiji's deputy prime ministers says Sitiveni Rabuka is the best man to rebuild Fiji after "sixteen years of dictatorship".
Manoa Kamikamica was responding to Labour leader Mahendra Chaudhry, who last week called Rabuka "unfit to lead the country" and "frequently inconsistent".
Chaudhry hit out after Rabuka did a u-turn on restoring disgraced MP Lynda Tabuya to Cabinet.
Rabuka dumped the former Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection after she appeared in a private video dancing naked on Christmas Eve.
Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica told RNZ Pacific that Rabuka has the full backing of the coalition government.
"Some people have got nothing positive to add to the conversation. The reality is he (Rabuka) has brought Fiji out of a very hard situation, 16 years of dictatorship."
Former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama seized power in a military coup in 2006. However, Fiji returned to democracy in 2014.
Bainimarama's Fijifirst Party swept to victory in 2014, the first general election in eight years. But the party was viewed as being dictatorial due to the bullying and intimidation of opponents, flouting of human rights and suppression of the media.
Asked if he knew why Rabuka changed his mind over Tabuya, Kamikamica said: "We all know that in a Westminster system we serve at the discretion of the Prime Minister.
"It's his prerogative to change his mind and I'm not going to try and understand what he thinks is right.
"As far as I'm concerned, he (Rabuka) is very clear in how he wants to drive the country, and what any sensible government should do is to support him wholeheartedly in his endeavour to rebuild Fiji, which is in a mess at the moment because of the last government.
"Unifying the country is equally important."
Asked if he had any aspirations to become Prime Minister, he said: "Look... right now there's only one Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, the whole coalition is 100 pecent behind him and that will continue as long as he wants the job," he said.
"We need stability in Fiji, we need consistent leadership, which is being driven through the Prime Minister and what I think or feel is totally immaterial."
He said the focus right now is not who is going to win the next election, but "it is how do we execute as well as we can to deliver the changes that the people of Fiji are demanding."
"We have got a long list of things we need to execute," he said.
"It took us a good two years to mobilise and understand the extent of all the mess that is in the country.
"This year, and certainly next year, you will see a heightened level of execution.
"For example, we knew that there was a mess in the health system, and in order to even come up with a sensible way of addressing it, we had to reach out to development partners to assess it.
"And guess what? After 12 to 19 months of evaluation, they told us that the health system is not adequate for Fiji, its actually very poor. So, we now have a plan to start resolving the issues.
"We are progressively fixing things, you are talking about two and a half years of rule versus 16 years of dictatorship," he added.
