The Fiji government's ousting of its TV chief has sent shockwaves through the Pacific, reports DAVID ROBIE

THE CASE of New Zealander Kenneth Clark, ordered to leave Fiji by this Sunday after a month as chief executive of the national television station, has shocked the local news media industry.

Many believe he is being made a sacrificial lamb by the new Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government, determined to slash the use of expatriate consultants and ensure locals are employed in top-level positions wherever possible. But the move is also seen as the latest development in a crackdown on the news media by several Pacific governments.

The irony is that Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry's government just last month lambasted the Fiji news media, alleging poor quality and lack of training.

Clark, 59, with extensive Canadian and New Zealand television experience, is seen locally as a man who could strengthen the fledgling Fiji television industry.

Newspaper editorials have branded the decision to send Clark packing as "immoral" and "draconian" and have warned that the drive against expatriates in the country's news media would send "alarm signals to corporate offices".

Clark has pledged to fight for his work permit this week, his staff have petitioned the government in his support, and the Fiji Television board met Home Affairs Minister Joji Uluinakauvadra yesterday to review the decision.

Uluinakauvadra said he would make his final decision today.

"I came here to take on an assignment that I share with the Fiji TV staff and the board - and I think I should be allowed to get on with it," Clark said.

Alan Robinson, the Australian publisher of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fiji Times, a newspaper often criticised by Labour, has speculated on who might be next on the government's list.

In an editorial, the Fiji Times, said: "The government now stands guilty of double standards. The prime minister has one rule for the media and another for all other businesses - at least for now. Who will be the next target is anybody's guess".

It claimed that the government thought it would be easier to control the media when expatriate executives had been expelled.

According to the Immigration Department, Fiji Television failed to train a local person to succeed the former chief executive, another New Zealander, Peter Wilson.

However, the chairman of the Fiji Television board, Isoa Kaloumaira, says the company had provided appropriate training for local managers, and Clark was the best person for the job.

In an open letter in the Daily Post yesterday, Kaloumaira challenged the government's claims, saying Fiji Television had last year "explicity stated [to the government] the board's stand that it is not its philosophy to appoint 'heirs apparent' but rather to make all appointments contestable to appropriate internal and external applicants".

Chaudhry holds the information portfolio, but Assistant Minister Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi, a former vegetable farmer, has done most of the recent talking on media issues.

In Parliament last month, Yayeshnoi claimed that "arrogant" news media "deny fair and equal coverage to the opinions that may be contrary to their agenda, they distort and misrepresent facts to arrive at preconceived conclusions, and they have shown that while quick to criticise others, they drag their feet and are not above refusing to acknowledge their own mistakes².

The minister also talked about his plans for media legislation, presently being dusted off from the draft laws under the previous government of coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka. Though government indirectly has a controlling stake in Fiji Television, the independence of its board, management and editorial policy has brought it into conflict with the previous administration on several occasions.

In July last year, Fiji Television was put under pressure from politicians over its coverage of the Monasavu land rights protests in the highlands of the main island of Viti Levu.

Television images - broadcast worldwide - of a group of landowners daubed in warpaint and wielding spears, and threatening to "kill" for their rights in political theatre drew angry political responses.

Also last year, then Communications Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, directed Fiji Television to broadcast on its free-to-air channel coverage of the Hongkong Sevens tournament after the company had made a commercial decision to broadcast it on its pay channel, Sky Sports.

Elsewhere in the Pacific, news media have faced attacks on their independence.

International media freedom organisations such as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières, last month condemned the "draconian regulations" governing media coverage of ethnic tensions in the Solomon Islands.

On June 28, the Solomon Islands government imposed emergency powers which threatened journalists who violated state-imposed reporting restrictions with up to two years' imprisonment, or a fine, or both.

This effectively gagged relays of regular BBC, Radio Australia and Radio New Zealand International broadcasts on the local Solomon Islands Broadcasting Commission's stations. Foreign journalists also left.

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