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468 the Contemporary Pacific • Fall 1998 468 the contemporary pacific • fall 1998 The Pacific Way: A Memoir, by Ratu Mara’s life might easily have taken a Sir Kamisese Mara. Honolulu: Uni- very different course, for when Sukuna versity of Hawai‘i Press, 1997. Isbn directed him to study economics and 0–8248–1893–8, xvi + 280 pages, history at Oxford in preparation for maps, appendix, glossary, photographs, the career in government, he had index. Cloth, us$42; paper, us$14.95. almost completed medical studies in New Zealand. Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara is the presi- Wittily recounted in a light and dent of the Republic of Fiji and the last graceful style, Mara’s memoir strikes of several paramount Fijian chiefs an engaging balance between personal groomed for high office by the British life and affairs of state. Appendixes in the last two decades of colonial rule. include the famous Wakaya Letter of For many years these chiefs dominated 1963, in which Mara and fellow Fijian leadership and were at the center leaders insisted to the UK government of dialogue with Indian leaders on that Fijians must approve any constitu- issues of land and constitutional tional changes leading to self-govern- change. Even as Fijians of “com- ment, his address to the UN Assembly moner” status became prominent in after Fiji’s achievement of indepen- government, the chiefs continued to be dence, and his moving tribute to the the core symbols of ethnic identity and late Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau. Photo- the source of legitimacy. In part their graphs range from the youthful pose in security in these functions enabled a students’ production of Romeo and them to become mediating and stabil- Juliet, to his chiefly installation as the izing national figures in a multiracial Tui Nayau, and meetings with world society, facilitating the transition from figures. Mara’s former secretary, Sir crown colony to independent domin- Robert Sanders, assisted in the ion of the British Commonwealth after research and editing. While the a brief phase of interracial tension. chapters on early life and international As the most intellectually able of the experience are particularly interesting chiefs, and the man especially favored and often entertaining, the account of by his uncle (and “idol”) the great events in Fiji over the last twenty or so Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, Ratu Mara rose years is disappointingly thin and rather to become prime minister in a predom- one-sided. But perhaps we should not inantly Fijian government from 1970, expect in such a work a candid warts- the year of Fiji’s independence, until and-all review. For the most part it is a 1987. Several months after his defeat valuable and enjoyable book. by a mainly Indian-based coalition, he Over the last thirty years Ratu was reinstated as prime minister in a Mara has been the most outstanding military backed “interim” regime that political personality not only in Fiji, ruled till 1992 when, after elections but among all island nations of the under a new constitution, the coup- Pacific. He first achieved this promi- maker Sitiveni Rabuka replaced him. nence in 1965 for his forceful initiative In 1994 Mara succeeded the late Ratu in leading island delegates in a Sir Penaia Ganilau as president. Ratu challenge to colonialist paternalism at book reviews 469 a conference of the South Pacific Com- my own multiracialist philosophy.” It mission. He later played a central part also influenced his decision to switch in setting up the South Pacific Forum, from Methodism to Catholicism, and quickly became leader of the because from the Catholics he had African, Caribbean, and Pacific sugar- learned “individual responsibility . producing countries in their negotia- a creed to which I felt I could give tions of trade terms with the European wholehearted allegiance.” He was Economic Community. (This role occa- uncomfortable with the Methodist sionally drew him into most unlikely Church’s close alliance with the chiefly mediations, as when he helped Ghana system, for “there seemed to be an and Denmark settle their dispute over unspoken feeling that rank would pro- payments for Mercedes cars!) vide the way to salvation, whatever Mara’s local and international faults might intervene.” stature owes much to his efforts to In 1987 Ratu Mara’s reputation at promote a sense of nation in Fiji. home and abroad was severely shaken Though he doesn’t mention it, he was by unsubstantiated allegations that he the first Fijian leader to champion the had a hand in the first army coup, goal of interracialism. Indeed, in the which occurred soon after his election 1950s he was seen as a radical, advo- defeat. His quick decision to join the cating interracial schooling and local military regime provoked condemna- government based on common roll tions by “the