Posted on: Tuesday, April 20, 2004

EDITORIAL
Ratu Sir K. Mara an island visionary

Hawai'i lost a friend and the Pacific Islands lost a great leader this week with the death of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Fiji's founding prime minister and a towering political figure throughout the Pacific.

While Mara's political legacy was strongest in his native Fiji, he was a respected leader of many multilateral and multinational organizations within the Pacific.

He was a founder of the South Pacific Forum and the Pacific Islands Conference of leaders, which established the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center.

In fact, Mara was a familiar figure at the center, serving on the center's International Board of Governors from 1976 to 1986 and from 1998 to 2001.

It was in 1975 that Mara delivered the Dillingham Lecture at the center in which he elaborated on the concept, also contained in his memoirs, of the "Pacific Way," a vision of peaceful multiracial and multicultural development and growth.

That vision was challenged in 1987 by two military coups in Fiji led by then army Col. Sitiveni Rabuka.

In 2000, Mara stepped aside as president of Fiji in an effort to bring calm to the nation after an armed assault on the Fijian Parliament.

Ratu Mara will long be remembered as a regional leader of international stature. The best memorial to him will be for the people of the Pacific to rededicate themselves to the principles of peace and cooperative progress embodied in his ideal of a Pacific Way.