Global Voices Online

Reacting to the election of a new president Gaston Tong Sang, Tahitian blogger SamsonPointCom surveys the political landscape (Fr): “Turncoat politics are a national sport, even more so than rowing. There are basically two opposing equally-sized blocs in the Assembly: the independentist “Blues” (socialist affiliated but who have National Front politics) and the autonomist “oranges” (affiliated to the UMP) and in the center, the … non-affiliated who have formed a new party and who flip flop from one camp to the other.”

Recent Links also in Oceania

With Fiji’s government cracking down on outlets selling pirated DVDs, L. Cass pens a piece in Failed Paradise criticizing these “cheating” retailers but also lamenting their downfall

A second journalism school has opened in Fiji, this one at the Fiji Institute of Technology. But given “the climate of censorship and media paranoia in post-putsch Fiji,” media educator David Robie in his Café Pacific blog argues the standards of these new programs should face heavy scrutiny.

Jonathan, the writer of the blog Oceanic: User Experiences from the South Pacific reports on a consumer complaint against his Fiji-based advertising agency stating that his advert for a local ISP attempts to benefit from the Swine Flu epidemic (now called H1N1) by misleading consumers into thinking internet service “is like a prescription drug.” He wonders how people can protest against his work, while much of the local media prints “sensationalist” and “inaccurate” headlines about the flu scare.