[3] First elected as a candidate of the original PANU to represent the Ba West Fijian communal constituency in the House of Representatives in the parliamentary election of 1999, Bogileka subsequently served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry from 1999 to 2000, and was held as a hostage[4][5] by gunmen led by George Speight, who led a coup d'état against the Chaudhry government, starting on 19 May 2000.
Bogileka also stirred controversy by criticizing the legacy of modern Fiji's first statesman, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, who is regarded as a national hero.
His comments provoked an angry reaction from the government, which issued a press release calling his statement "inaccurate" and saying that it should be "treated with the contempt it deserves."
This was not a political demand, he told the Fiji Sun on 3 January 2006, but rather an insistence on the fulfillment of a promise made by Queen Victoria in 1881, at Nailaga in Ba Province.
He strongly disagreed with Military Commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama for saying that the association should not "waste time" trying to recover ownership of the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Delainabua, Suva.