# WHAT THE CHIEF JUSTICE, THE ACTING DPP AND THE FIJI LAW SOCIETY PRESIDENT DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW AS THEY TRY TO CRUSH THE COI (UPDATED SUNDAY PM)

While desperate attempts are being made behind the scenes to throttle the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry into the Malimali affair, the forces trying to manipulate the course of justice to spare the likes of Barbara Malimali herself and senior politicians Manoa Kamikamica and Biman Prasad are finally meeting a degree of resistance.

It isn’t nearly enough resistance – which is what the national interest demands – because a corrupt Chief Justice, a corrupt Acting DPP and lawyers acting for the principals are doing all they can to manipulate events and the narrative. And the mainstream media isn’t properly reporting what is going on because it is either lazy, cowered or compromised by its relationships with some of the main players.

Take the following statement by the Opposition leader,Inia Seruiratu, putting pressure on the Acting DPP, Nancy Tikoisuva, to explain why she is sitting on all 12 files sent to her by the police with recommendations about who should be charged and tried of offences arising from the CoI.

This is a matter of vital national importance. Yet the main media organisations – the Fiji Times, the Fiji Sun, CFL-Fiji Village and FBC – have simply ignored Seruiratu altogether in a manner that would be regarded as intolerable in any other democracy.

He is the official Opposition Leader who ought to command media attention as a matter of course. Yet while the mainstream media crows about a “new era of media freedom” under the Coalition, only the Internet news service, Fiji Live, has seen fit to highlight Seruiratu tightening the screws on Nancy Tikoisuva and promising to pursue her until she does her duty to act independently of her crooked patron, the Chief Justice.

Of course, Nancy Tikoisuva knows that when a statement like this doesn’t appear in either of the two daily newspapers or the two main broadcast outlets, FBC and CFL-Fiji Village, she has a much better chance of riding out what Grubsheet first highlighted a week ago – the scandal of her willfully blocking action on the police files and leaving herself open to a charge of obstructing and perverting the course of justice.

It underlines the pathetic nature of the mainstream media in Fiji, which is in a state of perennial self-congratulation over its “freedom” under the Coalition to report national events yet routinely ignores the most important threats to proper governance, the rule of law and even democracy itself. Refusing to run an important statement by the Opposition leader is a glaring example – either an act of wilful negligence or evidence that the media has been corrupted or both.

Yet the noose is tightening around Nancy Tikoisuva and her patron, the Chief Justice, Salesi Temo, who in the ultimate perversity in Fiji, continues to preside over the criminal justice system when he stands accused by a Supreme Court Commission of Inquiry of grave criminal conduct himself – perjury and obstructing and perverting the course of justice.

Inia Seruiratu’s statement in itself saying this issue isn’t going away carries the implied threat of prosecution under a future government, which is why the malignant forces in the Fijian establishment led by the Chief Justice are increasingly desperate to prevail in a series of court challenges and power plays before the coming election and the threat of comeuppance if a new order takes the reins.

Salesi Temo and his fellow accused – the convicted drink-driving Chief Registrar, Tomasi Bainivalu – have been desperately trying to unseat Barbara Malimali’s successor, the Acting FICAC Commissioner, Lavi Rokoika, who has re-instituted a number of investigations that Malimali had quashed and which threaten some very big names.

They are doing so falsely claiming that because they didn’t appoint Rokoika – or at least the Judicial Services Commission they control didn’t recommend her appointment and the Prime Minister did – that her appointment is invalid. As we’ll see, Wylie Clarke, the President of the Fiji Law Sociey, is arguing the same thing in his defence of the FICAC case against the sidelined deputy prime minister and Rabuka rival, Manoa Kamikamica.

Those arguments are currently playing out in the courts. Yet as if to circumvent the court process, Salesi Temo and his gofer, Bainivalu, unilaterally decided without consulting other members of the JSC to merely advertise the substantive position of FICAC Commissioner and cut Rokoika’s legs from beneath her. She would have had to apply to them for her own job. And presto, she’d be out on the street, their choice of corruption watchdog would be almost certainly installed and the whole problem would go away.

Alas. Not consulting the other members of the JSC means that this little pantomime hasn’t run past the first scene – an advertisement for the FICAC Commissioner’s job that pointedly emphasised that the JSC recommends any appointment nomination to the President, not the Prime Minister.

Unfortunately for the Chief Justice and his drink-driving servant boy, their little power play has failed and they have fallen flat on their faces. Assuming, of course, that they don’t regroup and try again.

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It is critical for the Fijian people to understand that the narrative being peddled by the Chief Justice and his sidekick, plus Barbara Malimali and her lawyer Tanya Waqanika, plus Wylie Clarke on behalf of his client, Manoa Kamikamica, and perhaps, soon, Clarke himself, plus Richard Naidu on behalf of his client, Biman Prasad – is just plain wrong.

This is that if the JSC didn’t recommend Lavi Rokoika’s appointment to the President and she was chosen on the advice of the Prime Minister, that is invalid and everything Rokoika does, including prosecuting them, is also invalid and should be thrown out, along with the entire CoI Report.

This false narrative is being peddled to the two High Court judges currently hearing challenges to the CoI report and the prosecutions of those being pursued by FICAC – Justice Dane Tuiqereqere and Justice Saiiniu Fa’alogo Bull.

