Sheriff guilty, not Fiji PM

FIJI – Fiji’s Prime Minister didn’t plagiarise someone else’s Easter message after all.

Instead, a county sheriff in the United States has apologised for his office posting the Fiji Prime Minister’s Easter message as if it was his own.

Observant internet searchers last week found there were some uncanny similarities between Easter messages posted by Frank Bainimarama and the Scotland County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s office.

A number of the sentences in the message were word for word.

The incident led to anti-government blog site Fijileaks alleging that Bainmarama had plagiarised the Sheriff’s message.

However the Fiji government’s head of Communications and IT said the Prime Minister’s speech was written in Suva and posted on the government website more than 14 hours before the sheriff in North Carolina posted a Facebook message using much of the same language.

Sheriff Ralph Kersey said an employee responsible for maintaining the page had posted the message and he was unaware it had been mostly copied from the Fiji Prime Minister’s office.

He said he had emailed and apologised for the post and said there was never any intent for the message to mislead as it was only shared in the hope someone who read it would find the importance of Easter and its true meaning.

The sheriff said the post had been removed and the employee warned when sharing a post they must have permission and include attribution.

Fijileak quickly removed their original article criticising the prime minister.

Fiji’s Communications Ministry permanent secretary Ewan Perrin has since cautioned people posting on social media and blog sites to exercise moral responsibility of being truthful, especially when someone’s reputation was being challenged.

“Under Fiji’s Constitution, every person has a right to freedom of speech, expression, thought, opinion and publication,” he told the Fiji Times.

“Social media allows messages to be posted at any time from anywhere, and then to be viewed by anyone, anywhere.

“It pays to stop and think for a moment before we post, just to be sure that what we say is clear and truthful.” - RNZI/PNC