PNG activist blogger Martyn Namorong protests online in defiance of gag order

PNG blogger Martyn Namorong ... gagged but not silenced. Image: MN Twitter

By Mong Palatino of Global Voices

A Papua New Guinea court has issued a gag order against Martyn Namorong, a prominent political blogger and activist accused of defaming Patilias Gamato, the country’s Electoral Commissioner.

Gamato this week sued Namorong after Namorong compared him to a "fruit" (tomato) on social media, as reported by Pacific Media Watch. When Namorong learned about the court order, he posted this image on Twitter before adding the above blue gag selfie image:

He added that he also needed a lawyer.

Gary Juffa: Why these PNG elections are taking us towards dictatorship

Oro Governor Gary Juffa speaking at a PNG campaign gathering ... explaining the qualities to look for in
national leadership. Image: JuffaFB

By Gary Juffa, Oro Governor and an opposition MP writing for Asia Pacific Report.

I SUSPECT that these Papua New Guinea elections have been so deliberately set to fail, leaving much room for fraud and confusion, and distracting from what is really going on – the establishment of a dictatorship.

Already Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has his own special police unit that flies around Papua New Guinea escorting him in his private airlines, he has a special army unit of 40 exclusively for his callout, he controls the media and Public Service, and, it seems, the Police and Defence commands — and perhaps the judiciary -- the signs and red flags are blinking bright red now…

Yet many people do not see it. We are inching closer towards dictatorship and the ensuing bloodshed and violence that must come from the hostility towards it. But, like lemmings and sheep, we are led to that reality with little resistance at all. Is this the Papua New Guinea we all believed in once upon a time?

Last Wednesday in Oro province, provided a demonstration of how much the PNG government is not for PNG.

A Fiji democratic mandate for the coup leader – what now for the media?

Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and Rear-Admiral (Ret) Voreqe Bainimarama's Fiji First party is leading the country in the next four years. Photo: Mads Anneberg, an AUT Pacific Media Centre student on internship in Suva with Repúblika Magazine and Pacific Scoop for the elections

By David Robie

IN THE END, it was no real surprise. For 2006 coup leader Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, who retired recently as the military strongman with the rank of rear admiral, it was a foregone conclusion that he would emerge as the triumphant victor in Fiji’s first general election in almost eight years.

Just as it was inevitable in 1992, when the original coupster - who staged two coups in the same year, 1987 -  Brigadier-General Sitiveni Rabuka made the transition from military backed prime minister to civilian leader.

A major difference is that Rabuka was elected in 1992 on an indigenous supremacy platform of “Fiji for Fijians” while Bainimarama’s Fiji First party is pledged to a multiracial “Fiji for all Fijians”.

The hope is that Bainimarama’s authoritarian streak will gradually mellow and he will come to recognise as an elected leader the critical importance of a civil society discourse with a strong non-government organisation sector and an independent Fourth Estate.

The media was once a proud and feisty part of Fiji democracy. It can achieve that credible status again.

Democracy in Fiji a tender plant – now time to nourish it for the future

The Multinational Observer Group sees Wednesday's general election as a credible expression of “the will of the Fijian voters”. Video: Alistar Kata/Pacific Media Centre/Pacific Scoop

By Fiji affairs columnist and blogger Dr Crosbie Walsh

UNFORTUNATELY, it had to happen but all is not lost.

It started with Fiji Labour Party leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry – deposed in the 2000 attempted coup – complaining about a minivan showing a Fiji First sticker during the blackout period and another alleged election breach when a disabled voter at St Joseph’s in Suva was assisted by an election officer with no witness present.

Then there were complaints that the counting had stopped when all that had stopped were the announcements, and Radio New Zealand International quoted an unnamed SODELPA official saying its agents had noted anomalies in the transmission and counting of votes, and Fiji Leaks claimed the Multinational Observer Group (MOG) were having “a good holiday in Fiji”.

And then someone calling himself Thakur Loha Singh on a blog said he’d heard of a polling station where the votes of relatives of a candidate mysteriously disappeared and the candidate ending up with a zero vote.”

He said he’d “forewarned political parties of this some time ago.” Not a shred of evidence — but he made sure his prophecy came true.

Fiji elections live blog: Bainimarama takes early lead

Voters in Suva today. Photo: Wansolwara

By Alistar Kata of Pacific Scoop in Suva

PRIME MINISTER Voreqe Bainimarama took an early lead in provisional results in the Fiji general election tonight.

