{"id":889928,"date":"2022-11-19T07:23:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T07:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/?p=80907"},"modified":"2022-11-19T07:23:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-19T07:23:06","slug":"fiji-elections-chief-issues-legal-order-for-times-to-remove-no-apology-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/11\/19\/fiji-elections-chief-issues-legal-order-for-times-to-remove-no-apology-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiji Elections chief issues legal order for Times to remove \u2018no apology\u2019 article"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Felix Chaudhary in Suva<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has issued a legal direction to <em>The Fiji Times<\/em> to remove an article which he said misquoted him.<\/p>\n<p>Saneem objected to the headline of the article, which read: &#8220;Saneem: I will not apologise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unity Fiji party candidate Riaz Mohammed had demanded that Saneem apologise for initially rejecting his nomination on the grounds of an alleged criminal conviction.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/?s=Fiji+elections\"><strong>READ MORE:<\/strong> Other Fiji elections reports<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In response, Saneem, declining to apologise, said that if Mohammed wanted an apology \u201cthat means we have some malice, there is no malice in this\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Saneem issued a legal notice to <em>The Fiji Times<\/em> yesterday under section 144A of the Electoral Act, directing the removal of the online article.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate letter to <em>The Fiji Times<\/em>, Saneem said he \u201cdid not make the statement as quoted in your headline\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe headline is clearly misleading and also appears to be fabricated by <em>Fiji Times<\/em>,\u201d Saneem said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the same is your own views, then you should correctly identify it to yourself and not the SOE.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Fiji Times<\/em> disagrees<\/strong><br \/>\nSection 144A, giving the power to the Supervisor to remove or correct \u201cfalse statements\u201d was enacted by Parliament last year.<\/p>\n<p><em>Fiji Times<\/em> editor-in-chief Fred Wesley replied it was not necessary for the Elections Supervisor to serve legal notices on the newspaper every time he wanted a correction to a news story.<\/p>\n<p>Wesley said he did not agree that <em>The Fiji Times<\/em> had breached the law but was prepared to remove the article as directed because &#8220;it was not an article of great importance&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><em>Felix Chaudhary<\/em> <em>is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_80912\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-80912\" style=\"width: 680px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img class=\"wp-image-80912 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-19-at-10.53.47-PM.png\" alt=\"A screenshot from the Fiji Times 19112022\" width=\"680\" height=\"686\" srcset=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-19-at-10.53.47-PM.png 680w, https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-19-at-10.53.47-PM-297x300.png 297w, https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-19-at-10.53.47-PM-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-19-at-10.53.47-PM-416x420.png 416w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-80912\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot from today&#8217;s Fiji Times &#8211; the Fijian Elections Office directive and Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley&#8217;s reply. Image: FT screenshot APR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/asiapacificreport.nz\/2022\/11\/19\/fiji-elections-chief-issues-legal-order-for-times-to-remove-no-apology-article\/\">Asia Pacific Report<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Felix Chaudhary in Suva Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has issued a legal direction to The Fiji Times to remove an article which he said misquoted him. Saneem objected to the headline of the article, which read: \u201cSaneem: I will not apologise.\u201d Unity Fiji party candidate Riaz Mohammed had demanded that Saneem apologise for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,35709,5,54610,495,10487,54549,51817,54613,35886,94,12,14,23563],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890644,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889928\/revisions\/890644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}