Beer 'Too Strong'

Fiji’s outspoken senator and leader of the Part-European Association, Senator Felix Emberson, raised some official hackles in March with an out burst on the police force.

He claimed that worsening dis orderliness and drunkenness could be blamed partly on the leadership of the police force and partly on the alcoholic strength of local beer.

He was supporting a motion in the Senate by Senator R. I. Kapadia, ex pressing concern about the incidence of drunkenness, disorderliness and petty crime in urban areas, especially in Suva.

He claimed that police no longer patrolled nublic bars as they had in days past, when people would not have dared to display drunken be haviour. Loitering, he felt, was a prime cause of crime because it en couraged young people to commit crimes out of bravado.

“I am completely unimpressed with the leadership of our police force,” he said.

He claimed that Fiji’s brewery had “pressurised” Fiji’s colonial govern ment into accepting one of the world’s strongest beers with the story that a weaker beer would make a brewery uneconomic. He maintained that it was time the alcoholic content of Fiji beer was re-examined.

Senator Emberson’s complaints brought a rebuttal from Fiji’s Minister for Defence, Ratu Penaia Ganilau.

Senator Ganilau said Senator Ember son had made some very serious alle gations relating to the inefficiency or poor leadership of the police force, which, he indicated, were not justified.

The incidence of crime was exag gerated.