Vice-President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi added his own voice on 9 January 2006 to the campaign to make Fijian a compulsory subject.
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In May and June 2005, a number of prominent Fiji Islanders called for the status of Fijian to be upgraded; the present Education Minister, Ro Teimumu Kepa endorsed calls for it to be made compulsory, as did Great Council of Chiefs Chairman Ratu Ovini Bokini.
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Addressing the 72nd annual meeting of the Fijian Teachers Association in Suva, Madraiwiwi said that it was dangerous to assume that Fijian children would automatically learn their own language.
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Similar calls came from Misiwini Qereqeretabua, the Director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture, and from Apolonia Tamata, a linguistics lecturer at Suva's University of the South Pacific, who both said that recognition of the Fijian language is essential to the nation's basic identity, as a unifying factor in Fiji's multicultural society.
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