The End Of An Era

"If the constitution goes, I go," Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara.

Many writers described it as the close of an era. And with the death on April 18, at the age of 83, of the grand old man of the Pacific Islands, Ratu Mara, so it was.

It was really the close of more than two eras, one for Fiji, which he led to independence from Britain in 1970, and one for the Pacific Islands region, in which he was overwhelmingly the dominant political personality for almost three decades.
He wanted to be a doctor but was ordered by a far-sighted relative to become a politician.

The illustrious career of Ratu Sir Kamisese Kapaiwai Tuimacilai Mara ended in deep bitterness that he expressed in television interviews before the stroke that eventually killed him, and to some friends.

"It was all bullshit," he exclaimed, speaking in a Fiji Television interview about the coup that deprived him of the full cap on his remarkable career.

In June 2000, as the legally elected government of the day was held hostage at gunpoint in the parliament building, the army and police chiefs with army officers went to Government House, where Ratu Mara had resided as president since 1993.

The president was under great stress. He'd assumed executive responsibility for the country after Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the country's first Indian head of government, his cabinet and most government MPs were taken hostage by a gang of anti-Indian Fijian civilians and some rebel soldiers.

They were led ostensibly by George Speight, a shady business failure who posed as a nationalist but more likely was the tool of opportunists and business interests alarmed by the socialist aspirations of Chaudhry's Labour Party-led coalition government.
Some hostages were having a bad time. Chaudhry was one of those being roughed up.

Archbishop Petero Mataca... led the Mass of Resurrection.

One of the captive ministers was Adi Koila Mara, the president's daughter and generally held to be one of his favourite children.
As Ratu Mara confirmed in later years, Speight had threatened to kill Adi Koila if the army stormed the Parliament chambers to release the hostages.

Perhaps the army and others felt the president's resolve to deal firmly with the crisis was crumbling.

A group led by the army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, and the then police commissioner, Isikia Savua, went to Government House to ask Ratu Mara to step aside. Warned that Government House might be attacked by rebels who had previously trashed a television station, Ratu Mara agreed to board a naval patrol boat awaiting him in the Suva Harbour to take him to the islands of Lau, in eastern Fiji, the region of which he was the paramount chief.

He went, so effectively ending a political career begun in the 1960s. The army wanted to abrogate the 1998 Constitution enacted as a successor to an interim document used after two previous coups in 1987.

"If the constitution goes, I go," Ratu Mara explained later, saying that he felt unable to carry on effectively without the loyalty of the army and police. The army appointed itself as the government, talked Speight into releasing the captives and returned power to a civilian regime.

In September 2001, a general election restored the country to constitutional rule with Laisenia Qarase, leader of a new Fijian nationalist party, as prime minister.

An excuse was made to arrest Speight, now serving a "life" sentence, meaning probably about 12 years, on a small island near Suva with some conspirators, three of whom were released in March. Other accused figures, one being Vice President Ratu Jope Seniloli, are awaiting trial. About half a dozen other suspects remain under investigation.

Chaudhry, still a powerful figure and head of the Labour's parliamentary opposition, awaits a court ruling on the number of seats in Qarase's cabinet, the Supreme Court having already declared that he is constitutionally entitled to some.

Archbishop Petero Mataca... led the Mass of Resurrection.

Fiji's volatile politics smoulder on, fed by issues of race, land, the collapse of the 120-year-old sugar industry, Fijian provincial rivalries and such matters of social dynamite as mounting poverty, unemployment, crime and now HIV-AIDS.

After his rude exit from Government House in 2000, Ratu Mara watched broodingly, practically silent from the wings. Technically, he hadn't resigned the presidency, although after a year he did so retrospectively.

His silence was partly inadvertent. In 2001, he telephoned a friend, a crony of 40 years, Hari Punja, a multi-millionaire industrialist.
"He called me up from Lakeba and said Œlet's go to Vanuatu. I need to get out of here, let's go. I need a break,'" Punja related to a newspaper, Fiji's Daily Post, after Ratu Mara's death.

In Port Vila with Punja and another long time crony Joe Ruggiero, a businessman of Italian origin, Ratu Mara at more than six feet, once a physically impressive man, once a demon cricketer, golfer and athlete, was felled by a stroke that wrecked his physique and crippled his power of speech.

The remainder of his life was a shuffle between Fiji and New Zealand for medical care, sheltered by his family from the public gaze. Just glimpses of him were seen in public. His main concern, the family let it be known, were the affairs of his fiefdom, Lau, a chain of small islands half way between the main Fiji group and Tonga.

Traditional warriors...on guard at Albert Park.

In mid-April he returned to Suva from another medical trip to New Zealand, entered a private hospital and at 11 pm on Sunday, April 18, quietly passed away.