With provisional results from 43 out of 2025 polling stations processed, the Fiji First leader topped the five best-placed candidates with 2339 votes, well ahead of rival SODELPA’s Ro Teimumu Kepa with 628.

But in the party stakes, Fiji First held a narrow lead with 48.3 percent while SODELPA had 42.1 percent.

This is the first election in Fiji since Bainimarama staged a military coup in 2006.

Alistar Kata is a member of the student journalism team covering the Fiji elections as part of their Asia-Pacific Journalism course at the Pacific Media Centre. She is on internship with Wansolwara while her colleagues are Mads Anneberg with the Republika in Suva and Thomas Carnegie and Pacific Media Watch editor Anna Majavu with the PMC in Auckland. 

Their story archive is at Pacific Scoop. Read on with the Live Blog:

Key accused of allowing secret 'spook' cable sensors to spy on NZ citizens

 Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald (left) and Kim Dotcom at the "moment of truth"
political surveillance meeting in Auckland last night. Image: PMW

By ANNA MAJAVU of Pacific Media Watch

NEW ZEALAND Prime Minister John Key has been accused of allowing the secret installation of equipment that would enable spooks to tap into New Zealand's undersea fibre optic cable as part of a covert mass surveillance system of citizens.

This was the word from globally acclaimed whistleblower Edward Snowden and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (both speaking via video link), Kim Dotcom and US Pulitzer prize-winner Glenn Greenwald last night at a packed meeting of more than 2000 people in Auckland.

The hall was so full that another 800 people could not get into the venue at the Auckland Town Hall.

In a major political coup for the Internet-Mana alliance which organised the seminar and which is contesting the New Zealand national elections this Saturday, the three speakers painted a grim picture of individual privacy and internet freedom under New Zealand's ruling National Party.

Dotcom told the meeting that there were only two ways to fight mass surveillance - through political mobilising, as the Internet Party was doing and through encryption.

Bouquets for the Fiji media from a ‘new wave’ politician

Professor Biman Prasad ... sound credentials - for democracy and a free media.
Photo: Republika Magazine

FIJI ‘new wave” political hopeful Biman Prasad, a University of the South Pacific academic and economist with some sound democratic credentials, had positive messages for the beleaguered media last weekend.

In a speech to a working group of the rejuvenated National Federation Party, he handed out a few bouquets to the Fiji scribes.

Professor Prasad was at pains to acknowledge the handicaps that journalists faced in Fiji under the Media Industry Development Decree (MIDA), saying that while this remained in force, the 2014 general election in September “cannot be free and fair – period”.

And unlike many other politicians, he actually knows what he is talking about with the country’s media. In 2008, he was co-editor of a Fijian Studies academic journal with the theme “Media and democracy” in Fiji. And this followed a rare Pacific media textbook textbook Media and Development: Issues and Challenges in the Pacific Islands. In both collaborations his partner was then USP head of journalism Shailendra Singh.

So his commitment to media freedom is sincere and well-argued. But after eight years under this military backed regime, it is hard to think back to the days when Fiji actually had a feisty, truly independent media, arguably the best in the region.

Border ‘butchers’, absentee poll reps and West Papua’s growing strife

A West Papuan in handcuffs at a recent “Free West Papuans” rally in Auckland. Photo: Del Abcede/PMC

THE INDONESIAN parliamentary elections this week were disappointing on a number of fronts, especially for presidential frontrunner Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. His Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) which gained just 19 percent of the vote, was far less than the expected 25 percent. But the presidential vote is not until July.

What about West Papua? What was the fate of representation for the two Melanesian provinces bordering Papua New Guinea this week? Who among the Jakarta hopefuls really have the future of the Papuan region at heart?

Bobby Anderson, one of the rare journalists filing from West Papua, wrote in New Mandala:

In Papua, where state sovereignty and legitimacy is deeply contested, representation matters. So in this national election, who purports to represent Papua?

Candidate residence is one way of sizing up the candidates and the results are telling. Sixty three out of 114 candidates running for the DPR (National House of Representatives) seats in Papua province live within the greater Jakarta area.

