Information Minister Lynda Tabuya has hit back at the Fiji Labour Party’s criticism of her Cabinet reappointment, labelling its leader Mahendra Chaudhry and his son “convicted criminals”.
“Calling me a disgrace? There is nothing more disgraceful than a former prime minister and his son who are convicted criminals,” Ms Tabuya said in a statement yesterday.
“Mahendra Chaudhry was convicted by the High Court for hiding millions of dollars from the Reserve Bank and the people of Fiji. His son Rajendra Chaudhry, who is a fugitive from justice, will not return to Fiji to serve his sentence,” she said.
Mr Chaudhry was convicted in 2014 of offences against the Exchange Control Act after it was found that monetary donations given to him in India had been deposited in offshore accounts instead of being brought to Fiji.
Mr Chaudhry’s son, Rajendra Chaudhry, a lawyer in New Zealand, was found guilty of criminal contempt of court in 2019 after making a number of Facebook posts insulting High Court judges. He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by then Chief Justice Kamal Kumar but has not returned to Fiji since the sentence was imposed.
Ms Tabuya also launched a personal attack on other critics, naming individuals she claimed were “minions” of the former PM and accusing them of engaging in character assassinations.
“These individuals,” she said, “portray a deficit in critical thinking, intellectual laziness and low emotional intelligence.”
The Fiji Labour Party yesterday described Ms Tabuya’s return to Cabinet as Minister for Information a “crisis of integrity in government,” accusing Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka of “recycling individuals mired in scandal”.
Ms Tabuya, who was dismissed from Cabinet in March following the circulation of an explicit video and allegations of misconduct, said she would not be “distracted by irrelevant criminals and cyber bullies”.
Mr Chaudhry, in a statement issued yesterday, questioned the Prime Minister’s judgment. “This is not about personal attacks. It is about standards,” he said.
“And under Sitiveni Rabuka’s leadership, those standards continue to erode before our eyes.”
