July 7, 2006

HOW AFIF CONSPIRED WITH SPPF TO TRY AND DISCREDIT DP

On Wednesday evening last week after the DP Conference had ended at the conference of the Berjaya Mahe Beach Hotel, the SBC film crew of two – a reporter and a camera man – sat in the hotel lobby waiting for the gala dinner to get started. Suddenly out of the blue the cell phone of the cameraman rang. On the line was Ibrahim Afif, Managing Director of SBC. He wanted to speak to the reporter. The crew had not yet reported back to anyone at SBC.

According to DP Executive member Ralph Volcere, “the reporter approached me and said he has been instructed by Mr. Afif to interview Kenneth Nalletamby another Executive member of the DP.” Nalletamby was at that time seated at the dinner table downstairs where the gala dinner was due to take place.

Volcere went immediately downstairs to inform DP leader, Paul Chow, of his conversation with the SBC reporter. Chow went upstairs to discuss the matter with the reporter. “I told him that this was out of the ordinary for SBC. Certainly they have never done this at an SPPF Congress.” Chow said. The reporter recommended that he speak to Afif because that was the instruction he had received.

“He gave me Afif’s home number and I rang him straight away.  He said that he could interview anyone he liked. I told him that, while he had that prerogative, his duty was to be fair. By creating one reporting rule for one political party and another for another party, he was not being fair. Mr Afif, in his usual arrogant self told me he could and would do whatever he wanted.” Chow recounted. At that moment Chow hung up on Afif and told the camera crew that in the circumstances he would have to ask them to stop filming on the premises of the hotel.

SBC hung on to the recordings of the DP Conference for 5 days before broadcasting a news item about the DP conference of the week before. In the report, which lasted exactly 5 minutes and 39 seconds, SBC allocated exactly 2 minutes 43 seconds to the conference itself, with Mr Antoine Onezime, the news editor of SBC, who was the news reader for the item doing most of the talking. Chow’s speech, which lasted over ten minutes featured barely for one minute. The scenes themselves were edited in such a way to set the stage for the rest of the report, although Onezime did tell viewers that there was an acclamation by the conference in support of the Executive Committee decision to forge an alliance with SNP.

After featuring Chow’s speech for less than a minute, SBC gave Mr Nalletamby uninterrupted air time of 2 minutes 47 seconds to record a complaint to the whole country about his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the conference. The recording of Mr Nalletamby’s complaint, according to our information, took place two days later. It was obvious since he was wearing a different shirt and he was filmed in broad daylight.

Evidently, Mr Afif did not mince his words bout his determination to interview Nalletamby and he kept his promise to the SPPF.  It is strange that the party which SPPF had dubbed the Dead Party, is having so much attention from the SPPF leadership to warrant the big guns at SBC to edit and manipulate the reporting of its conference.