End to Fiji Sun living off taxpayers

Mouthpiece of dumped regime struggling to survive

This week the Fiji Sun had an opinion piece from a more whiny than usual Nemani Delaibatiki. Outraged, he told his diminishing readership that Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka meant it when he invited the media to his office.

‘He is serious and he knows he has the time to do an interview,’ Delaibatiki intoned in his ‘Analysis’ on January 11. ‘In short, he is media savvy.’

Rabuka had agreed to an interview, he said, but his staff cut off the Sun reporters and were told the prime minister was too busy. The reporters sound rather tame and shy; hardly a real journalist anywhere in the world would admit to missing out on a story because a party hack made difficulties for them.

Delaibatiki engaged in more flattery, although not on the same scale he and his newspaper used to accord Voreqe Bainimarama (to the Sun he was ‘the Messiah’). Rabuka must have wondered, said Delaibatiki, what happened to the two Sun hacks that had followed behind.