Epeli Ganilau

Brigadier-General Ratu Epeli Ganilau, MC, MSD, (born 10 October 1951) is a Fijian soldier and statesman, who currently heads the National Alliance Party of Fiji. His career has previously encompassed such roles as Commander of the Fiji Military Forces and Chairman of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (Great Council of Chiefs). On 15 January 2007 he was sworn in as Minister for Fijian Affairs in the interim Cabinet formed in the wake of the military coup which deposed the Qarase government on 5 December 2006.

Early life

Ganilau was educated at Wanganui Collegiate School, in New Zealand, from 1965. He later graduated from the University of the South Pacific and from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force Staff College.

Military career

After enlisting with the Royal Fiji Military Forces in June 1972, he was promoted to the rank of captain and participated in several peacekeeping missions to the Middle East. In March 1990, Ganilau resigned his rank of Brigadier General to take up the post of Brigadier, Doctrine, and Policy. In July 1991 he was appointed Commander of the Military, succeeding Sitiveni Rabuka. He held this office for eight years, retiring in 1999 to pursue a new career in politics.

First foray into politics

In 1998 he helped to found the Christian Democratic Alliance, which won three seats in the House of Representatives in the 1999 election, although he personally was not elected. He chose not to run in the election held to restore democracy in 2001. He suffered a personal defeat in 2001, however, when the Supreme Court ruled in support of the claims of his kinsman, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, to the title of Tui Cakau, or Paramount Chief of the Tovata Confederacy. As the newly appointed Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs, however, he continued to have an influential political role.

Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs

Ganilau was appointed to the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (Great Council of Chiefs) in 1999 as one of six representatives of the Fijian government. In 2001, he was subsequently elected chairman on 3 May 2001 after his predecessor, Sitiveni Rabuka, stepped down amid accusations that he may have been involved in the coup d'état that deposed Fiji's elected government in May 2000. The Bose Levu Vakaturaga is a formal assembly of Fijian hereditary chiefs, along with a number of specially qualified commoners, chosen mainly by Fiji's provincial councils, which also has a constitutional role in functioning as an electoral college to elect the President of the republic, as well as 14 of the 32 Senators.

As chairman, Ganilau took a strong stand for law and order, and supported the prosecution of persons implicated in the 2000 coup. On 11 April 2003, he was quoted as saying that politicians had already done enough damage to the country, which could not afford to have any more coups and bloodshed. He spoke out in support of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who was then becoming increasingly vocal in his criticism of some government policies. On 6 August that year, he said that all persons implicated in the coup should be brought to justice, regardless of their position in the community. Culture and tradition should not, he said, impede the investigation of chiefs who had allegedly participated in the plot. He also rejected a call from Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, a Cabinet Minister and the Paramount Chief of the Tovata Confederacy, for the Great Council of Chiefs to replace the Senate as the upper house of the legislature, saying that would mix the chiefly system with the modern governmental apparatus, which he believed should remain institutionally separate.

Ganilau held the chairmanship until his sudden replacement on 21 July 2004 by Ratu Ovini Bokini. His departure followed the decision of the government not to renew his membership on the council. The Great Council of Chiefs is required to elect a chairman from its own members, so the decision not to reappoint him effectively terminated his term as chairman, which was not due to expire until 2005.

The Qarase government gave no reason for its decision to not to reappoint Ratu Ganilau, but there were known to be strained relations between him and some Cabinet Ministers. Information Minister Simione Kaitani had criticised Ganilau for his public calls for the resignation of Vice-President Ratu Jope Seniloli, who is currently (2004) on trial for suspected involvement in the 2000 coup. Kaitani maintained that Seniloli was legally entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. He went on to accuse Ganilau of hypocrisy, saying that he himself had been accused of involvement in the forced resignation of his father-in-law, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara's, as President on 29 May 2000. There were also accusations that Ganilau was undermining the political neutrality of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga with his calls for a revival of the defunct Alliance Party, the multi-racial political party founded by Ratu Mara, which governed Fiji from 1967 to 1987. His call received support from a number of political factions, including the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party, but received a cool welcome from Prime Minister Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua, which would see the revived Alliance as an unwanted rival, especially for the ethnic Fijian vote. Ganilau hinted that he himself would play a role in reviving the Alliance, and it the decision to oust him from the leadership of the Great Council of Chiefs was widely seen as a ploy to prevent him from using the Council as a platform from which to advance his own political ambitions.