Local newspapers reported that the day before, at Ratu Mara's request, he was driven to see an area near Suva where people had been affected badly by floods.

Ratu Mara's death released a torrent of emotions. The pages of local newspapers, and radio and television were awashed with reports of praise for the man who featured on Islands Business December 1999 cover as ŒMan of the Century‹The remarkable Ratu Mara.' News of his death was widely reported internationally. In Fiji, most of the country's 860,000 people were not aware of it until 6pm on Monday, April 19, when Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase announced it in a television broadcast. The television station and all local radio stations held back the news in deference to Fijian customs which required various people to be formally informed and consulted.

"We have lost a giant among men. For as long as many of us could remember he dominated our national life. His leadership was marked by discipline, vision and a keen and penetrating intellect. He worked tirelessly to make a unified nations from different communities; a nation to stand tall as a model of progress and harmony," Qarase said, when making the television announcement.

Ratu Mara, he said, would have a state funeral.

But as national emotion of Ratu Mara's death mounted, it became evident that the nation that had tried for 30 years to build "tall as a model of progress and harmony," only to see it stunted by racism, corruption and ambitious personal agendas, was also affected by guilt, remorse and anger.

Traditional delegations...pay their last respect at Government House.

Ratu Mara's wife, Adi Lady Lala, imposing and influential in her own right and actually ahead of her husband in the Fijian chiefly hierarchy, was still on her way back from New Zealand. There were leaks that she had initially resisted the state funeral proposal, exclaiming in effect that "you abandoned him in 2000 why a state funeral for him now?" Joseph Browne, now head of the immigration department but Ratu Mara's secretary at the time of the 2000 coup, was savagely explicit. He told the Fiji Times in an interview that the state funeral proposal was "hypocrisy." "What we are going to witness is the height of hypocrisy. The involvement of the military and other elements in any ceremony is farcical because these institutions ridiculed him and betrayed him when he was the president at the height of the 2000 coup." Mick Beddoes, head of the General (non-Fijian, non-Indian) Electors' party and officially the Opposition Leader due to Chaudhry's refusal to take up the post, put into words sentiments that many of Mara's admirers, professed and actual, concurred with. The nation was "collectively responsible" for the "dreadful treatment" Ratu Mara got in 2000, he said.

"This includes those who asked Ratu Mara to step aside and all of his friends who should have been at his side when the chips were down. All of us knew he was unjustly removed but said nothing. Our collective silence was as good as supporting his removal, even if we did not or could not do anything." Prior to the stroke that crippled his speech and body, although not apparently his mind, Ratu Mara had spoken about the 2000 coup to his friend, businessman Hari Punja, and in long television interviews at his home island of Lakeba, 270 miles kilometres east of Suva.

Adi Lady Lala Mara (second from left)...at the state funeral.

In an earlier interview, relating the story of the crisis before him as he tried to deal with it as president, he said: "I had been in touch with a lot of people I thought would stand by me in the front row of the scrum, (I) didn't know it was going to collapse." Ratu Mara said when the army and police commanders asked him to "step aside" he had thought, "Here's the Commander with all his army and the police who is going to be with me. Now, they want me out; they want to abrogate the Constitution and this is exactly what Speight wants. If they belong to Speight, (then) I don't belong to them." He had gone, Ratu Mara said, "because to stay would have been "an exercise in futility. I thought Œthey know that I was the Commander-in-Chief' and that they should Œknow how to behave to the Commander-in-Chief.

"I said, yes, if you think that I (will) avoid bloodshed by standing aside, then I will stand aside. After all, you are two people that are, eh, my men, and I remarked ŒI will never ever again come back' Ratu Mara added: "I have no desire whatsoever (to return to the presidential office). You know, I don't know what I have done wrong. I thought I played everything down the line." Businessman Hari Punja said in his interview: "Ratu Mara had a dream to retire gracefully. After 2000 his life changed.

"He used to get very angry and upset whenever he talked about the political upheaval. I have been with him for the last 40 years. I have never seen him more upset than after 2000.

The final farewell...Crowds watch as soldiers carry the casket of the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara for the Mass of the Resurrection at Albert Park.

"What caused most distress to him was a comment made by some politicians calling him an "angry old man". This particular statement had a marked effect on Ratu Mara. He got very upset, very angry, very hurt and very, very sad." "Opportunist", was the word he used to describe the coup of 2000. "It was the work of opportunists, crooks, thugs for their own self-gain and interest." As Islands Business went to press, preparations were being made for the burial of Ratu Mara at Lakeba Island on May 3 after a state funeral in Suva.

He would go to Lakeba as probably the last of Fiji's great traditional chiefs and, as people said, as the father of Fiji's independence and the grand and undoubtedly great old man of the 20th century Pacific.

The funeral ceremonies were on a scale unlikely to be ever seen in Fiji again