He is not eligible to leave pay for 698 days since 1978, because his contract ended in January 2004.

These are the sentiments of Citizen's Constitutional Forum Executive Director Reverend Akuila Yabaki on reports that Army Commander Frank Bainimarama had received $184,000 on back dated leave from 1978.

Yabaki said if Bainimarama did not want to utilize his leave since 1978, then he should accept that was his choice.

Audio 2

"The normal practise as we understand it is that all oustanding leave has to be utilised before the end of a contract period. As far as the CCF is aware, Bainimaram's previous contract as Army Commander ended in January 2004. Therefore all leave prior to January 2004 that have not been utilised will have become null and void. The new contract began as far as we are aware in February 2004 and as such he can only claim not utilised in the new contract."

Leave Payment Had To Be Made Publish date/time: 25/07/2008 [13:01]

"Previous governments did not pay him for his accumulated leave and therefore it was only right for us to do so."

Those were the words of interim Finance Minister Mahendra Chaudhry who confirmed that they had to clear Army Commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama's leave owed by the RFMF since 1978 since it would have cost them more if they deferred it any longer.

Chaudhry also said that a lot had been said but the blame lies with previous governments.

“No one produced evidence that there was some impropriety. Nobody’s disputing that he was owed that leave. The military has a budget on the consignment of emoluments. I wouldn’t know. At the moment, I have no information on that but I think they are within the limits that are allocated to them," Mr Chaudhry said.

"Towards the end of the year we will find out if they are. If it is not, we are doing our best now. What we are trying to do is clear all liability. It’s not the fault of this government. Previous governments neglected this, they should have seen to this. But we cannot carry this into the books,  because every day you carry this forward, you are incurring higher costs as a result of wages and salaries going up. Had they cleared this ten or twenty years ago, we would have paid a lot less."

The leave payout totaled about $184,000. Although Chaudhry refused to comment further, he maintained that Commodore Bainimarama is entitled to the leave payout as a military officer and the figure had grown to that amount due to non-payment for years.