Founder of the National Alliance Party

On 18 January 2005, Ganilau formally registered the National Alliance Party of Fiji. Joining him were university lecturer Meli Maqa as party secretary, and Manu Korovulavula as treasurer. Ganilau said the party would be multiracial and would pursue national reconciliation, something he had attempted with less success as Chairman of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga. "I was quite outspoken about the need to respect the rights all citizens in Fiji during my role as chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs," he said, "but that did not go down well with some. That is why I decided it was best to continue the fight on a political platform."

In a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants on 28 April 2005, Ganilau called for a sense of national unity to be built by an emphasis on common values, shared by Indo-Fijians as well as indigenous Fijians. These values should, he said, include a vision of the kind of society Fiji should be – "a Fiji where people of different ethnicities, religions and cultures can live and work together for the good of all, can differ without rancour, govern without violence and accept responsibility as reasonable people intent on serving the best interest of all". He called racism "a primary force of evil designed to destroy good men," and asked all Fijian citizens to learn from the past to build a better future. "I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it," Ganilau said.

On 3 May 2005, Ganilau strongly criticised Prime Minister Qarase for his calls for ethnic Fijians to unite politically to provide stable national leadership. Ganilau said this policy was "divisive and a travesty of good governance and responsible leadership in a multiracial country like Fiji." He called on his fellow-chiefs to take a stand against what he considered a move to pit indigenous Fijians against other races. Ganilau also spoke of the importance of chiefly institutions, saying that chiefs provided permanent leadership for the Fijian people, unlike politicians who could be dismissed at the ballot box and were susceptible to the temptation to appeal to voters' racist sympathies to win power. "Very often, to remain in power the easiest option for them would be to play the racist card, drum up fears of marginalisation and extinction of other ethnic groups," he said. He said the country would prosper if all political leaders would support the role of chiefly leaders and make "a serious effort" to bring together all the people of Fiji.

In a speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club on 13 May 2005, Ganilau called for better pay for professional and skilled workers, and also attacked racial discrimination in the employment, saying that it was socially and economically harmful and resulted in second rate replacements for talented people. "When we leave out people on the grounds of ethnicity we limit our options, he said. "As such, we become poorer because we are not making optimum use of our human resources, thereby depriving us of the returns and full benefit of our capabilities."

Domestic policies

Ganilau has a reputation as an outspoken but moderate chief and politician, who opposes what he sees as divisive and inflammatory policies and statements of political leaders.

Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill

Ganilau spoke against the plans of the Qarase government to establish a Reconciliation and Unity Commission, with the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators of the 2000 coup and compensation to its victims. Ganilau first aired his opposition to the bill on 4 May 2005, saying that it was an unwarranted interference in the judicial process and represented a naïve and uncaring attitude to people who had suffered as a result of the coup. On 18 May he went further, saying that he saw "nothing reconciliatory about the bill" and that "To use the word reconciliation is a gross violation of the rights of everyone in this nation."

On 16 June, Ganilau continued his attack on the legislation. He said that there was a widespread belief in Fiji that it was designed to provide for the freeing of coup perpetrators, a belief supported by the Tui Vaturova, Ratu Ilisoni Rokotuibua who said early in June that it would allow members of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit, who have been jailed for mutiny, to be released. Having built up such expectations, Ganilau said, the government had better be prepared for a strong backlash if they are not fulfilled. He criticised Qarase for expecting the people, as ordinary mortals, to do as only God could do by legislating forgiveness and freeing people from the consequences of their actions.

On 23 June, Ganilau accused the Prime Minister of having committed a "monumental deception" by asking church leaders to support the legislation without honestly explaining its contents to them. He was reacting to revelations from Roman Catholic Archbishop Petero Mataca and other church leaders that at a meeting with the Prime Minister on 2 May, they had been told of the reconciliation and compensation provisions of the legislation, but not about its amnesty provisions. "It does not say much about the credibility of the Prime Minister for him to be saying publicly that the Christian churches support the bill after these deliberate acts of deception." Ganilau said. He called on churches to join with other religions to put together an alternative blueprint to the government's reconciliation proposals.

