# JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED. A MAGISTRATE SPEAKS OUT

It is seven weeks tomorrow since the Prime Minister said the suspended DPP, Christopher Pryde, was entitled to continue to be paid his salary – which was summarily cut off by the Acting Chief Justice, Salesi Temo – and it still hasn’t been restored. It is almost 17 months since Christopher Pryde was suspended for alleged misbehaviour and still there has been no judicial tribunal hearing date set – as the Constitutional stipulates – to hear the allegation against him.

Salesi Temo told the nation in a statement last month that the Pryde Tribunal hearing would commence on August 19. Ten days later, there is still no sign of that happening. And the outlaw Temo – having given a specific undertaking on a hearing date – doesn’t even see fit to update the Fijian people on why the undertaking he made so publicly hasn’t been honoured. It is a gross dereliction of the Acting CJ’s duty to the Fijian people to maintain the integrity of the criminal justice system. And it is being enabled by the Attorney General, Graham Leung, and Sitiveni Rabuka as PM.

We found out from the Tribunal judges last week (Justice Anare Tuilevuka, Justice Samuela Qica and Justice Chaitanya Lakshman) that the state still hasn’t finalised all of its affidavits in the case despite the fact that it is approaching 17 months since Christopher Pryde was suspended.

The whole thing is a national scandal that reflects extremely poorly on Justice Temo and the Attorney General, who may not be able to tell the outlaw Acting Chief Justice what to do but certainly carries responsibility for the astonishing inability of the State to get its prosecution together.

What are we to make of all of this? On any reasonable assessment, it is this: The original charge against Christopher Pryde 17 months ago was that he was seen in conversation with Aiyaz Sayed–Khaiyum at a Japanese Embassy function. Then a year later came a fresh allegation that he had received unauthorised superannuation payments since 2012, a charge he strongly denies. And recently came news that government investigators were still ferreting around trying to find fresh evidence against Christopher Pryde, which presumably accounts for the latest delay that has exposed the Acting Chief Justice as a liar.

Let’s call this for what it is. A stitch-up. Because if there was a genuine allegation of misbehaviour against Christopher Pryde, this would have been done and dusted long ago. Instead Fiji has presented with legal world with a textbook example of the old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. And to add insult to injury, the Acting Chief Justice severed the DPP’s salary to prevent him from being able to adequately defend himself.

Seriously. How can anyone in Fiji continue to have confidence in the criminal justice system when there is such a blatant case of victimisation, so much so that the Prime Minister himself has been made to look like an idiot by giving the Acting Chief Justice a lesson in what should have been done and is simply ignored. The old fool is a law unto himself and a threat to the entire system.

Now someone from within the system is calling out this kind of unconscionable conduct, not specifically in Christopher Pryde’s case but in the case of delays in the FICAC case being brought against the Acting Corrective Services Commissioner, Salote Panapasa.

Resident Magistrate Krishan Prasad hasn’t been in the job for very long. He was among a group of judicial officers sworn in in March 2023 ( see photo below). But it also hasn’t taken very long for Magistrate Prasad to make his presence felt by stating the bleeding obvious, which has so scandalously escaped his boss:

You would think that this was a lesson that Salesi Temo, Graham Leung, Siromi Turaga and the other sorry bunch of characters in the Pryde saga would have had figuratively etched on their foreheads as young lawyers. Yet the quality of the criminal justice system in Fiji has been so degraded that one of the most fundamental tenets of the rule of law has simply been thrown out the window.

While the nation wrings its hands about the breakdown of law and order, the corruption of the police, the breakdown of community morality and standards of conduct and endures lessons from a degenerate, drug-taking hypocrite in the form of Lynda Tabuya , no-one seems to understand the most basic of facts. That when the criminal justice system is degraded to the point that the rule of law is threatened, everything else simply falls apart.

It is the root of all evil in any society. And sadly, it is precisely what is happening in Fiji.