Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

Fiji election deadline sends 'loud and clear message'
PNG Correspondent Steve Marshall
11 hours 53 minutes ago


Kevin Rudd says it is time to get tough with Fiji
interim leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama.
(AAP: Rocky Roe)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says an ultimatum from Pacific leaders to Fiji demanding it hold democratic elections
this year or be suspended from the regional forum, is a clear and unequivocal message to the Fijian interim government.

Pacific leaders have agreed to give the Fiji's interim government until
May 1 to nominate an election date and then hold elections by the end of the year.

Kevin Rudd says it is time to get tough with Fiji interim leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama.

"What has occurred here in Port Moresby is for all countries in the region to send a loud and clear message to the interim
government in Fiji that they must return to the ballot box and they must send the soldiers back to the barracks," he said.

Failure by Commodore Bainimarama to meet the May deadline will see Fiji
suspended from the regional forum until democratic elections do take place.

Suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum means no Fiji interim government members or officials
would be allowed to attend forum meetings and Fiji would no longer benefit from funding programs.

The United States has backed the Pacific leaders ultimatum to Fiji,
calling on Fiji's interim government to move immediately to restore democracy.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the United States is "extremely disappointed" that Commodore
Frank Bainimarama did not attend the meeting and says it endorses the Pacific leaders' position.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/28/2475744.htm
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Fiji’s government deported the publisher for the Fiji Times Monday, January 26, a few days after the newspaper
was found guilty of contempt of court and fined nearly $55,000 for printing a “scandalous” letter to the editor.

Rex Gardner, an Australian citizen, is the third foreign high-ranking media officer to be ordered out of Fiji in the past 12 months. Evan Hannah, the man Gardner replaced, was whisked out of the country in May because “he was a threat to national security.” On February 25, 2008, government officials told Russell Hunter, publisher of the Fiji Sun, he had to leave the country immediately for “conducting himself in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, security and stability of the sovereign state of the Fiji Islands.”

Fiji authorities say that Gardner’s deportation stems from the guilty verdict handed to the Fiji Times on Thursday, January 22 for contempt of court for printing a letter to the editor criticizing the High Court for validating the legal maneuvers that dissolved Fiji’s Parliament after the December 2006 coup that brought Voreque Frank Bainimarama to power. It was Fiji’s forth coup since 1988. Gardner’s work permit was to expire at the end of February, but he was seeking a three-year extension. (Blogger reaction to the court verdict is here.)

Local and regional media commentators largely criticized the deportation, which coincides with the country’s Attorney General meeting with members of the 16-nation Pacific Island Forum in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea over Fiji’s government backing off on a promise to hold elections in March 2009. Tuesday, January 27, the organization gave Fiji a May 1 deadline to announce an election date that should take place this year or be suspended from the Forum.

Bainimarama, the country’s Prime Minister, did not attend the meeting because he is overseeing the relief efforts in the wake of recent flooding that took the lives of 11 people and caused an estimated $30 million in damages to infrastructure and crops in still incomplete assessments. Fiji is a former British colony whose population is currently composed of nearly 60 percent ethnic Fijians and slightly less than 40 percent Indo-Fijians, the descendants of immigrant workers brought to the islands by colonial rulers in the 19th century. Bainimarama has long maintained that he will not allow elections until his government has implemented changes to the nation’s electoral code that apportions seats in Parliament based on race. This process could take as long as five to 10 years, Bainimarama recently told members of the military at a parade.

Let’s get back to Gardner’s deportation.

The bloggers at IG Fiji fully supported the decision.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/01/28/fiji-bloggers-discuss-newspaper-publishers-deportation/