As the fate of the University of the South Pacific remains on edge, a small leak of a personal file hints at what is wrong with the 50-year-old regional institution.

It is detail on Dr Angela Jokhan, until recently USP’s Head of Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment.

It’s unflattering: “…she has an unfortunate tendency to create conflict with her peers and to be extremely disrespectful”.

• READ MORE: Other USP saga reports
• USP chancellor condemns treatment of Pal
• The BDO report

Plainly a significant player in the organisation, Dr Jokhan is of greater significance now in Fiji having been appointed Fiji’s Permanent Secretary Education last October.

How she got the job, given her academic performance, raises questions. Answers point to her marriage to a wealthy land agent who happened to be an unsuccessful FijiFirst candidate for Parliament.

The couple have been strong supporters of Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

At the 12-nation USP, under former vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra, Dr Jokhan earned a significant salary and had her contract renewed in a less than transparent way, say institutional sources.

Complaint led to BDO report
Incoming vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia took up the post and, as is now well known, suspected matters were not right. His complaint to the USP Council led to the now infamous BDO report, initially revealed in The Pacific Newsroom.

Dr Angela Jokhan was mentioned 109 times in the BDO report.

Professor Ahluwalia called for reports on the various people and among them was one written by Professor Derrick Armstrong, the deputy vice-chancellor. Last year, he became acting vice-chancellor when the Fiji government moved to have Professor Ahluwalia fired.

When they were unsuccessful in that, they earlier this year just nabbed him in the middle of the night and deported him.

Professor Armstrong’s report on Dr Angela Jokhan has been leaked. Headed “Feedback on the Performance of Associate Professor Anjeela Jokhan as Dean FSTE” it is in several sections.

”Contribution made to support the University, the Vice-Chancellor and President and the Senior Management Team.
“Associate Professor Jokhan is a highly experienced manager and makes significant contributions to the University across a number of areas. In addition to her Faculty responsibilities she has also recently taken over temporary responsibility at the SMT level for the University’s ICT area. She pursues her responsibilities with vigour and has been fully engaged in a number of key areas and activities central to the University’s strategy and performance. She is a very active member of the University Senate. Her enthusiasm can from time to time lead to her being quite abrasive and dismissive of other points of view. She can be a very effective member of the SMT team but this is not always the case and she has an unfortunate tendency to create conflict with her peers and to be extremely disrespectful. She does have a tendency to insist that she is correct on an issue on the basis of her personal knowledge and long experience with the University, even when there is no evidence to support her viewpoint.

”Contribution to the Faculty/Department.
Associate Professor Jokhan runs her Faculty with a very firm hand. The Faculty is successful on a number of indicators and she has put together a good team of Associate Deans who ensure efficiency and consistency in the administration of Faculty procedures. The Faculty has led the University in a number of areas, for example in the development of apps and the granting of patents. The Faculty has also been very successful in achieving the international accreditation/recognition of programmes in, for example, Engineering and Computing. The research performance of the Faculty might be considered satisfactory overall but there has been very little success in achieving external funding for research and with some individual exceptions its performance would not be considered notable compared with Science Faculties elsewhere. With stronger academic leadership there would most certainly be opportunities for the Faculty to step up a gear. There have been many conflicts with Heads of Schools and with other staff. On occasions the Dean has taken actions with regard to staff members that have put the University at risk. She demonstrates considerable impatience with those with whom she differs. It would be hard not to be aware of the widespread grumblings and dissatisfaction within the Faculty over her management style.

”Leadership, Representation
“Associate Professor Jokhan does not have the rank of full professor and her personal research leadership is minimal. She is a biologist by academic background but in recent times has contributed to publications with her students and junior staff in the area of ICT enabled learning. However, she does not have an academic background in this area, nor does she have a strong profile. The absence of academic leadership is a significant deficit in the leadership one might expect from a dean. Her contribution is principally as a manager rather than as an academic leader.”

Also leaked is a spreadsheet itemising Dr Angela Jokhan’s academic publications and PhD supervision.

It’s rather modest for an academic who, as BDO said, was on a salary of F$450,000 (NZ$305,000) a year.

• Full report and documents at The Pacific Newsroom

When the University of the South Pacific’s vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, was hauled out of his Suva, Fiji, home this week and deported, it had nothing to do with his views on education or tertiary management.

With his wife and nursing lecturer Sandy Price they were driven across curfew-locked down Fiji to be put on a plane to Australia.

It was not an action designed to make USP a better place, or to improve life for Fiji’s young people.

• READ MORE: ‘Most surreal experience of our lives’: Leading professor describes being deported from Fiji
• A bruising 24 hours in the Pacific – three key questions about regionalism
• Forum calls for ‘due process’ over USP, inquiry into Ahluwalia deportation
• Case of ‘beating up the whistleblower,’ says deported USP chief
• USP staff, students condemn Fiji ‘Gestapo’ tactics, demand Ahluwalia’s return – Wansolwara
• Politicians, educators, advocates blast Fiji’s ‘barbaric’ expulsion of USP head
• Deported Pacific university VC claims no wrongdoing
• More USP saga reports

It was bitterly personal.

“You have nailed it,” Professor Ahluwalia told Pacific Newsroom. “It is precisely a case of ‘let’s get rid of this man because he exposed too much corruption’.”

