Fiji dictator hijacked Pacific Islands News Association

The recent news that the current board members of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) have agreed in a recently held meeting in New Caledonia to register PINA as a private company in Fiji, and not as a charitable organization as it is used to be,  is misleading and deliberately tailored to deceit regional members.

The reality is PINA has been forced by recent changes to the media ownership laws in Fiji, which have been designed by the current dictatorship regime to kick out foreign ownership and take control of local media critics. These draconian laws had forced the sale of the Fiji Times newspaper, which was owned by News Limited, a subsidiary of the Rupert Murdoch global media empire. It also gave the Fijian dictatorship regime the legal grounds to deport expatriate managers and editors of several Fiji-based news media companies.

These same laws have also forced the hands of non-Fijian board members of PINA to accept the registration of the former charitable organization as a private company. But PINA was given a choice, as has been in the case of the 1987 Fiji coup, where the PINA office in Suva was moved to Auckland, New Zealand and later to Honiara, Solomon Islands. The news component of PINA, PacNews was also moved from Fiji to the Solomon Islands in the early 1990s. The office was later relocated to Port Vila, Vanuatu. But following the restoration of democracy in Fiji, the office was relocated back to Suva.

But interestingly in this new twist of the PINA love-hate relationship, the Fijian-based dominated Secretariat of PINA was reluctant to move from Fiji. As a result, the PINA executive was forced to register the organization as a company before the PINA annual convention in Noumea. A case that is going to force other regional countries to put taxes on the activities of PINA as a commercial entity. What it means is - as a private registered company in Fiji, PINA status and functions have to come under Fiji media ownership laws. It directly resulted in the recent changes to the composition and election of board members of PINA. As in yesteryears, board members of PINA were elected on the basis of fair representation of member countries and affiliates. With the new status of PINA as a private Fijian-based company, it requires by Fiji laws that not less than two board members of the usual six members’ board of PINA, will have to be Fijians, a ticket for Fijians domination of PINA.

The problem of accountability in the PINA management, which a media news has claimed to be one of the basis of why PINA have to be registered as a private company is misleading. It is a known fact amongst members of the Pacific Islands media fraternity that the former PINA Secretariat, under the management of Peter Lomas, a New Zealand naturalized citizen of Fiji, now the managing editor of the pro-Fijian dictator newspaper, Fiji Sun, and his wife, a local non-trained journalist without any management background, Nina Ratulele, they consistently failed to produce a comprehensive audit account of PINA.

During my time as a student at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in the late 1990s, two or three consecutive years of PINA annual conventions, the duo failed to produce an audit report. It led to the withdrawal of many major European and foreign media and journalism donors. Now, the registration of PINA has also put a question-mark on a number of critical issues about the future viability and existence of PINA and also its role as a neutral observer and strong advocator of media freedom in the region.

It raises the question of who owns PINA. And as a private company, what is the role of PINA in the promotion and developing of media freedom in a country where the host-media is currently under constant media gage and censorship by monitors of a dicator. It appears that the Fiji-based board members of PINA are only using the current President of PINA, Moses Stevens of Vanuatu, and few other Ni-Vanuatu and PNG in the board as PR machines, who have no spine to make decisions about PINA and its role in media development in the region. 

My taking of this issue is AusAid, NZ, European Union etc should withdraw their funding from PINA and redirect them to national associations and tertiary media and journalism programs.

National associations of media and journalism professionals in the region should also withdraw their memberships and support of PINA. This organization is now controlled by a dictator, whose stooges are infiltrating every media, organization and institution in Fiji, with the intention of silencing opponents, critics, news media and journalists, who dare to speak the truth about corruption and dictatorship in the country. Fiji’s dictatorship regime is becoming bolder, strategic, manipulative, exploitative and forceful.

A classic example of this is the fact that during the recently held PINA annual meeting in Noumea, the Fijian-dominated PINA board, only held two workshops about "media legislation", and nothing about "media freedom" in modern Pacific Islands region. They even took the PINA annual board meeting out of Noumea to a town 3 hours’ drive from the venue of the meeting that simply inaccessible to members of the news media, who were attending the annual convention. This is despite the fact that the majority of those who were attending this year's convention in New Caledonia were funded by Australia.

The attitude of the Fijian members of PINA board was blatant arrogant and disrespectful to the hard working journalists, news media organizations and donor partners of the news organizations, who have stood by PINA through thick and thin. The pro-military regime members of PINA can easily fool Melanesian members of the PINA board to support their self-centered move. But the registration of PINA as a company is the beginning of the end for PINA as a trust worthy recipient of donor funding for media development and freedom of expression in Fiji and in the Pacific Islands region.