MILITARY-REGIME BALLSUCKER … and paid Qorvis toady Graham Davis has written that the findings of the Tuilevuka Tribunal are a ‘total vindication’ of Christopher Pryde, whose ‘reputation and integrity have now been restored in the most dramatic of circumstances imaginable’.

But is it really true that Pryde has been totally vindicated and his reputation restored? Hardly.

There are certainly a number of things that the tribunal is very clear about with regard the key allegation that led to Pryde’s suspension in 2023:

1. Yes, the allegation has not ‘been made out’.

But the Tribunal found that Pryde did violate the principle to ‘avoid outside activity that could reasonably be perceived as a conflict of interest’ [paragraph 125] by engaging in an ‘extensive discussion’ with Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum while the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions was considering charges against ASK.

2. However the Tribunal found that violating this principle – not to create a perception of conflict of interest – did not rise to the definition of ‘misbehaviour’ which is the sole reason that a DPP can be removed from office.

The tribunal did take some very well-aimed pot shots at Pryde. You may ask yourself whether the Tribunal’s conclusions paint a picture of someone perhaps unfit to hold the office of the DPP after the way he has behaved.

I have highlighted some of this commentary below in red.

– Pryde and his supporters tried to paint the suspended DPP as a martyr figure once his salary had been stopped in July last year. He was positioned as a Joan of Arc, throwing himself onto the firepit of injustice, saying he could no longer afford to defend himself and wanting the whole process stopped.

You’ve Got To Be Kidding, said the Tribunal.

The truth was that ‘Mr Pryde chose not to participate … He could still have appeared on his own, or applied for Legal Aid representation … The Tribunal was not obliged to stay proceedings on account of his alleged inability to afford a Rolls Royce representation’.

– Graham Davis’ Grubsheet site was the main tool by which Pryde’s point of view was briefed out to a wider audience. The Fiji Sun was a secondary, supportive channel. Documents relating to the accusations and the Tribunal’s work were published online by Davis almost as if in real time.

Davis seems to have so closely and faithfully associated himself to Pryde and Pryde’s cause that he was like former Daily Express journalist Chapman Pincher who was once described as ‘a kind of official urinal where high officials of MI5 and MI6 stand side by side patiently leaking’.

Pryde’s blabber-mouthing and backbiting, republished by Davis and the local media, did not impress the Tribunal at all.

‘The media would, on a daily basis publish Mr Pryde’s view on evidence given while the hearing was on foot. The Tribunal denounces this disrespectful and contemptuous conduct on his part. The issues were sub-judice. Mr Pryde should have known better! …

And there was more:

‘Even before [the Tribunal] hearing began, the media would report comments from Mr Pryde which appear to scandalize the Tribunal and undermine public confidence in it … as holder of high constitutional office in Fiji, [Pryde] would know the implications and consequences of such conduct.’

Could this be the same Christopher Pryde who was happy to serve such an ultra-sensitive regime that it regularly prosecuted ‘scandalising’ comments about Fiji’s judicial integrity and processes from such diverse sources as lawyer Richard Naidu, the Oceania Football Confederation, The Fiji Times, the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum – CCF and the chairman of the employees’ trust of Airport Terminal Services?

Would Pryde, the faithful defender of the military regime, not have taken the strongest possible exception to Pryde the plaintiff if Pryde’s behaviour on a matter that was sub-judice was found by a three-person tribunal to be scandalising, contemptuous and disrespectful of a live judicial process?

Is this really the best available DPP that Fiji can source – a fag-end appointment from the Bainimarama goonshow?

Declaration of interest: Pryde was DPP when the charging decision was made in the case of my late mother in law Dr. Mere Samisoni, Semisi Lasike, Apete Vereti and former parliamentarian Mataiasi Raigigia.

Regime soup-server Davis has whined about Pryde’s 21 months’ suspension from his position as DPP – 15 months on full salary. As injustices go, that’s a nothing.

In the case of my late mother-in-law she was arrested on December 30 2011, charged a few days later and finally vindicated with the usual Pryde ‘Nolle Prosequi’ on December 14 2016 – 59 months and 15 days later.

The others charged were also ‘Nolle Prosequi’d’ in December 2016. The only exception was Ragigia who died in October 2012 before being able to confront his accuser, test the prosecution’s case in court, and clear his name.

The accuser was thug Waisea Kaloumaira, who had more than 50 convictions mostly for armed robbery and sundry acts of violence, at the point at which Pryde judged Kaloumaira’s testimony to be sufficiently credible and authorised the charges. [The Fiji Sun even called Kaloumaira a ‘renowned offender’.]

Whether this is a connected event or a random coincidence, after three and a half years of waiting to appear in court to support the DPP’s allegations, in August 2015 Kaloumaira was selected as the turaga ni mataqali Bete for the Yavusa o Qalilevu – a position in the Lomaiviti hierarchy that is in the gift of Ministry of iTaukei Affairs, iTaukei Lands and Fisheries Commission [line minister Frank Bainimarama].

Prior to Kaloumaira’s star turn as Christopher Pryde’s surprising and solitary prosecution witness, the position of turaga ni mataqali Bete had been unfilled in more than 80 years.

It’s hard to find a better summary of Pryde than that of Professor Wadan Narsey who wrote in January 2018:

‘Christopher Pryde will be remembered in Fiji’s history as yet another expatriate “Flotsam and Jetsam” who drifted into Fiji waters, eagerly serving and benefiting from illegal military coups and governments with little respect for basic human rights or freedoms, while making grand heroic pronouncements.

‘Sadly, Fiji has no shortage of these expatriate Flotsam and Jetsam which drift to our illegal shores, rapidly rising through eager service to illegality and immorality, while trashing our human rights.’

All reactions: 10-01-2025.

10You, Rob Rickman, Ted Young and 7 others