Professor Ahluwalia and Price were seized late last Wednesday and deported on Thursday morning to Brisbane where, due to covid-19, they are now in managed isolation until February 18.

He is adamant that he remains vice-chancellor of the 12-nation regional USP and will keep managing the university.

Money was missing
Just over two years ago Professor Ahluwalia took over USP from vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra. He discovered much was wrong in the accounting department, and money was missing. A lot of money.

Professor Ahluwalia submitted a report to the USP Council and, in an abbreviated form, this led to the hiring of Auckland accountancy consultants BDO. When their damning report reached the university council, it was pretty much suppressed. Key details were kept from the public.

The BDO report was then leaked – not by Professor Ahluwalia or any USP staff – to Pacific Newsroom, prompting uproar.

As BDO linked corruption and missing millions efforts were begun to get Professor Ahluwalia fired.

These were mostly led by USP’s pro-chancellor, Winston Thompson. A Fijian, BDO’s report made it clear Thompson was acting for FijiFirst; not USP or its students.

Professor Ahluwalia said that until talking with Pacific Newsroom, he had not talked publicly about these connections. He was now because Pacific Newsroom had become a key influence in the debate in Fiji.

Getting rid of Professor Ahluwalia was part of that: “It’s as personal as that and Winston Thompson was Fiji’s ambassador to the United States, he is a diplomat and he has presided over several interesting, very interesting, downfalls of public institutions…”

‘The intimacies of politics’
Surely, it was put to Professor Ahluwalia, USP was bigger than just a couple of people. But that, he replied, was what it amounted to.

“It is really that, the intimacies of politics… the way these networks work, after all this is a very small country.”

Fiji refuses to accept BDO evidence, claiming their own Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) had found no corruption.

BDO had pointed clearly to corruption and both Professor Ahluwalia and Price say they were close to getting to the bottom of the operation behind it.

“The best evidence I can provide for all of this at the moment,” Professor Ahluwalia said, “is that I am close, but don’t have evidence yet.

“What I would say as evidence is that 2019 and 2020 we had to put a number of financial restrictions in place, but the fact that I returned, in 2020, a $28.3 million surplus on a university that did not receive grants from Fiji and Australia. That tells me how much they were leaching out of the system.”

Was it a basic kind of fraud, people helping themselves to cash: “That’s what it seems to me. The bit I cannot figure out is that these accounts are audited by auditors and how were they doing it?”

People complicit at USP
There were, Price suggested, a lot of people in USP that were complicit.

This week, as the Pacific Forum met in Zoom session to elect a new secretary-general, the Fiji government moved against Professor Ahluwalia and Price. He found it interesting that this was the week.

“There was a special council meeting (a Friday week ago) and at that meeting the President of Nauru (Lionel Aingimea, the current USP chancellor) raised my contract as an issue.”

He wanted it placed on the agenda because he was concerned about it. Both Thompson and the council’s Fiji representative, Mahmood Khan, expressed concern at having it on the agenda, saying there was no supporting paper to explain its presence.

They said they needed to know what the issue was.

“And Lionel gave them a hint, he said it’s about visa issues and then he said, well we will send a paper.”

It was drafted and it noted that the Fiji Sun, a pro-Bainimarama newspaper, had reported in a gossip section that someone from “a big school for big students” could be sacked.

‘Draconian barbaric act’
Professor Ahluwalia said as soon as that appeared, they knew they had to act: “On Wednesday they did this draconian barbaric act, trampling over our human rights.”

As to the Pacific Islands Forum Summit: “I wouldn’t put anything in Fiji as just a coincidence. They probably knew all the leaders were busy.

For himself, and the USP Council, Professor Ahluwalia is still the vice-chancellor. His contract remained valid and he had done nothing wrong: “I suppose it’s a wrongful dismissal which is what I am arguing… the employer still has a duty of responsibility even if the government chooses to deport you on fabricated charges.”

Given all the stresses, it would be understandable that Professor Ahluwalia and Price might want to cut their losses, but that is not so: “I was hired to lead USP and take it forward, I think it has a lot of potential, I don’t think it has to be just beholden to Fiji and one of the best things that would happen to the university is for the vice chancellor to operate from outside of Fiji and actually really lift the education of the rest of the region and give the region more attention while paying attention to Fiji as well.

“Covid has taught us that the university can be run from its other campuses. After all, the USP campuses are run from Laucala so the converse is absolutely possible,” he said.

“I have nothing against the people of Fiji and my students and staff in Fiji are the reason I have so much support so I want to make sure they are supported.”

He could live in another USP member country: Samoa is already waving the welcome mat.
The university would survive.

Damage done to Fiji
“I think the damage is not being done to USP, the damage is to the Fiji government because of their actions in violating our human rights.”

This kind of passionate battle augurs well for USP: “Its international reputation is enhanced, that there are people in it with ethical people trying to clean it up.”

Ethics, integrity and good governance mattered.

“My message to the students is very clear. Come to USP, a great regional institution, committed staff, we are there, it remains the premier regional institution and when this vice-chancellor is back he will continue on the march to make sure USP becomes an even better institution and be ready as a university for the next 50 years.”

Michael Field, the New Zealand author and an independent journalist, has also been deported from Fiji on several occasions under different prime ministers and remains persona non grata. This article is republished from The Pacific Newsroom with permission.