The Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga in Fijian), was constitutional body in the Republic of the Fiji Islands from c.1897 to March 2012. In April 2007 the council was suspended, due to an unworkable relationship with Frank Bainimarama, leader of an "interim government" which came to power through a military coup in December 2006. It was formally de-established by decree in March 2012.
It is not to be confused with the House of Chiefs, a larger body which includes all hereditary chiefs, although membership of the two bodies overlaps to a considerable extent. The Great Council of Chiefs in its most recent form was established under Section 116 of the 1997 Constitution (now defunct), but it actually predates the Constitution by many years, having been established by the British colonial rulers as an advisory body in 1876, two years after Fiji was ceded to the United Kingdom.
Read more about Great Council Of Chiefs: Institutional History, Recent History of The Council, Composition of The Council, Constitutional Role
Famous quotes containing the words council and/or chiefs:
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.”
—Chief Joseph (c. 1840–1904)