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Soper dead wrong over Fiji

by Whaleoil on February 22, 2013

Barry Soper get’s it so wrong on Fiji it isn’t funny

Barry Soper launched an attack on Fiji yesterday, unfortunately he was dead wrong. So wrong that the Fiji government issued a press release to correct his egregious errors.

I have written an opinion piece at Truth about it:

This really is a poor effort from Barry Soper who is normally much better than that. One wonders though why he deviated from his usual topics to have a swipe at Fiji? 

In one respect he did get something right however and that was the fact that only 3 parties out of an original 17 have registered so far, with most disbanding. Soper of course failed to inform the readers and listeners of NewstalkZB that the reason behind that is the new regulations prohibit narrow focused parties or ones based solely on race. In fact many of those 17 parties have declined to such an extent that they had effectively ceased to exist anyway.

The new regulations require 5000 members and I have blogged at Whaleoil before about the new regulations. It is strange that the mainstream media have taken so long to beat up this story from what is essentially a non-issue.

Go read the rest at Truth.

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  • Peter

    Good work on Fiji..fairness and balance is critical if Fiji is to progress and Soper is a fool on this issue. Nothing is perfect in Fiji, and the new electoral reforms may seem odd to us, but after many years residing in Fiji, a country and people I love, nothing is “normal”
    Fiji is its own state, it knows its people, and its issues, and can resolve them.
    If NZ and Australia hadn’t been so stupid as to interfere in Fiji’s domestic politics, there would have been a return to “democracy” a long time ago..we bullied Fiji because we are too small to bully anyone else.
    Democracy??? Is a race based party, gaining power by bribe, by fear, by corruption a democracy? I think not.
    I had much involvement with several cabinet ministers and count two prominent chiefs/cabinet ministers as friends but the use of the cultural brick bat is obscene.
    In short..vote for your chief..or else
    Bainimarama warned the Govt to work for ALL of the people or you will be removed…that is what happened.
    As for coup 4.5….yet another bunch of greedy Fijians waiting to return to the past where status equals financial opportunity and forget the rest.

    • LesleyNZ

      Absolutely agree Peter!

  • Bones

    Barry Soper used to provide a balanced view of politics, maybe just a little to liberal lefty for my tastes, but not too bad. But lately he seems to feel that his opinion is much more important that the facts. This pisses me off, as I want the facts to form my own opinion.

    • http://www.whaleoil.co.nz Whaleoil

      Barry has never provided a balanced view

    • Patrick

      Biggest leftie supporter the world has ever seen, so far up Aunty Helen that you could only see his bootlaces hanging out.

  • Gazzaw

    There’s no fool like an old fool.

    Barry did used to be much better than this. I wonder how many of his viewpoints are now originated by the child bride.

  • John Parr

    To me, Barry Soper is an example of someone who has been in the same job for far too long and he really needs to move on. He was probably ready to go from that ZB gig about a decade ago, should of gone about five years ago but yet is still there today. One reason is that his way of thinking of spending other people’s money without a second thought as to where its coming from and what its being spent on died in 2008.

    • Patrick

      He should consider a productive job – like digging ditches.

  • LesleyNZ

    Barry Soper must now tell the readers and listeners of NewstalkZB that what he wrote about Fiji and the political parties was dead wrong. Barry’s expertise is supposed to be politics so why did he get it so wrong? I was talking to a friend about this – they believed the news item that Barry Soper wrote and that Bernadine Oliver-Kirby read out – to be absolutely true. Opposition parties banned from campaigning in Fiji
    http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/news/nbint/423518888-opposition-parties-banned-from-campaigning-in-fiji
    Barry Soper has mislead NewstalkZB listeners and that is very wrong. He must put it right. I hope Murray McCully (or Muzza as Barry affectionately calls him in his political report) reads today’s post because it seems he too believed that Barry was telling the truth about the Fiji government and the political parties.
    Fiji’s crusade back to democracy -
    http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/opinion/political-report-20-feb-2013

  • LesleyNZ

    For Barry, some excellent advice (and for a lot of other journalists these days):
    “The importance of fact-checking for journalists”
    http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/journalism-basics/640-fact-checking-separates-journalism-from-rumour-and-gossip
    101 rule of journalism – cross reference/research every so-called fact and check it out for truth. I can understand Michael Field using dodgy anonymous blog sites for information about Fiji – especially the Coup 4.5 one, but surely not David Farrar as well?
    Apart from this blog, another reputable blog to gain factual information about Fiji is Croz Walsh’s Blog — “Fiji: The Way it Was, Is and Can Be” – http://crosbiew.blogspot.co.nz/
    Suggest in future Barry follows the 101 rule!

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