French Polynesia's Tahoeraa Huiraatira Party has strongly criticised a local daily newspaper for disclosing the pays and benefits of local politicians as moves are afoot by the territory's government to go to Paris to ask for more money to cope with growing deficits.
The Nouvelles de Tahiti reported that the assembly cost just under six million US dollars to operate while the government used two million dollars a year.
It listed the monthly 15,000 US dollar pays of Gaston Tong Sang and Oscar Temaru and added that the Tahoeraa leader and French senator, Gaston Flosse, gets 25,000 US dollars a month plus 16 Tahiti to Paris business class airline tickets.
On its website, the Tahoeraa says some of the listed figures are wrong, describing the disclosure as a denouncement like the ones known during the German occupation of France.
The party has challenged the paper to publish as a comparison the remuneration of the French high commissioner, of the public prosecutor and the judges.
It says the paper is determined to present the elected members of the assembly as predators.
