COMMENTARY
Fiji chief Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara embodied the modern Pacific ali'i
By Gerard Finin and Sitiveni Halapua
The extended traditional and state funeral services for Fiji's first and longest-serving prime minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, concluded earlier this month at his chiefly home in Tubou village on Lakeba island.
Photo courtesy of East-West Center
Although he visited Hawai'i many times and leaves an enduring legacy internationally, his stature as a modern-day ali'i and his achievements in more closely linking Hawai'i to our Pacific island neighbors remain underappreciated here.
Fiji's first and longest-serving prime minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, is shown in traditional chief attire circa August 1955.
Mara last came to Honolulu in 2001 to chair the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders. Convened at the East-West Center every three years to focus on a theme of regional importance, this meeting of government leaders and heads of state examined the challenges and opportunities of globalization for island societies.
Mara was uniquely qualified to comment on the nature and consequences of a globalizing Pacific, having lived through more than 80 years of change and standing as a dominant force in the region for more than three decades.
He saw Hawai'i as a beacon of the north, as well as an important bridge between the Pacific and the United States.
Yet what was perhaps most striking about Mara, a paramount chief, was the way in which he embraced both tradition and modernity. His leadership style was unique in its ability to harmonize the traditional elements of his chiefly status with the requirements of modern governance. All present at the conference respected Mara's status, effective leadership, extensive international experience and vision for the region.
Mara believed in the rights and wisdom bequeathed by his spiritual ancestors, but he also understood that a modern nation-state requires responsible democratic leadership in a global context. Such personal belief and understanding underpinned his notion of the "Pacific Way" of dealing with the challenges of a changing world. This approach — which he believed Hawai'i exemplified — embraces the notion that "people of different races, opinions and cultures can live and work together for the good of all."
The societal rank and mana that came with birth was imbued at an early age, and Mara always insisted that proper traditional protocol be followed.
Growing up under British colonial rule, he was equally insistent on obtaining the best Western education possible. He studied at the Fiji School of Medicine and later at the Otago University of New Zealand. Before completing his medical degree, however, he was convinced to change fields to pursue a master's degree in history and economics at Oxford University and the London School of Economics.
Studying in some of the best Western educational institutions formed an important part of his early preparation to lead Fiji into independence and become the first national leader of the country's post-independent era.
Mara's traditional upbringing as a chief and his education abroad instilled dynamic leadership qualities based on personal and professional discipline that spanned more than five decades and included scores of state visits, innumerable friendships with world leaders and careful attention to domestic matters. Stories about Mara's travels are many.
At the conclusion of one memorable working visit to Washington, D.C., then-President Ronald Reagan offered Mara use of the presidential plane to facilitate a speaking engagement in Boston.
As prime minister, he was renowned for visiting cyclone-damaged areas with government ministers in tow, often before the storm had fully subsided. Not long before he passed away on April 18, he asked to be driven from the Suva hospital to see the areas severely damaged by recent flash floods. He was deeply committed to serve his country till the end.
Photo courtesy of East-West Center
Mara's single most important contribution and enduring legacy to the Pacific region, however, was his understanding of the need for regional cooperation among Pacific island governments. Well before "globalization" became a household word, Mara saw that Pacific states faced similar challenges, and that their collective strength greatly exceeded their individual capacities.
Former Fiji prime minister Ratu Mara, center, and former Hawai'i Gov. George Ariyoshi, then chairman of the East-West Center Board of Governors, receive a check from Gotaro Ogawa, left, Japanese consul general in Hawai'i from 1998 to 2000, to support the work of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center. Behind them is the center's current president Charles Morrison.
This was particularly true in dealing successfully with the former colonial powers. Mara believed the benefits derived from negotiating with governments such as Britain, the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand on issues such as agricultural exports, marine resources and environmental issues could be greatly enhanced if Pacific island nations stood together and tried to speak with one voice on the world stage.
This view had been shaped by experiences early in his career. In the first two decades after World War II, the only Pacific regional organization was the South Pacific Commission, established for the convenience of, and dominated by, the former colonial powers. At its meetings, the commission banned any and all public discussion of political issues by island leaders.
Mara recalled in his memoirs how he and his colleagues were not taken seriously, and that "the attitudes of what may be called the administering powers were at best too paternalistic, and at worst arrogant and autocratic."
