Croz Walsh's Blog -- New Zealand and Fiji: How Much Fairer They Could Be

There is a very interesting comment to this post. Click on Comments below to read it.

I invite you to look at this article in The Australian and further comment by Coupfourpointfive and then consider the following:

Chief Justice Gates sent PM Bainimarama a memo about the difficulties experienced by the Sri Lankan judges in obtaining transit visas through Australia. The memo was "leaked" to the media.

Within hours, Bainimarama said he would expell top diplomats from the Australian and New Zealand High Coms. But Bainimarama had threatened this action earlier, according to another "leaked"email, this time from one of the judges to the Sri Lankan Honorary Consul in Suva.

The email, and a letter to both High Coms written by Foreign Affairs Secretary Solo Mara, were then "leaked," directly or indirectly to The Australian.

A copy of this email sent to Bainimarama was also then "leaked" to the media. And a copy of the Aust.High Com's telephone con…

 CORRECTION* 
New Zealander Anthony Gates, Fiji's Chief Justice, has criticized his own country and Australia for what he called interference in Fiji's judiciary. His comment came after NZ's initial denial of a visa to Family Court judge Anjala Wati. (NZ said her visa was not denied, only being decided upon).

Gates said “Fiji must have a judiciary. And it is not for Australia and New Zealand to tell us we cannot have one or to tell us who we are to appoint. No international convention allows such a supervisory role to a neighboring state.”

Meanwhile,  the Sri Lanka Government has seconded some of its serving judges and magistrates to help Fiji’s judiciary get back to its full capacity. Sri Lanka first offered judicial help to Fiji in 1987 following the Rabuka Coup. The CJ  said it was "an extremely generous offer of support at this critical time."  The judges and magistrates begin arriving tomorrow Monday.

* A reader has corrected me. (See Comments, below).  CJ Ga…

A moral or ethical dilemma is a situation that often involves an apparent conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. Resolving moral dilemmas is seldom simple.

I think Anthony Gates faced such a dilemma before accepting his reappointment as Chief Justice. Having once stated that the 1997 Constitution was Fiji's supreme law and only Parliament had the power to amend laws, his reappointment now rests on a Presidential decree and the Abrogation of the Constitution. The blog Coupfourpointfive and some other commentators whose opinions I respect question his motives.

But what does CJ Gates himself say? Speaking on the afternoon of his reappointment the Fiji Sun reports him as saying “There is no doubt in my mind that the judiciary must continue. Academic commentators may expatiate on the indelicacies of our situation, the constitutional dislocation itself, the present impossibility of constitutional compliance over appointments and ma…