An open letter to the commodore

Bula Frank,

I AM sure you prefer being called by your first name, rather than being than being called coup leader. I know you see yourself as a saviour – but may I say that you seem to be a slow saviour. You move … snail slow towards democracy, vinaka. From 2006 to 2014 is tomorrow and then Election Day – a special day, which I hope will be long, prosperous and full of fair play to the people.

Your media decree is a genuine way to boost the economy. Over the next four years you will be able to make a considerable amount of money from media organisations by collecting F$100,000 from journalists when they refuse to disclose their sources about their news story with the person who said in a mild manner… that your policies

Encourage people to think carefully and restrain themselves from voicing their negative views of the army.

To pay your fines, senior journalists will be able to mortgage their homes, take their children away from school, postpone paying the doctor, ignore their donations to the church and cut back on the food budget.

But… Frank… I see you have been thoughtful of the needs of journalists and left a loophole. Non-payment of the $100,000 fine will allow any journalist to go to jail and be clothed and fed at state expense. Good thinking.

I am sure your self-appointed judges will ensure married journalists with children will get a priority to go to jail before young single reporters. Perhaps, you can lock up the junior journalists at the army barracks. Your men know to do that.

The numerous $500,000 cheques collected from the media organisations will mount up and you will soon have enough money to legally buy The Fiji Times. With a little bit of luck (or military strategy) by 2014 you will own all the media in Fiji except perhaps the internet.

Internet story
It will be sad for you to miss out on owning the internet. It is among your harshest critics and I know that sometimes the information is wrong and often offensive. But, then how else do the people of Fiji, and the rest of the world finds out about Fiji in all its black, white, grey and khaki colours?

A short story for you about the internet. During 2000 when George Speight had his coup, the big Fiji media of radio, TV and the newspapers were uncertain about how to deal with him. The limited information they could glean was crucial for the public to hear and crucial too for the outside world. Getting information out to the rest of the world was difficult.

At the time I was working at the Media Centre of the University of the South Pacific. We managed to record news reports from radio and TV. That information along with on-the-spot reporting by student journalists was forwarded several times a day through the internet to media organisations in New Zealand, Australia, the US and Britain. This process continued for many days even after the overseas journalists arrived. Some of those students now hold key media positions in Fiji.

I no longer teach journalism to students in Suva, but if I was, I would still be helping them understand, learn and practise the Fiji Code of Ethics. It’s a sound code. I would want them to be fearless and to ask questions on the many facets of the problems and needs of society.

Young journalism students could ask… why do you need so many years in power to develop a new Constitution?

I would encourage them to think on questions about how you are dealing with the growing number of poor people in Fiji. Various blogsites tell me the poor are now half the population. Why are there more poor people now than in 2006 – you and your soldiers have been in charge of the country for a long time?

I would get students thinking too, on why we need so many military men in key administrative posts. Hopefully, they are all working towards putting themselves out of work and replacing their jobs posts with civilians. Are they?

About elections
Student journalists may ask you questions on democratic practice? In New Zealand, there are elections every three years. When the voters dislike the government, they tell it to go … and the government goes. Helen Clark went, John Key will go too.

Citizens in Britain are in the middle of a cliffhanger election to decide who they will want to lead the country for the next few years. The citizens’ decision this week does not bode well for the present government, but then democracy is difficult.

I hope you agree with me? If not, what will happen after 2014 when a decision by a civilian elected government angers you or perhaps a junior officer who has modelled himself on your behaviour?

To close off the tutorial and leave students thinking, it would be useful for them to reflect on this recent statement on democracy.

Pacific Beat Story from Radio Australia March 2, 2010
Fiji's military backed regime has announced that any politician, who has played a role in the country's politics, since 1987, will be banned from contesting the promised elections in 2014. The announcement has been made by interim Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama ...

A reply would be appreciated. Please post it on your favorite blog site

Vinaka
Patrick Craddock
Aotearoa

• Draft Fiji Media Industry Development Decree
  
• USP Speight coup journalism archive

Clinton told: Don’t listen to ‘heavy-handed’ Australia, NZ on Fiji

A STORY that didn’t rate too highly in the Australian and NZ press this week was Congressman Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin’s "advice" to US Secretary of State Helen Clinton to take a reality check on the briefings being dished up by Canberra and Wellington. This was important for two reasons: First, somebody of his stature in the Pacific giving prominence to another, more conciliatory view on Fiji. Second, it highlights the lack of an effort on the part of “big brother” media in the region to get the diverse and balanced Pacific viewpoints over Fiji. One of the few journalists to be diligent in this respect is Radio NZ's Richard Pamatatau who has consistently provided fresh angles in his Pacific reporting.

