# “YOU HAVE BROKEN THE LAW”. WHAT THE DPP HAS TOLD THE PRESIDENT AND WHAT THE PRESIDENT TOLD THE DPP (UPDATED TUES AM)

The stand-off between the State and the DPP, Christopher Pryde, has gone to a new level with the DPP releasing correspondence between him and the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, in which he tells the Head of State that he has unlawfully suspended his salary.

Christopher Pryde says he is doing so because the State has leaked selected passages of the letter of suspension from the President to the Fiji Sun newspaper and the situation needs to be clarified. The DPP is suing the Fiji Sun for defamation for refusing to correct its false claim that he has continually refused to explain his absence from Fiji even though he was exonerated of wrongdoing and reinstated back in January.

As we’ve done before, we are publishing proof that emails from Christopher Pryde have been directed to the Fiji Sun, including its Managing Director, Rosi Doviverata, yet the contents still haven’t been accurately reported.

Let’s just see, Fiji, whether the Sun publishes the full contents of the following correspondence that again outlines the true position. Because if it doesn’t, it will be as bad as its opposition, the Fiji Times, in manipulating the facts of this saga and depriving the Fijian people of the full story of the unprecedented standoff between the Head of State and the nation’s chief prosecutor.

The credibility of the Fijian media as a whole is now very much on the line. Who is going to faithfully report the contents of these two letters? We will be monitoring the media closely and naming (and shaming) those outlets who don’t report them accurately and fairly. The Fiji Sun‘s treatment will be especially scrutinised by Christopher Pryde’s lawyers, who are lodging defamation proceedings against it.

We are now in the extraordinary position in which we can’t trust those who provide us on a daily basis with what we read, watch and listen to in the mainstream media in Fiji. And that is as shocking as the unlawful treatment of Christopher Pryde himself and the manipulation of the senior offices of state by a government mired in illegality as well as chaos and dysfunction.

(Click on the following images to enhance them)

UPDATE TUESDAY AM:

True to form, the Fijian mainstream media has overwhelmingly ignored the contents of the above exchange of letters, despite the extraordinary spectacle of the substantive DPP telling the President that he has broken the law – contravened the constitution – by suspending his salary.

Anywhere else in the world, a public scrap like this between two principal officers of state would be major news. But not in Fiji with its corrupt and supine media bought off ,in some cases, with taxpayer funds.

One exception is Fiji Live, which headlines the old news that the DPP’s salary has been suspended but ignores its most basic duty to balance the story with Christopher Pryde’s response. It is an astonishing breach of journalistic ethics.

As for FBC News and CFL-Fiji Village – the commercial network that has received $1.7-million in taxpayer funds while making record profits – they have chosen not to cover the story at all. As does the corrupt Fiji Times, which compounds its lack of the most basic journalistic standards with an editorial by Editor in Chief Fred Wesley trumpeting the paper’s commitment to “truth”.

It is genuinely Orwellian – the Fiji Times posing as a “trusted” dispenser of the facts when it routinely manipulates the news (see previous story).

Fred Wesley and his cohorts have interpreted the supposed new era of media freedom as the freedom to ignore the most basic standards of proper journalism. Yet like some pedophile priest, he adopts a posture of righteousness from his daily pulpit that is vastly at odds with the paper’s actual conduct.

The hypocrisy of this extract from Tuesday’s editorial is sickening – the media not as the champion of free speech but an ally of government for its suppression.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Fiji Times wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the face.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Fiji  has sunk into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister by the lights of perverted journalism – a new “Ministry of Truth” presided over by the Porn Queen from Room 233 and media outlets who should be holding the government to account meekly falling under her spell.

Let’s see how Vijay Narayan handles Lynda Tabuya in his “Bent Talk” program on Wednesday night. Because he now has an additional 1.7 million reasons – the amount CFL-Fiji Village has received in government subsidy – to give her a free ride.

“Top News”. Yes, we can certainly expect the Minister for Bonking and Weed to assume the dominant position and for the once brave Vijay to be his now customary submissive self.

Go on, Vijay, surprise us. Prove me wrong. You could at least ask her why the Prime Minister – having found Lynda Tabuya guilty of a “sex and illicit drug scandal” and stripping her of the deputy leadership of the PAP – has now given her the keys to the Ministry of Truth.

Here’s the documentary proof you need to ask a genuinely straight question on Straight Talk. But, of course, you won’t.

Incredibly, the mainstream media in Fiji – including Vijay Narayan – has never reported this letter or its contents. And we can be certain that isn’t about to change.