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NZ foreign minister Murray McCully - Source: ONE News -
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Foreign Minister Murray McCully says the re-appointment of Commodore Bainimarama as Fiji's interim Prime Minister is a sham and the events that surround his appointment take his country down an even darker path.
"The extent to which the Commodore seems prepared to go to entrench himself and the military in power is unsettling," McCully says.
"Abrogating the constitution, dismissing judges and now introducing emergency measures that curb the media and deny citizens freedom of political expression is a sorry recipe that has been tried by dictators in a number of other countries, always with tragic consequences.
"The United Nations and Commonwealth have rightly condemned these recent developments, which I'm sure will also be viewed with concern across the region.
"The interim government's reaction to the appeal court decision will only harm the ordinary people of Fiji and alienate the international community even further," he says.
Bainimarama was sworn in on Saturday by President Ratu Josefa Iloilo at Government House in Suva, the FijiLive website says.
The move comes a day after the President annulled the 1997 constitution after a court declared Bainimarama's 2006 coup illegal.
Iloilo also sacked the judges who made the court ruling on Thursday, reversing an earlier decision that the military-backed government was legal.