The Fiji media, of course, were quick to give their spin as part of their new regime-tailored “journalism of hope” era, but they often overlooked another important part of Faleomavaega’s discussion on a more comprehensive US policy on the Pacific: Clinton reportedly expressed support for greater autonomy for West Papua – another blind spot in the NZ media. (This was in response to Faleomavaega's request that the Obama Administration review the political status of West Papua and "hold Indonesia accountable for continued human rights abuses" in Jakarta-ruled "province".)

Faleomavaega met Clinton after returning from a visit to Fiji (he met privately with regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama and former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry) and his message was don’t listen to the “nasty accusations” against Fiji and the country shouldn’t be pressured into rushing into elections – it isn’t ready yet.

According to a statement from his office, Faleomavaega said: “The situation in Fiji is more complex than it appears. [The United States] has had no coherent policy toward some 16 Pacific island nations; very indicative of the fact is that we have not had any USAID presence in the Pacific region for many years now."

And for too often, and for too long, Madam Secretary, in my view, we've permitted Australia and New Zealand to take the lead even when Canberra and Washington operate with such a heavy hand that they are counterproductive to our shared goals," Faleomavaega added. It makes no sense, Madam Secretary, for the leaders of New Zealand and Australia to demand early elections just for the sake of having elections in Fiji while there are fundamental deficiencies in Fiji's electoral process, which gave rise to three military takeovers and even a civilian-related takeover within the past 20 years - along with three separate constitutions to govern these islands. I totally disagree with the nasty accusations that the leaders of New Zealand and Australia have made against Fiji given the fact that it's more complicated than it appears.

Faleomavaega immediately copped blasts from the Coup four point five media blog and Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. According to a report by Savali editor Tupuola Terry Tavita, Tuilaepa reckons Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin has been in the US too long and he is out of touch with Pacific politics:

Perhaps [Faleomavaega] has forgotten that Fiji has been independent since 1970 and its Legislature, Judiciary and the Executive branches of Government have been functioning until the military started to meddle with the affairs of government – a responsibility it was least capable of performing…
The good congressman completely ignores the fact that the regime in Fiji is a military dictatorship. And that Bainimarama’s regime has been engaging in a ruthless crackdown on dissenting public opinion and complete suppression of the media. Is not freedom of speech, freedom of the media and engaging in free and fair elections hallmarks of American democracy?

Touché!

• Faleomavaega's advice to Clinton
• Congressman hits out at Australian/NZ accusations
• Congressman Hunkin's meeting with Bainimarama deplored
  

Tongan poll vindicates pro-democracy group

Tonga's general election has vindicated the pro-democracy movement with a resounding success in spite of clumsy attempts by the authorities to gag political reporting and debate. As Pacific Radio News reports, pro-democracy candidates captured an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote in last Thursday's poll:
Of the five incumbent MPs, four have been re-elected, despite government moves to discredit them. Four are facing sedition charges over the 2006 riot in Nuku'alofa. Despite that, most were returned with increased majorities.
But first-time candidate Sangster Saulala narrowly missed out finishing fourth on Tongatapu but second in several rural polling stations. Saulala is also facing charges in relation to the 2006 riot.
Less than 50 percent of Tonga's registered voters turned out on the day.
Voting in Nuku'alofa was heavy but in the rural booths, voter turnout was reportedly lower.
'Akilisi Pohiva, former broadcaster and publisher of Kele'a, and long the leader of the Democracy Movement, topped the poll - as expected - with 11,290 votes. This was more than 4000 votes clear of the next highest polling candidate 'Isileli Pulu.
Another pro-democracy MP, Clive Edwards, a onetime notorious Police Minister, who jumped the political fence, had the biggest jump of any candidate, says RPN. He polled with thirteen hundred more votes than he did in the last election.
Pohiva doesn't want to see any slowing of change in Tonga - he would like debate continued next month and electoral reforms embedded before the coronation of King George Tupou V in August.
Pictured: Voting in the Tongan poll - Matangi Tonga

• Pro-democracy movement wins 70 percent of votes
• Tonga - another 'media Zimbabwe'
• Tongan call to resume political reform debate