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Fiji Time: 5:50 PM on Saturday 25 May

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Draft leak

Nanise Loanakadavu
Saturday, January 05, 2013

THE now dissolved Constitution Commission had agreed that a draft constitution be leaked to a blog site.

This was confirmed by a member of the commission, Penny Moore, yesterday.

However, their actions have been labelled as "unbecoming" and "not expected" by the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Land Force Commander Lieutenant-Colonel Mosese Tikoitoga.

"They should be ashamed of themselves," Lt-Col Tikoitoga said.

Ms Moore said the document on the blog site, together with the explanatory report and the statement by outgoing chairman Professor Yash Ghai, was the final draft document.

"The commission had agreed for the chairman to release (to the blog site) so people could view it," she said.

"That was really the choice behind the decision.

"As far as we were concerned, our intention was to give them out to the President, a copy to the Prime Minister and his people, to the Solicitor-General because we do not want them to think we were doing things out of hand," Ms Moore said.

"We were upfront with the process since day one," she said.

Lt-Col Tikoitoga said their motives were clear that they wanted to destroy the process.

"It was unbecoming of them to leak the document given they have a high profile," he said.