# A CORRUPT CABAL TAKES ADVANTAGE OF AN AILING PRESIDENT AND SEVERELY COMPROMISES THE HEAD OF STATE

It is becoming clear that by advising the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, to suspend the salary of the DPP, Christopher Pryde, the Acting Attorney General, Siromi Turaga, and the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, have led Ratu Naiqama into an ambush in which he now standards accused of again breaking the law.

It is an astonishing position that the President has been placed in because of advice that is simply WRONG. For the second time in as many weeks, Ratu Naiqama is being accused of unlawful conduct towards two senior officers of state – first the sacked FICAC Commissioner, Barbara Malimali, and now the substantive DPP, who is being willfully prevented from taking up his post.

Of course, the circumstances are very different. Barbara Malimali is no longer FICAC Commissioner and is fighting her dismissal in the High Court. While Christopher Pryde continues to occupy the substantive position of chief state prosecutor but has been sidelined just as the ODPP has begun processing the police dockets arising from the CID investigations into those referred to it by the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry.

As Grubsheet has reported, in Christopher Pryde’s absence those cases are being decided – utterly perversely – by two individuals who are also mentioned adversely in the COI Report. They are the Acting DPP, Nancy Tikoisuva – who was accused of not declaring a conflict of interest – and the Deputy DPP, John Rabuku, who the Judge found liable to a charge of perverting the course of justice. As we’ve observed, giving them the job of deciding whether to prosecute is akin to allowing the inmates to take charge of a prison or mental asylum or pedophiles to take charge of a kindergarten.

For daring to publicly question the suitability of Tikoisuva and Rabuku to handle the police files, Christopher Pryde has had his salary cut off. The notification has come in a letter not from the Head of the Judicial Services Commission – the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo – but from the Head of State, the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu. Yet in passing the buck to his relative by marriage, Salesi Temo has severely compromised the President because the legal advice he and Siromi Turaga have given him is just plain wrong. It is UNLAWFUL.

Christopher Pryde is yet to respond to what is yet another astonishing provocation. But the true legal position is outlined in the following article by Victor Lal of Fijileaks, who again establishes himself as the most gifted Fijian journalist of his generation by bringing his Oxford academic skills to bear on his examination of the ambush into which Temo and Turaga have dragged the President.

It is simply incredible that these people are either so stupid or so malevolent (or both) that they would compromise the position of a high chief who is supposed to be above politics as Head of State yet is clearly not sufficiently in possession of his mental faculties to be able to independently ascertain that he is once again being led into a trap that will destroy any vestige of credibility he still has.

It is now for the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, and the head of the RFMF, Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai, to exert their constitutional responsibilities to defend the well-being of the State by removing Salesi Temo and Siromi Turaga from the President’s orbit before any more damage is done to the integrity of the institution of the presidency. The urgency of doing so cannot be overstated.