Law and order, moral values

Speaking at the Crime Prevention/Reconciliation Sports Day in Flagstaff on 4 June 2005, Ganilau called on the older generation to instill basic moral values in their children. "Increasing lawlessness and criminal activity can be interpreted as discourteous behaviour and lack of respect for other people and their property. So what we need to do if we want to salvage the situation is to go back to the basics," he said. The same day, he strongly criticised the country's leadership, saying that they were taking Fiji in the wrong direction, "spreading their gospel of fear and hate and not doing anything to help the ordinary people put bread on their table for their families." He warned against retaliation, however: "I believe we must not fight fire with fire, we will be burnt." The only way extremist elements could be stopped from destroying the nation, he said, was to deny them the opportunity to control the destiny of the nation by "holding the country ranson." He also called on people to respect one another, saying that it was the on way for lasting unity and reconciliation.

At the 80th birthday celebration of Satya Sai Baba at Lautoka's Girmit Center on 23 November 2005, Ganilau called for more religious programs to promote morality in private and public life. Most politicians were selfish and lacked moral values, he claimed. Teaching young people good values at home and at school would be "useless" if adults and political leaders were doing what children were taught not to do, he declared. He said that the country had strayed from spiritual values and had lost its way, with bribery, extortion, misuse of public funds, abuse of office, and racism having become common place at all levels of government. He claimed that the number of beggars and unschooled children was increasing while politicians were engaged in "egotistical pursuits."

In the same address, Ganilau also declared that all religions have the same essential teaching about the unity of divinity and the cultivation of universal love, and condemned those he considered responsible for creating "confusion" and "chaos" by "fragmenting divinity". "How often have we seen the bigotry of the religious fanaticisms and intolerance that have occurred in Fiji?" he asked. "Temples have been desecrated, places of worship are destroyed, all in the prejudice view that one religion is the true one and others are not."

Ethnic relations

Ganilau was a guest speaker at the Lautoka conference of the Fiji Labour Party, with which his own party subsequently formed a coalition to contest the general election scheduled for 2006, on 30 July 2005. Calling for changes in the attitudes of indigenous Fijians to allow everyone born in Fiji to be classified as "Fijian," he said that the country could not afford to remain fragmented and polarised on racial lines, and that racially based measures enacted by the present government were shortening the fuse on a time bomb. "Government seems unaware that the more race-based measures it tries to put in place the faster that time bomb burns to detonation point," Ganilau said. He said that until Fiji Islanders got out of their ethnic boxes and embraced multiculturalism, Fiji's future as a nation would not be secure. He expressed disbelief that after a century and a quarter of sharing the land, the level of cultural interaction between the major racial groups was so low.

Speaking at the launch in Rakiraki of his own party's campaign for the 2006 election on 6 August 2005, Ganilau said that the future of the nation's children would not be secure unless the people freed themselves from what he called "the comfort zone of our race." He said it was important to break down the imaginary ethnic wall separating the people. "We should not allow ourselves, individually or our ethnic communities to become easy tools for politics of race that will continue to segregate us mentally and emotionally," he said. He strongly criticised recent moves to form an ethnic Fijian electoral block, saying that would be divisive and would never lead to national unity. He accused "unscrupulous politicians" of promoting racially divided visions for Fiji.

He continued his attack on racially divisive politics with a number of speeches and interviews in the last week of August. He condemned Senator Apisai Tora for saying that indigenous Fijians would not accept a non-indigenous Prime Minister, and charged the government with fostering ethnic tensions to distract the public from its own "non-performance". He also accused the government of handling its relations with Opposition parties in a "crude and amateurish way" which prevented any cross-party agreement on land reform, necessary for obtaining the two-thirds parliamentary majority for amending the Constitution. This would create a mess for the next government to clean up after the 2006 election, Ganilau said on 27 August.