They are being told that Lavi Rokoika’s appointment was unlawful when it is not unlawful at all. And on the say-so of New Zealand’s preeminent authority on constitutional matters, Professor Philip Joseph KC, in advice he gave to the Ashton-Lewis CoI, which has been given to the Fijian government but which, so far at least, has simply been ignored.

First, the following is what Wylie Clarke told Justice Bull in the High Court during the week that also completely ignores Philip Joseph’s advice that the Prime Minister DOES have the right to make appointments and what is being argued is nonsense.

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It’s not as if the Philip Joseph advice is new. Grubsheet outlined the position last October when we observed that Wylie Clarke and Richard Naidu were desperately trying to convince the courts that it didn’t exist to avoid their clients being prosecuted.

Here’s an extract from that article that still stands, with the full Philip Joseph document at the bottom of this posting.

The following is from Grubsheet on October 24, 2025:

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It is all there is black and white in Philip Joseph’s advice to the CoI from a professor of law and Kings Counsel far more capable of interpreting the law than Salesi Temo, Wylie Clarke, Richard Naidu or Tanya Waqanika.

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Of course it is open to Wylie Clarke and the others to ignore New Zealand’s top constitutional expert and stick to the precise terms of Section 5 of the FICAC Act simply because it suits their purposes to do so.

But Justice Tuiqereqere and Justice Bull and any other judge or magistrate who hears a case in which the same argument is put – that only the JSC can advise the President on a FICAC appointment – is going to have to take into account Philip Joseph’s opinion to avoid prolonged and expensive Supreme Court challenges to their judgments. So there is a burden of responsibility on them to get these cases right if this saga is to be brought to a close before the coming election.

Of course, they are judges who are independent and have sworn on oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. So if Section 5 of the FICAC Act is indeed ultra vires – invalid because it is contrary to Section 82 of the Constitution, the supreme law – they can hardly ignore Philip Joseph’s opinion.

They have an obligation, above all, to uphold the Constitution. And while we’re not hearing any of this from mainstream media outlets in Fiji – who lend their ears to the likes of Wylie Clarke, Richard Naidu and Tanya Waqanika almost as a knee-jerk response, irrespective of the truth of what they are saying – the nation’s judges are in a different league, or at least those who are still independent, with an accused criminal now running the judiciary in the form of Salesi Temo.

We observed last October that an element of desperation had set in with some of those named in the CoI Report but that desperation has gone to another level when we know that 12 cases investigated by police are being held up in the ODPP by Nancy Tikoisuva and the Opposition Leader is insisting publicly that she start doing her job.

A week ago, we revealed that one of the reported police recommendations is that Wylie Clarke be prosecuted and tried for perverting the course of justice for his role in the events at FICAC on September 5 2024, when he organised a posse to free Barbara Malimali from arrest and was present and remained mute when Tomasi Bainivalu conveyed a message to Francis Puleiwai – the then acting commissioner – that no charge she laid would be heard by any court in Fiji.

So that when the President of the Law Society gets up in court to defend his client, Manoa Kamikamica, he is also fighting for his own survival – a startling conflict of interest that has also gone unremarked in the mainstream media yet ought to be causing particular concern among the nation’s lawyers in private practice, who re-elected Wylie Clarke to lead them after his adverse finding by the CoI.

Other reported police recommendations are that Barbara Malimali also be charged and tried with abuse of office and that Tomasi Bainivalu be charged and tried with perverting the course of justice. If all of this is true – and there has been no denial since our story a week ago – the level of sheer panic behind the scenes can only be imagined.

It is in the national interest that the Acting DPP stops preventing the rule of law from taking its course. And equally in the national interest that Justice Tuiqereqere and Justice Bull do their jobs without any interference and exercise their independence to uphold the rule of law.

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DEEPER BACKGROUND THAT THE PRESIDING JUDGES CAN’T IGNORE:

The entire legal opinion from Philip Joseph KC that gives the lie to the claims by the JSC, Wylie Clarke, Richard Naidu, Tanya Waqanika and others that only the JSC and not the Prime Minister can appoint or remove a FICAC Commissioner.

The Prime Minister did both – removed Barbara MalImali and appointed Lavi Rokoika – and here is the evidence that he had every legal right to do so. And that if the rule of law genuinely prevails, the current proceedings to declare Rabuka’s actions unlawful are destined to fail.

POSTSCRIPT. A SUNDAY REFLECTION:

Why judges, magistrates and other judicial officers must put the Constitution first. For a start, because they have sworn by Almighty God to do so.

Yet Salesi Temo has repeatedly violated the Constitution during his term as Chief Justice and the Prime Minister is violating the Constitution by not advising the President to suspend Temo after the CoI accused him of perjury and obstructing and perverting the course of justice.

A sacred trust has been broken and the rule of law disregarded and degraded. It is a tragedy for our beloved Fiji and those responsible must be brought to account.

We look to our judges and magistrates to resist having their independence compromised by those putting their own interests before the national interest. And you can use your vote at the coming election, Dear Reader, to bring this betrayal to an end – to punish those who have broken their promises and help set the nation on a proper course.

UPDATED SUNDAY LUNCHTIME

The Fiji Times belatedly reports Inia Seruiratu’s remarks after Grubsheet’s criticism of the media. Let’s see if other outlets do the same.

The onus is now clearly on Nancy Tikoisuva to explain herself. Or should the police send the files to the self-exiled substantive DPP, Christopher Pryde, whose contract doesn’t end until March the 25th?