PM's Office to sue Kele'a [1]
Friday, December 21, 2007 - 19:05. Updated on Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - 10:40.
The Tonga Government has announced today that it intends to sue the Kele'a newspaper for alleged defamation over a letter to the editor that the Prime Minister's Office objects to.
A press statement from the Prime Minister's Office today December 21, said that on October 17, the Kele'a newspaper published a letter to the editor from a Fifita T. Tau'ataina regarding the Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister, Rob Solomon.
The Prime Minister's Office in its statement denied the letter's claim that Rob Solomon was a private employee of the Prime Minister or Molisi Tonga, a business owned by the Prime Minister's family.
The press statement, circulated as a "Public Announcement" stated that Rob Solomon, an economist, and an international consultant, had worked in Tonga for a number of years, starting in 1992 for three years at the Reserve Bank of Tonga, and over the years, with the Ministry of Finance under the late Hon. Fakafanua, and the Ministry of Education, and recently with the Ministry of Finance until March 2007.
"Following a request from the Government of Tonga, Mr Rob Solomon was recruited in April 2007, by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation, according to their procedures of recruitment, as Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister. He is fully funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
"Mr Solomon has also worked in several other countries over the years - such as the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. He has worked for New Zealand, Australian and British Aid Agencies as well as multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development and the United Nations. He is married to a Tongan and now lives in Tonga," the PMO stated.