SUVA – Suva lawyer Richard Naidu has stepped down from a key commission in Fiji after the appointment of a senior military officer as acting police chief.

Colonel Sitiveni Qiliho was appointed last week to stand in as Fiji’s police commissioner after Ben Groenewald left citing military interference.

Naidu told Radio New Zealand’s Dateline Pacific the way the appointment was made led him to the view there wasn’t much point in remaining a member of the Constitutional Offices Commission.

“The commission isn’t operating in any particularly organised fashion. There are a number of vacancies which have been advertised and not filled.

“Take for example the auditor-general, a really important constitutional office. That position was advertised in May. We’ve had no information from the secretariat on what’s happened, same with the Commissioner of Corrections Services.

“Things tend to be done at the last minute by email and that’s really why I’d reached the view that we were little more than rubber stamps.

“Not withstanding my resignation, I respect the proceedings of the commission that took place internally, but overall it was the results that I was dissatisfied with.

“As I say, we have at least two important constitutional offices – we have no idea what happened to the process of filling those roles.

“Certainly the manner in which the acting Commissioner of Police was appointed was unsatisfactory.

“ Now it’s true, as the attorney-general Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has said, that the prime minister as chair of the commission had the power to make acting appointments, but there doesn’t seem to be a very clear understanding of how that power should be exercised.

“That’s a power exercised on behalf of the members of the commission. If you are required to make an acting appointment then the proper thing to do is appoint the senior most officer of whichever organisation it is to fill the top vacancy.

“I think before you go out of the organisation and decide you’re just going to appoint somebody else willy-nilly, you owe a duty to the other members of the commission on whose behalf you are acting to at least consult them and if necessary explain your reasons for an unconventional choice.

Dateline Pacific: It would be fair to say from what can be seen on social media that your resignation is a blow for good governance on this key body. Wouldn’t it have been better for you to fight for a transparent process from within rather than leaving?

“Certainly, one of the issues that confronted me before I’d even accepted appointment was the fact that under the constitution the commission is already politicised.

“It has four government members or appointees and the opposition has two. So the question then really is, why participate at all?

“And the answer, I think, for me was that despite the lop-sided nature of this commission the government leaders could choose, if they wanted to work consultatively with the
opposition leader and her nominee but there’s no real interest in that.

“We’re really treated as rubber stamps.”

Dateline Pacific: And what do you hope will come out of your resignation?

“I’m hoping that we can just draw attention to the fact that really the commission is not operating as an independent, non-political Constitutional Offices Commission should, which is that independent people appoint these really important independent constitutional officers. That’s what’s not happening and more’s the pity.”

- Dateline Pacific