UNETHICAL: Vodafone's boss, Aslam Khan, (third from left) alerted the regime to Premila Kumar's strong lead.
Taken fron coup point five
REDDY: One eyed perspective?
The so-called 1500 votes for Frank Bainimarama on the last day of the Fiji TV Personality of the Year texting competition came from just two phones, both of them government numbers.
Coupfourpointfive sources have established the texts were sent by two personnel from Bainimarama's Suva office and that one of them was using this phone number: 9905393.
FIJI TV FACE: Satish Narayan
Our sources reveal here the true scale of the dishonesty behind the vote rigging that saw Premila Kumar bumped from her win and Bainimarama cheat his away again to the top.
Here's how the sham was played out:
1) As has been established, Fiji TV made the mistake of closing the poll a day early: on December the 30th instead of the 31st. But on the 30th, Premila Kumar was already way ahead of Bainimarama by almost 600 votes.
2) The mistake was picked up by Vodafone boss, Aslam Khan, who alerted Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum. Vodafone also informed the regime the revered leader was trailing badly behind Premila Kumar.
3) On December the 31st, two government numbers, which typically begin with 9905, were used to send more than 800 texts supporting Bainimarama. The two personnel who wrote the texts were from office of the illegal prime minister.
4) These two then called Vodafone (their contact person and Aslam Khan's trusted man) to see if their texts had gotten Bainimarama ahead of Kumar. They were informed that while the numbers had indeed put him in the lead, the text initials were wrong. Bainimarama's two officers were texting "FB" instead of "VB" as advertised by Fiji TV.
5) The two officers then re-sent more than 800 texts with the initials "VB".
6) These texts were discounted by Fiji TV because they had already closed the poll by mistake, a day early.
7) Khaiyum, Bainimarama and Khan then got the pay-ad Fiji TV to strip the title of Fiji's Personality of the Year from Premila Kumar to give to Bainimarama.
8) Khaiyum then decided to lay a complaint with the Commerce Commission claiming: "The allegation is that members of the public could text in and give their vote and the announcement was going to be made on the first of January. Unannounced to many members of the public, Fiji TV closed the actual polls on the 30th of December as opposed to the 31st of December.'
Khaiyum has been quick to take the high moral ground but as Coupfourpointfive sources have revealed in the above information, the slight of hand came from the regime.
Consider the following, folks:
1) Even if the poll closed early, Vodafone broke all ethics by informing an interested party - the regime - about the result of the poll. Khan is of course a regime supporter and has been proven to be a colluder time and time again. If this happened anywhere else, there would have been an outcry.
2) If Mahendra Reddy is fair and impartial, then he needs to man up and acknowledge that text messages for Bainimarama were sent from two government numbers. Two years ago the Nausori town clerk, Satendra Singh, used his work mobile to send hundreds of texts and won a car offered by Vodafone as part of its birthday giveaways. Singh was sacked by the regime, which had control over municipal councils through Special Administrators. He had offered to pay the phone charges. His dismissal was justified because he abused his power. Will justice be done here as it was then?
3) More worrying, though, are the implications for the supposed 2014 elections. If a texting competition can be rigged after the regime knows it is way behind its rivals and challengers, then it will cheat just as it has done in this poll. It's a poor loser.
4) Alarming, too, is this very real scenario: With electronic voting as planned, it will be much easier to rig votes because the regime has the advantage of knowing how the other candidates and parties have fared. This is the real zinger in this sorry, sordid affair by Fiji TV and Vodafone to find Fiji's Personality of the Year.
