NEVER before seen pictures of the six Pacific journalists that were detained in PNG the day they arrived to cover the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders summit. Told to step aside at the immigration line after their arrival at Jackson Airport in Port Moresby, the group spent more than four hours detained inside a room at the Immigration’s airport office. The group was led by Makereta Komai, veteran journalist and editor of the Pacific Islands News Association’s news service, Pacnews (she’s also manager of PINA) and included our editor in chief, Samisoni Pareti, the head of programmes at the Tonga Broadcasting Commission, Viola Ulakai, senior Samoa Government media officer Asenati Semo, and journalists Puaseiese Pedro of the Tuvalu Media Corporation and Georgina Maki of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation. While no one was manhandled during their incarceration, only access to telephone, food and water (initially) were denied them. The group was rescued by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat’s Media Officer Mereseini Tuivuniwai and her counterpart at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs PNG, Helen Aisi when they insisted outside the arrivals terminal at Jackson that they needed to see the “detained” journalists.
DESPITE a rather rude and un Pacific welcome on their arrival, the Pacific journalists none the less saved the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and host of the Forum meeting of what could be a huge diplomatic embarrassment. Driven by their police escorts around Port Moresby on the eve of the leaders’ arrival, the visiting journalists noticed that the wrong photo of the Solomon Islands Prime Minister, PNG’s closest eastern neighbour was being used in the giant billboards erected around Moresby to welcome Pacific island leaders. The photo was that of Gordon Darcy Lilo, the man current PM of Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare replaced!
THE Land of the unexpected certainly lived up to its name at the Pacific Leaders summit it hosted in September. Interesting to put it mildly were the people that won contracts to service the meeting. The caterer is said to be a good friend of someone high up in the decision making body. The opening night’s banquet contractor was the wife of a millionaire who’s a good pal of another in the high places. Forum visibility, things like billboards and publicity was also outsourced, again to someone who knows someone in the upper echeleons of PNG society. No wonder this someone who knows that someone in the upper places couldn’t even distinguish Gordon Darcy Lilo from Mannaseh Sogavare. Or should it be just a matter of expect to see or hear the unexpected!
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• Whispers is compiled by the Editor. Contributions are welcome, send them to editor@islandsbusiness.com