Qiliho eyes permanent appointment

SUVA – Fiji’s Acting Police Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho says he is thinking of applying for the fulltime Police Commissioner’s post when it is advertised.

He conducted his first briefing with senior officers on Tuesday after being appointed for three months in the wake of the former police chief Ben Groenewald’s departure.

Brigadier General Qiliho said two of the key issues he will look into during his three month acting tenure are violence against women and children, and sexual abuse against children.

Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key says his country is willing to support the Fiji police force transition between commissioners – if it wants the help.

Key said he would have preferred if the outgoing police commissioner was not replaced with a military commander.

“Fiji’s a country that’s been beset by coups over the last two decades and we’d hate to see a situation where it starts moving back away from democracy and those independence pillars that any decent society relies on, including independence for the judiciary and the police.”

Key said after recent elections Fiji’s democracy was still in a fragile state and he would hate for it to be eroded.

A Suva lawyer Richard Naidu says it is clear the Fiji government had no intention of consulting the opposition on key state appointments.

Naidu was the opposition’s appointee to the Constitutional Offices Commission but he resigned at the weekend following the appointment of military officer Qiliho as Acting Police Commissioner.

He says the Commission is lop-sided with four government appointees and two for the opposition but he originally joined because he thought there was there was a chance for the two sides to act in a consultative way.

He says it is true the commission’s chairperson – Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama – had been delegated the power to make acting appointments but the power wasn’t exercised properly in the case of Groenewald’s replacement.

“That’s not a power to go off and do your own thing. That is a power to be exercised in routine matters for everybody’s convenience.

“It’s just not right, in the case of the police, that a sworn police officer is not appointed to fill the vacancy in the commissioner’s position in the routine way.”

Naidu says the commission operates in a haphazard fashion and it is yet to appoint a number of officers like the Auditor-General and the Commissioner of Corrections. - PNC