Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has taken a swipe at the Fiji Times for claiming it has been attacked by him.

In a press conference, Saneem referred to an article published in the Fiji Times on Saturday, September 24, 2022, titled “Saneem Attacks the Times’.

“This newspaper is fond of calling itself being attacked but goes and does all these ridiculous things and this action of Anish Chand simply undermines all these provisions of the Electoral Act that I’ve just read out. What is even more unfortunate is instead of taking action against his journalist for failing to protect electoral integrity, Fiji Times says Oh we’re being attacked.”

The article reported that the Supervisor of Elections questioned the integrity of The Fiji Times, saying social media posts by senior journalist Anish Chand showed “very poor understanding of the legal framework around elections.”

Saneem on Friday had also called out the Fiji Times in one of its senior journalists’ posts on Facebook, “Amazing Fiji,” “expressing his personal concerns when political parties want to have actions that are not free and fair in terms of an election.”

“The Fiji Times have definitely endorsed this because they have not taken any action on this and I think it is an amazing Fiji where a newspaper can get away with it and the senior reporter can get away with this too.”

Questions have been sent to the Fiji Times for a response regarding the claim made by the SOE.

Meanwhile, the SOE called on the Fijian Media Association to come out with a Code of Conduct for its journalists.

FBC News is awaiting a response from the Fiji Media Association on this.