# YES, NO NEED FOR A STATE OF EMERGENCY. THE MILITARY IS ALREADY IN CONTROL AND THE MEDIA IS UNDER CONTROL

Without in any way diminishing the importance of tackling the drug threat, there are some deeply disturbing aspects to the current crackdown on criminals way beyond the extrajudicial killing by the RFMF of the accused drug kingpin, Jone Vakarisi.

As the police “investigate” (yeah, sure) the circumstances in which Vakarisi was tortured and beaten to death at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks three weeks ago, the Fijian people are now being told only to believe information from official sources. Not the mainstream media, let alone the likes of Grubsheet or Fijileaks, but only from the government itself.

There is only one word for this assault on the right of every Fijian to free access to information. Unacceptable. And especially when the Minister for Information, Lynda Tabuya, has coined a new word – “mal -information”, which she says is when something is true but is harmful to the position of others.

Incredibly, the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, has also embraced this word in a speech about media freedom having to be accompanied by media responsibility.

Let’s get one thing straight, Fiji. There is truth and there is falsehood. Bullsh*t. And the notion that truth can be suppressed because it is damaging to the government’s interests is unacceptable in any democracy. It is Orwellian* and must be resisted.

Why? Because who decides when the truth is damaging? They do. And when there is already so much massaging of the truth by the Coalition government, so much deliberate misinformation or disinformation deliberately peddled for political gain, we must not surrender to the preposterous notion that truth should be suppressed just because it is damaging to the government’s position.

It is especially critical that we resist it in the countdown to the election in nine month’s time at the latest. Or is the election to be delayed? Because that is the persistent rumour that the Prime Minister has done nothing to dispel, just as he has doggedly avoided telling us whether he opposes the common and equal citizenry, the common identity and the secular state.

Now he tells us that the truth can be “mal-information” when it doesn’t suit the government’s purposes and we should only listen to what the government tells us through his corrupt handmaiden at the Ministry of Information. No. No. No!

Lynda Tabuya is a proven liar. Ergo, anything she says cannot be believed. Ergo, anything this government says cannot automatically be accepted as true when it actively seeks to debase the principle of absolute truth. We need a genuinely independent mainstream media and genuinely independent commentators. And in the case of Grubsheet and Fijileaks, Victor Lal and I have a record of commitment to the truth that is second to none.

What is the progress of the “police investigation” into who murdered Jone Vakarisi at the Camp? How can the police be trusted to do a complete and thorough investigation that brings the killer/killers to justice when it is clear to the entire nation that the RFMF has assumed the principal role in the supposedly joint police-military operation against drug lords and other criminals?

And how can we possibly trust the RFMF when its Commander, Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai, lied about the circumstances of Vakarisi’s death – that it was a sudden medical episode brought about by a “pre-existing condition” – when he was almost immediately cast as a liar by the official death certificate revealing that Vakarisi was beaten to death.

The Prime Minister and his Information Minister would have it that we should have accepted the RFMF Commander’s account of what happened because it came from an official source – Ro Kalouniwai himself.

FACT: That was either misinformation – false information spread due to ignorance, or by error or mistake, without the intent to deceive – or disinformation – knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead or obscure the truth for malicious or deceptive purposes. It was not “mal-information” – on Lynda Tabuya’s definition – simply because it wasn’t true.

But was Grubsheet spreading “mal-information” when we proved that it wasn’t true by being the first media outlet to publish Vakarisi’s death certificate? Because while what we reported was true, it certainly did damage to the RFMF Commander and the force he leads. And it will continue to do them damage until Vakarisi’s killers are brought to justice.

Ro Kalouniwai appears to have gone to ground since the Vakarisi debacle, judging from the fact that it was his Land Force Commander, Brigadier General Onisivoro Covunisaqa – not the Commander – who addressed the troops in front of the entire domestic media with a warning to drug lords and criminals so dire that it surely should have come from the top.

• Is the Land Force Commander now effectively in charge after Kalouniwai’s humiliating back-down over the cause of Vakarisi’s death ?

• Is he emerging as Kalouniwai’s successor when Kalouniwai’s contract ends in September?

• What role, if any, did the Land Force Commander play in the interrogation, beating and subsequent death of Jone Vakarisi?

• When are we going to get an update about the “police investigation” into Vakarisi’s killing? Or is this going to be classified as “mal-information” – true but so damaging to the reputation of the RFMF, the government and Fiji that we will never know?

Again, no-one is disputing the gravity of the drug threat. But there is no question that a very heavy handed message is going out to the community as a whole, judging from the media headlines of recent hours.

By all means, threaten the drug lords and criminals. But the Fijian people are entitled to demand an end to the unacceptable notion that truth can be suppressed just because it is damaging to the government’s interests. Or that we should only believe what the government tells us. Because that is a fast-track to dictatorship. And for many Fijians, the alarm bells are ringing all over again.

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Who needs a formal state of emergency under the circumstances? The RFMF is clearly fully in control. And the mainstream media is reporting precisely what the government wants it to report.

Just compare the following two stories, the first from CFL-Fiji Village, the second from the Fiji Sun. The contents are virtually identical, taken from La Tabuya virtually word for word.

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Yep, we don’t want any of that “mal-information”, even if it is true.

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And where are the civilian office bearers in all of this? In the case of the corrupt Chief Justice, actively fighting a turf war for control of the corruption watchdog.

With the steady erosion of integrity of our institutions of state, Fiji as nation is in very big trouble indeed.

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NOTE TO READERS:

My apologies that this is not as comprehensive as it could be and that other stories are falling by the wayside in these columns as I await surgery for a shoulder replacement.

I am writing against doctor’s orders but some stories are really too big to ignore and this is one of them.