Fiji Labour Party Leader and former Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry says the coup prisoners released today have served very long sentences and are showing remorse for their treasonous acts but he hopes they will assist the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when it is set up to establish the truth of the events leading to the 2000 coup and the real faces behind it.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry who was the Prime Minister when the 2000 coup took place, says the release of the coup prisoners was to be expected under a government led by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka who set the coup culture rolling by executing Fiji\u2019s first coup on 14th May 1987.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry says in fact, Rabuka had foreshadowed the release of George Speight and other coup convicts in a political rally at the Nasinu Primary School just days before the 2022 general elections.<\/p>\n
He says it was also a campaign promise by SODELPA.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry says steps to release the political prisoners were taken up as early as January this year through the process of appointing a Mercy Commission.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
fiji village<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fiji Labour Party Leader and former Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry says the coup prisoners released today have served very long sentences and are showing remorse for their treasonous acts but he hopes they will assist the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when it is set up to establish the truth of the events leading to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8759,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions\/8759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}