Media and blogs respond to Fiji military dictatorship

Chris Merrit and John Stapleton writing in The Australian this morning:

THE Australian judges who triggered Fiji's latest political crisis have branded the Pacific nation's president a dictator and warned that any expatriate judges who accept job offers from him could be seen as treasonous.
The attack on president Josefa Iloilo was unleashed yesterday after he had sacked the country's judiciary, torn up the constitution and reappointed a prime minister whose regime the judges had declared illegal.
"He is effectively a dictator - that is a strong word, but that is the situation," said Ian Lloyd, one of the three Australian judges on Fiji's Court of Appeal who last Thursday ruled that military leader Frank Bainimarama's seizure of power in a 2006 coup was illegal.

The Canberra Times reported today:

Life becomes difficult for the Fiji press during a constitutional crisis. And so it has proved once again for the Fiji Times. Yesterday's edition featured some unusual page layouts, courtesy of the "khaki subeditors" - military censors placed in the newspaper offices by the interim prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama.

It is also being reported that Fiji blogs are stepping into the breach and supplying information despite the Fiji Government's attempts to censor media.

From Raw Fiji News on Sunday:

As you are aware His Excellency our President yesterday morning abrogated the 1997 Constitution. His Excellency has informed me that the decision of the then Court of Appeal; the anomaly in the decision, the serious consequent vacuum created by that decision; the existing circumstances in Fiji and the way forward as mapped out by the Charter left His Excellency no choice but to abrogate the 1997 constitution.

RFN says - Frank, there was no anomaly in the appeals court decision. It was consistent with the rule of law and consistent with what many people thought of your illegal acts. Even if there was some degree of anomaly, you could have instructed those taxpayer money thieves QCs who represented you to take that same argument to the Supreme Court. You didn't take it any further Frank because you and your team knew all along that there ain't no chance for you at Supreme Court who without doubt would have upheld the Appeals Court ruling denouncing you as an illegal usurper.

[Our response to Frank's yah dah yah dah yah dah, April 12, 2009]

Short list of other blogs commenting on the military regime and its media censorship posted by Andrew Bartlett over at Crikey:

 Discombobulated Bubu;
 Fiji Girl's Weblog;
 Luvei Viti – Children of Fiji;
 Soli Vakasama;
 Fiji Democracy Now;
 Tears for Fiji;
 Coup Four and a Half.