Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, 83; Led Fiji to Independence, Became President

Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Fiji’s first prime minister and the dominant statesman in Pacific Island regional affairs for nearly 30 years, has died. He was 83.

Mara, a former Rhodes scholar who led Fiji to independence from Britain in 1970, died Sunday in a hospital in the Fijian capital, Suva. Hospital officials said the cause was complications from a stroke he had in 2001.

Mara was the last of a group of powerful, mostly hereditary Pacific Island chiefs who led their countries to independence from colonial rule under Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. from the mid-1960s.

Mara was revered for holding together bickering tribes as he welded Fiji into a stable, multiracial nation after 96 years of colonial British rule.

Fiji, which kept Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as its monarch after independence, became a republic after a 1987 coup that toppled its first government. Mara, who with his son was linked to the coup, became Fiji’s president seven years later.

“His leadership was marked by discipline, vision and a keen and penetrating intellect,” Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said Monday. “His dedication to this country was total.”

Through the 1970s and ‘80s, the United States, Australia and New Zealand regarded Mara as key to keeping the South Pacific free of communist influences.

The United States persuaded him to ban Soviet vessels from Fiji’s ports during a period when Moscow was trying to establish a presence in the region.

Mara retired as president after a May 2000 incident in which an armed gang stormed Parliament and held the prime minister and Cabinet hostage for 56 days.

Among the hostages was Tourism Minister Adi Koila Mara Latikau, one of Mara’s three daughters, whom Mara said the gang threatened to kill if he called out the army.

Seen as a hurdle in resolving the hostage crisis, Mara was asked to retire as the army declared martial law. Embittered by what he interpreted as national rejection, Mara retreated from public life.

Mara was born in Vanuabalavu in the archipelago of Lau. He studied medicine at Otago University in New Zealand, then at Oxford University, where he earned a master’s degree in political science.

Mara is survived by his wife, Ro Lala Mara, a paramount chief who outranked Mara in the Fijian aristocratic hierarchy, three daughters and two sons.

Funeral services are pending.