Whale Oil- Radio N.Z. perpetrates lies about Fiji petition

Whale Oil recent post on Fiji, analyzes the Radio NZ coverage on the alleged 600k signed petition for a 3 minute democracy in Fiji.

The excerpt:

Radio N.Z. perpetrates lies about Fiji petition

It is a while since I wrote any­thing about the coun­try of my birth, but Radio NZ has finally dri­ven me to it.

Prob­a­bly the sin­gle best site on Fiji is Fiji the way it was, is and Can be. He has got stuck into Radio NZ. Unfor­tu­nately his blog isn’t widely read so I take this oppor­tu­nity to spread the word more effectively.

Before I do I must choke out good com­ment about the recent work of Mur­ray McCully to change the par­a­digm and rhetoric around Fiji.

Now onto the Radio NZ bol­locks.

“Fiji’s peo­ple have been fairly meek and accept­ing in the face of three years of mil­i­tary rule – but not any longer. On Fri­day, they sub­mit­ted a peti­tion to the mil­i­tary regime call­ing for the restora­tion of democ­racy and elec­tions by the end of the year. It was backed by over 680,000 peo­ple – more than 80% of the country’s pop­u­la­tion.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how the regime responds to this. With that level of mass oppo­si­tion, its not as if they can arrest every­one (besides the obvi­ous prob­lem of num­bers, the sol­diers may not be will­ing to arrest their fam­i­lies). OTOH, unless the peo­ple are will­ing to turn their mass oppo­si­tion into colour-revolution-style mass protests, then the regime may not in fact have to do any­thing.”

Now read on to see where this non­sense came from.

RadioNZ reports, with­out prior enquiry, ques­tion or com­ment, that a peti­tion “said to have the sup­port of more than 600,000 peo­ple” has peti­tioned Bain­i­marama to hold elec­tions this year. Link.( See other RadioNZ links below.) And Coup­four­point­five has fol­lowed suit.

So Radio NZ got some info on a peti­tion sup­pos­edly from over 600,000 Fijian cit­i­zens to request a return to democ­racy and silly twat no Mal­colm Har­brow duti­ful starts spread­ing the lie. nor­mally he researches a bit more beyond the issues but his blink­ers are always on over Fiji.

So where did Radio NZ get their info from?

The infor­mant and main peti­tioner was Suliasi Dau­ni­tutu of Quean­beya, NSW, who is linked to the Aus­tralian FijiDemoc­ra­cyNow move­ment. Suliasi said the peti­tion­ers, most pre­sum­ably liv­ing in Fiji, “are afraid to express [their views] openly, so it’s being done through var­i­ous polit­i­cal par­ties … Lead­ers of the Fiji Labour, SDL and National Fed­er­a­tion Party…”

So. This is a peti­tion based on past party mem­ber­ship lists not indi­vid­u­als who have signed in their own right or given par­ties to sign on their behalf. The lists were appar­ently given by these par­ties to Suliasi and then handed by him to Bain­i­marama! I cer­tainly wouldn’t like to belong to a polit­i­cal party, or any other orga­ni­za­tion, which was so free with its
mem­ber­ship list. And if Bain­i­marama is as vin­dic­tive as Suliasi would claim, he isn’t doing his peti­tion­ers any good by giv­ing him their names and addresses. The peti­tion is imme­di­ately sus­pect on these grounds.

Well, well, well three holes in the ground. No-one has actu­ally signed a peti­tion. The peti­tion is made up of mem­bers of oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal par­ties, with not a sin­gle sig­na­ture to sup­port the con­tention that 680,000 or the claimed 80% of pop­u­la­tion have signed the peti­tion. In the num­bers there is a prob­lem to, apart from the obvi­ous that there is no way that the SDL, Labour and the National Fed­er­a­tion Party could pos­si­bly have 80% of the pop­u­la­tion enrolled as mem­bers. Though with Qarase any­thing is possible.

It is also sus­pect on the num­ber of peti­tion­ers claimed:

600,000 by RadioNZ; 685,936 by Suliasi, the main peti­tioner. How does he come even close to his 600,000 made up mainly of those on the party lists?

The adult pop­u­la­tion at the 2007 cen­sus was only 518,000, and the com­bined first pref­er­ence votes given to these three par­ties in the 2006 elec­tion totalled under 240,000. I doubt that more than a few of these vot­ers were reg­is­tered mem­bers of the party for which they voted.

Fur­ther, it can­not be pre­sumed that vot­ing for these par­ties four years ago would result in sim­i­lar num­bers vot­ing for them today,
or the same vot­ers being opposed to what Bain­i­marama has been
try­ing to achieve since 2006. Vot­ing for a party is a lim­ited
man­date.

Mine does not assume it can speak on my behalf on all issues. But if all 240,000 “signed” the peti­tion, a fur­ther 440,000 for­mer Fiji cit­i­zens and other peo­ple liv­ing over­seas would also need to sign to reach 686,000!

Did it not occur to some­one in RadioNZ that 600,000 is more more than the total adult Fiji pop­u­la­tion of 518,000 recorded in the 2007
cen­sus, approx­i­mately one-third of whom were too young to
vote?

Or did they con­sider the daunt­ing task of get­ting at least 360,000 Aus­tralians and New Zealan­ders to sign to get even close to their
600,000? Such a mas­sive peti­tion would have reached the ears of the
media. Why have we not heard of it until now?

Dig­ging deeper, Suliasi’s peti­tion was in sup­port of a peti­tion by Vil­isi
Naduka of Caubati in Nas­inu who first came to pub­lic atten­tion when in Octo­ber 2008 he parked his car across the road at Nabua, Suva, in
protest against the Coup.

Suliasi says the peti­tion was handed to Bain­i­mara last Fri­day
after­noon but Visili says he posted it after pray­ing at the
Methodist Church and pre­sent­ing a copy to the Church
Pres­i­dent, not that the dis­crep­ancy really mat­ters other than rais­ing the ques­tion of what else Suliasi may have got wrong.

Well. the num­bers are cer­tainly sus­pect and so is the fact as to who pre­sented what and when. Sounds like com­plete bol­locks. Time to sell Radio NZ methinks.

The NZ tax­payer should not be sub­si­diz­ing such poor jour­nal­ism. Fancy Labour sup­port­ing such and inept bunch of hope­less fact checkers.

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