April 23, 2008

By Michael Field 

Fiji election timetable rocked by NZ lawyer's behaviour A one-time struck-off lawyer has pulled out of a job as Fiji's election supervisor leaving the military-ruled country struggling to honour a promise to hold democratic elections by next March. 

Lawyer Maurice Coughlan won the position as Supervisor of Elections but failed to tell Fiji that he had been debarred as a lawyer in New Zealand.

 "I have pulled out," he said. "It didn't seem fair to either party." 

He had not told the Fiji Constitutional Offices Commission (COC) that he had been struck off in 1985 and only restored in 2002. 

He told Fiji media the issue had been over personal commercial transactions and that the striking off had occurred later in his career. He also said it had been linked to alcoholism which he says he has overcome.

 However in 1986 he left a rather grim impression on Invercargill in a case that had nothing to do with money. 

Coughlin had been named as "father of the year" in a local competition but found himself with a wrecked family, the result of his own behaviour. The 14-year-old daughter of one of his prominent clients had been babysitting when Coughlin showed up. Details of what he was alleged to have done were, at the time, published but without use of his name. 

Said a report on May 22, 1986: "The law society alleged that on a night in August last year, without her consent, the lawyer lay across the foot of a bed in which the 14-year-old babysitter was lying; and he rocked the bed causing her to believe he was masturbating or simulating sexual intercourse; that he tampered with the covers of the bed causing her to suspect he intended entering it; and that he indecently touched her with his naked body." 

The girl's father did not go to the police, saying he wanted to spare his daughter the trauma of giving evidence and because he believed the profession should "do something" about one of its practitioners. 

Coughlan would not discuss the issue and hung up the phone. 

The post he was to have taken is crucial in Fiji's electoral system. The military, following the December 2006 coup, had removed the previous supervisor. Military ruler Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama had last year promised to hold elections by next March but had made it conditional on the electoral system being in place in time. 

When Pacific foreign ministers met in Auckland last month they expressed irritation that a supervisor had not been appointed and Fiji replied that Mr Coughlan's appointment was only weeks away. 

COC chairman Rishi Ram has confirmed that they conducted no background checks on Coughlan. Only when details of his past emerged did they ask him about it. 

"We had asked Dr Coughlan to explain the circumstances under which he was disbarred and to give details of his deregistration. After the meeting we received communication from him where he indicated his withdrawal." The would now go to a second shortlisted candidate by Mr Ram said it would take time. 

"It was already hard finding one," he said. This time they would carry out a full background check, he said.

Copyright: Michael Field