Recent History
The current Tui Cakau is Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu; he was installed on 8 May 2001 in succession to his father, Ratu Glanville Lalabalavu, who died in 1999. In April 2002, the courts dismissed a challenge from a rival claimant, Ratu Epeli Ganilau.
Perhaps the best-known Tui Cakau in modern times was Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, who held the title from 1988 to 1993. He was Fiji's last Governor-General and first President. The present Tui Cakau, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, leads a political party, the Conservative Alliance and was a Minister in the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase from 2000 to 2005, when he was convicted of involvement in the coup d'état that deposed the elected government in 2000. On 3 April he became the first-ever Cabinet Minister to be imprisoned while in office, and resigned from the Cabinet four days later. He was released on 14 April, to serve the remainder of his eight-month sentence extramurally. He is the highest-ranked chief in modern times to have been imprisoned.
Read more about this topic: Tui Cakau
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)