A turning point came in Lae, in what is now independent Papua New Guinea, in 1965, when the ban on political discussion led Mara to walk out of a meeting, followed by other leaders present. Mara's leadership at this gathering resulted in a new-found respect for island leaders by the more powerful nations, and signaled a turning point for the South Pacific.
In 1971, Mara, together with the leaders of Western Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Nauru, established the South Pacific Forum as an alternative to the South Pacific Commission. With a growing number of islands becoming sovereign states, the forum and its professional secretariat were seen as a vehicle for cooperation on issues affecting the region. Although hesitant at first, the island leaders recognized the need to include the South Pacific's two main trading partners, Australia and New Zealand, if only to amplify their voice outside the region.
Topics addressed at the annual South Pacific Forum meetings in the 1970s included French nuclear testing in Tahiti, the International Law of the Sea and enhanced regional trade and economic cooperation.
One proposal that gained unanimous support in the early 1970s was Mara's call to expand the University of the South Pacific, already a center of excellence for undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research on Pacific culture and environment. Owned collectively by 12 forum member governments, the university today supports more than 8,000 students and is an international leader in distance education.
Another outstanding example of Mara's vision of regional cooperation in action is the Pacific Forum Shipping Line, an experiment started 25 years ago that today plies South Pacific cargo routes with noteworthy efficiency.
In 1975, the East-West Center invited Mara to deliver the distinguished Dillingham Lecture. Speaking on "Currents in the Pacific," Mara noted how "the East-West Center and University of Hawai'i have been of greatest value to our developing country, for you have received numbers of our young people for training and education, and you have provided advisers, consultants and experts of high caliber over many years."
Mara later joined the East-West Center's board of governors and served for more than a decade.
A key element missing from the South Pacific Forum was a way for island leaders from the American-affiliated Pacific and French Pacific to meet. For example, the governor of Hawai'i would have few opportunities to meet with the president of Kiribati, even though this expansive country is our closest neighboring island nation, with numerous Kiribati citizens of Hawaiian ancestry whose forebears in the late 1800s sailed to what was then the Gilbert Islands as Christian missionaries.
In 1980, Ratu Mara, together with then-Hawai'i Gov. George Ariyoshi, established the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, the only regional organization that included heads of government from across the the Pacific, regardless of political status.
Concurrently, the East-West Center's Pacific Islands Development Program was launched to serve as the conference's secretariat. Mara's vision for devising common solutions to shared governance challenges through the "Pacific Way" lives on today at the development program.
The Pacific Islands Conference provides island leaders with a venue to discuss common concerns and informally address cross-cutting public-policy issues such as natural-disaster preparedness, marine and mineral resources management, private-sector and sustainable development, globalization, the spread of HIV/AIDS and global climate change.
Over time, the development program also has become an important link between Pacific nations and Washington, D.C., hosting Honolulu summit meetings with U.S. presidents in 1990 and again in 2003.
Mara's vision of regional cooperation, and the institutions he was instrumental in establishing, set the stage for an expanded range of activities that bring the people of Hawai'i into closer contact with their neighbors to the south. The Festival of Pacific Arts (which will convene this July in Palau with a significant Hawai'i delegation) attracts thousands of islanders to exchange and celebrate cultures of the region.
Similarly, student exchanges between the University of Hawai'i and the University of the South Pacific have enriched the lives of many students. Even the revival of Pacific canoe voyaging, spearheaded by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, embraces the cooperative spirit and collective action Mara so eloquently advocated during his lifetime.
For the people of Hawai'i, contemporary Fiji is associated with island music, challenging surfing and quality kava. Yet Fiji also should bring to mind the illustrious career of Ratu Sir Kamisese Kapaiwai Tuimacilai Mara. Not only did his statesmanship sustain the chiefly ali'i tradition by embodying what it meant to be a leader in contemporary society, his vision also guided the construction of a vibrant Pacific community of which Hawai'i is a valued member.
As Sir Michael Somare, the prime minister and founding father of Papua New Guinea, said at the Fijian leader's funeral, "the legacy and vision of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara will live on, as he was the pillar of the Pacific."
Sitiveni Halapua is the director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center. Gerard Finin is deputy director.
Correction: The photo caption in a previous version of this story misidentified Gotaro Ogawa and Charles Morrison.
