Court to rule on case against newspaper

 By CHARLES MOI 

The National Court will make a determination on a defamation suit filed by senior public servant  Rendle Rimua against The National newspaper after a trial was completed in Waigani yesterday. 

Rimua, Secretary for Petroleum and Energy, filed the defamation case against the paper alleging his reputation was damaged in the paper’s publication of four articles on May 20, 2010.  Journalist and former editor of the paper Frank Senge Kolma and Pacific Star Limited, trading as The National, were named as defendants in the case. 

Rimua told presiding judge Justice Ere Kariko yesterday that the articles had made him embarrassed and that the paper should have checked with him first before publishing the articles. 

Rimua said he did not respond to the findings in the report compiled by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) before the paper published the articles. 

He was appointed secretary in March 2007. 

His lawyer Greg Manda told the court that the paper’s publication was unfair because Rimua did not respond to the PAC report. 

According to Manda, the PAC report into the affairs of the department was tabled in Parliament on May 6, 2010, and four days later the PAC wrote a letter to Rimua. 

The contents of the letter gave Rimua 30 days to comment and give a detailed description of what he was going to do to address the committee’s findings, after which the committee would consider if the inquiry should reconvene to further investigate Rimua’s response. 

Manda said the report compiled by PAC was an interim one which did not have Rimua’s response. 

Lawyer Ian Molloy representing the paper said the publications were a fair summary of the report by the PAC into the Department of Petroleum and Energy. 

Molloy argued that Section 8 of the Defamation Act (Protection: reports of matters of public interest) and Section 11 of the Defamation Act (Qualified protection: excuse) protected the paper’s publications. 

Molloy said there was no element of bad faith or malice involved in publication and that the second page of the PAC report stated that it was a final report by the committee. 

Kolma, who was the author of the articles, told the court that his story was fair and was based on the PAC report. 

Kolma said the articles were written for the benefit of the people because the department managed public funds. 

He told the court during cross– examination that prior to writing the articles, he had made several attempts to call the department regarding the PAC report but nobody answered the phone. 

The court will hand down its decision at a later date.