Winston Thompson, a co-founder of Leadership Fiji, has renewed a call for a unifying national vision, saying the arching challenge for the country’s leadership remains unmet despite two-and-a-half decades of the programme’s work. Speaking from a career that has spanned the colonial transition, successive coups and the country’s economic modernisation, Thompson urged leaders across sectors to build cohesion that rises above social, political and ethnic divides.
Thompson’s reflections draw on an unusually broad public-service résumé. Born in the Yasawa islands and raised and educated across Fiji before studying agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago, he worked as an agricultural officer in Nadroga-Navosa and rose to become Permanent Secretary for Agriculture. He later served in the Public Service Commission, held diplomatic postings in New York and led Telecom Fiji through liberalisation and the introduction of mobile and internet services. Those experiences, he says, shaped his belief that leadership must be cross-sectoral and future-focused.
The idea for Leadership Fiji took form after the May 2000 crisis, which Thompson witnessed from his Suva office. That breakdown of order, he says, sparked urgent conversations among civic and business leaders about Fiji’s leadership deficit. Inspired in part by overseas models such as Leadership Victoria, the programme was designed to cultivate a network of leaders with a shared national outlook. “We were trying to develop agriculture among the landowners because independence was coming,” he recalled of early nation-building work, arguing economic empowerment and leadership capacity were seen as foundational to stability.
A quarter-century on, Thompson acknowledges Leadership Fiji has helped create a “core” of leaders capable of bridging sectors and communities but stresses that the broader project of unity remains unfinished. “We need some means of bringing people together so that they have a vision that is more inclusive and embracing of everyone in Fiji,” he said, underscoring the programme’s non-partisan ethos and its openness to people “of any faith, any political persuasion” who commit to the national interest.
Thompson also warned that cohesion cannot be assumed — pointing to fractures in established democracies as a cautionary tale. Drawing on his time observing politics abroad, he said even long-standing systems like the United States can be vulnerable to deep internal divisions, a reminder that Fiji must actively cultivate social and political cohesion through institutions, leadership development and shared purpose.
His recent remarks were accompanied by a sobering assessment of governance and accountability. As chair of a Commission of Inquiry into the Office of the Auditor-General, Thompson said the inquiry exposed systemic weaknesses that impede effective oversight. Contrary to public perception, he found many audit shortcomings stemmed not from the Auditor-General’s institution but from delayed or incomplete reporting by government departments. “It was not entirely their fault,” he said, pointing to a cycle of mutual dependency where oversight bodies cannot function without timely cooperation from the agencies they scrutinise.
Thompson’s latest intervention reframes Leadership Fiji’s mission as part of a wider governance imperative: leadership training alone cannot deliver national cohesion unless paired with stronger institutional practices and better accountability. As Fiji continues to navigate the political legacies of past upheavals, his message is that unity must be deliberately built — through inclusive leadership, dependable institutions and an active civic commitment to a shared future.
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