Disgusting. In fact, the wild rumors peddled by The Age link Abbott’s unpopularity not to the executions but their delay, as the subheading and the copy suggest: Elnino Husein Mohi, a parliamentarian from the same party as defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, said the government would lose the trust of the people if the executions continued to be delayed.
He said it was legitimate for people to ask the president and vice-president whether the executions would be delayed until Mr Abbott’s domestic popularity improved.
UPDATE
The ABC’s Chris Uhlmann, one of the ABC’s best and fairest, got caught up in the get-Abbott hysteria two weeks ago on Insiders, now undeniably partisan: Chris Uhlmann: There’s a lot of wild rumours going around but Four Corners have been wandering the building, that’s Parliament House, for the last couple of weeks. Now there’s a lot of speculation about what they have. And one of the things that people do believe they have is some documents which show that there was a deal with the Japanese submarines. Now I don’t know whether they do or don’t. All I’m saying, that’s one of the rumours that are going around. People believe that [the Four Corners] program will go to air on Monday the 23rd, which is the Monday before the NSW election, [in] which case you’d have three of four days of that kind of chaos again. Remember Prince Philip in the lead-up to the Queensland election. So they’re the calculations that people are making, rightly or wrongly.
Dennis Atkins: Are you sure that’s not just insider ABC gossip? Chris Uhlmann: Look, I can honestly say I have not been in touch with Four Corners. I support Four Corners but I don’t know what they’re up to, either.
Tonight the ABC’s Four Corners tried to beat that failed challenge to Tony Abbott back into life. Old grievances were once again aired, but nothing new was added. indeed, two former Abbott critics in the party now backed him. And, needless to say, there was no document showing Abbott had made a secret deal with Japan. As I said two weeks ago:
Chris Uhlmann ... concedes he does not know if this [rumor] is actually true and did not contact his Four Corners colleagues to even find out. He did not add that the Government denies any deal.
This is no longer even close to reporting or analysing. This is a witchhunt with not the slightest attempt at balance. And it is journalists doing their damnedest to make their predictions of Abbott’s fall - so often thwarted - come true.
And the ABC can’t stop trying to keep that witchhunt going.