Chiefs and the political order

On 4 September, Ganilau strongly criticised Prime Minister Qarase for comments made at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Nadi on 29 August. Qarase had said that while Fiji "accepted" western-style democracy, it was an alien concept and certain aspects of it clashed with Fijian traditions, in which chiefs were at the apex by virtue of their birth and rank. Ganilau ridiculed Qarase's speech, saying that Fiji's political and judicial institutions were firmly rooted in western democracy and that the Fijian people should not be "misled" by the Prime Minister's claims that democracy was alien to the country. "Mr Qarase should answer whether he wants the western system of governance which allows him to be Prime Minister, or the Fijian tradition which requires the chiefs to rule by virtue of their birthright and rank. Otherwise, he is just being hypocritical to save face," Ganilau said.

Ganilau spoke out on 16 September to dismiss claims that most of Fiji's problems were being caused by the "disrespect" of Indo-Fijians and other non-indigenous communities towards the country's chiefs. Making a parliamentary submission on controversial Unity Bill, Masi Kaumaitotoya had declared that the jailing of chiefs on coup-related offences was a clear sign of disrespect, and that indigenous Fijians were being taken advantage of by others. In response, Ganilau said as the former Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs that he believed that the chiefs were well respected by all communities. He also called on his fellow-chiefs to play a greater role in promoting national unity by serving all citizens in their district or confederacy, regardless of race. Chiefs who had participated in the 2000 coup should not get preferential treatment, he added.

The AIDS crisis

Speaking at the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference in Auckland, New Zealand in late October 2005, Ganilau called for strong leadership to confront HIV/AIDS, saying that it was a global war which threatened the very future of Pacific Islands nations. "We can only ignore this battle at the cost of being regarded by future generations of Pacific Islanders as lacking the will, the foresight, the understanding to tackle this issue, which threatens our very future," he told the delegates.

Criticism of affirmative action

Launching the Lautoka branch of his party on 24 November 2005, Ganilau said that affirmative action in favour of indigenous Fijians had not benefited ordinary Fijians, but had served only to facilitate the survival of the government in power and acted as a cover-up for the lack of effective policies. Instead of affirmative action, he said, the government should do more to assist Fijian landowners to develop their land commercially, and to improve educational and economic opportunities for ordinary people.

The politicisation of the military

In an interview with Australian ABC Television's Asia Pacific Focus programme on 27 November 2005, Ganilau regretted the way the Military had become politicised since the 1987 coups. It would be several years, he said, before the Military could return fully to its professional role.

2006 election

The National Alliance Party announced on 17 March 2006 that Ganilau would lead the party into the election scheduled for 6–13 May, and that he would contest the Suva City Open Constituency. The attempt was unsuccessful; neither Ganilau nor any of his party's candidates were elected.

2006 coup d'état

Months of tension between the government and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces culminated in a military coup on 5 December 2006. Citing alleged governmental corruption, Ganilau told Fiji Television that he supported the "cause" of the military, but not its method, and denied public rumours that he had been a party to the planning of the coup. He called on his fellow-chiefs, however, to accept the "reality" of the Military takeover and work to move the country forward. He also claimed that he had been asked to mediate between the Great Council of Chiefs and the Military, as a former head of both bodies, but the council chairman, Ratu Ovini Bokini, angrily denied making any such request. "I never made a request to meet the commander. Whoever said that is lying. I don't intend to see the commander. He has to make a request to me if he wants to meet me," Bokini declared.

In the interim government that was formed after the coup, Ganilau served for one year as Minister of Defence, at the request of President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, but resigned a year later when it became clear that the interim government was not delivering on its promise to hold elections.

Personal life

Ganilau hails from the village of Somosomo, in Taveuni. He is the son of the late Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, the first President of the Republic of Fiji (1987–1993). He is married to Adi Ateca Mara, the eldest daughter of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the founding father of modern Fiji. They have two sons, Edward Tuivanuavou and Gavidi (the youngest); between them were born two daughters, Koila and Tuikilakila. Ganilau also has three grandchildren. His hobbies include rugby, boxing, and shooting. He is a Methodist.

External links

• Ganilau's speech at the launch of the NAP, 8 April 2005