Western media [that] elections. His diaries as a young dis- hurt and maimed me psychologically.” trict officer reveal an enthusiastic com- Of course the coups also devastated mitment to evenhanded mediation of the interracial cooperation he had tried local disputes between Fijians and to promote in government and society. Indians, work that well equipped him Mara reaffirms that he joined the coup for leadership of the Alliance Party, the council to prevent bloodshed and save interethnic coalition that governed for the economy, though he now admits twenty years. that “at that stage my heart ruled my Ratu Mara recalls some of the early head.” experiences that helped shape his His sympathies for the Fijians who liberal outlook. Anatomy class at the most strongly supported the coup are medical school in Suva taught him revealed in the explanation and plea he “that under the skin all people are the made to the Queen’s secretary after same—chiefs were no different from Rabuka staged his second coup and others.” After winning the prize for declared Fiji a republic. This intriguing dissection he prepared for full medical statement, one of the book’s most studies in New Zealand by enrolling at interesting passages, candidly Suva’s Marist Brothers School, where acknowledges a tension in his leader- the staff were “more like friends than ship that had for many years been masters.” His year in this “microcosm heightened by challenges from his of multiracialism,” where he was the main indigenous Fijian opposition, the sole Fijian in a class mainly of Indians, anti-Indian Fijian National Party: was “one of the formative episodes in “The Governor General and I are both 470 the contemporary pacific • fall 1998 traditional leaders, educated and Indeed, a sustained resistance by both brought up under Western values. Our leading chiefs might have provoked the chiefly status gave us the privilege to army, or a section of it, to spur Taukei enjoy both cultures. In our indulgence fervor in support of a far more ethni- we have become insensitive to...the cally repressive regime, perhaps irre- feelings of insecurity and anxiety of vocably undermining the chiefs’ our own people.” Out of consideration restraining influence in ethnic leader- for “Western values” Mara had ship. Mara could well have made a rejected the Taukei Movement’s stronger case for his “damage control” “desperate” request for his leadership: action than he has. “They sought guidance from their In much of the academic writing on natural leader and were spurned by Fiji since the coups Ratu Mara has him. They consequently burned, been demeaned by a simplistic looted, assaulted, and were going modernist orthodoxy depicting the beserk. The Army and Taukei Move- chiefs as a reactionary self-serving elite ment have now come (to us) again. obstructing political unity between The choice before us is either to stand ordinary Fijians and Indians. This view on our Western pedestal, spurn and greatly understates the weight of ethnic berate them again and ignore the con- difference in popular life, and quite sequences, or to agree to guide them to misrepresents the chiefs’ significance in order, peace and harmony....My gut the national society. A close examina- feeling is that we should respond. We tion of the political process over the ask...for Her Majesty’s permission last sixty years highlights the part [and] blessing.” chiefs have played in containing and Following his election defeat Ratu mediating ethnic conflict (beginning in Mara had been proud to see that 1936 with Sukuna’s persuasion of the democracy was “alive and well in Fiji” Council of Chiefs to agree to land and urged the people to support Dr reforms giving security to tenants). In Bavadra’s government. But he now has fact, the importance of the chiefs in surprisingly little to say on the ques- restraining a more destructive escala- tion of what might have happened had tion of “Taukeism” is now widely he continued, after the coup, to defend acknowledged in Fiji, and few people that government by standing with the there would dispute the critical impor- governor-general against Rabuka. He tance of the Council of Chiefs’ recent doubts whether “the force of my moral endorsement of the proposal for con- authority would have altered the stitutional reform by which Fiji is now course of events [for] it was far beyond regaining its national vision. the capabilities of one man at that time Mara, towering still in physique and to reverse events.” This will hardly personality at seventy-eight, played a satisfy his critics. Yet the true answer key role in this political breakthrough. to the vexed question might vindicate Through his influence with the Coun- Mara. The power of chiefly authority cil of Chiefs, and with the wider Fijian was by no means certain in that leadership’s continued respect for his moment of unprecedented volatility.
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