Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga (10 November 1957 – 29 September 2016) was a prominent Fijian lawyer, legal scholar, jurist, and politician. He served as vice-president, and also acting president, of Fiji, and Chief Justice of Nauru.
Ratu Madraiwiwi was ceremonially sworn in as vice-president on 10 January 2005, following his nomination by President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, and his subsequent approval by the Great Council of Chiefs on 14 December 2004. He served as vice-president beginning 14 December 2004 to complete the unexpired term of his predecessor, Ratu Jope Seniloli, who had resigned in disgrace on 29 November 2004 in the wake of his convictions for treason concerning his role in the Fiji coup of 2000. Madraiwiwi's first priority was to restore dignity and respect to the vice-presidency. However, on 5 December 2006, Madraiwiwi was informed of pending abolition of the vice-presidency, to take effect officially on 15 January 2007, by the Military Commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who had seized power in a military coup. He was forcibly evicted from his official residence and his office on the night of 6 December. Yet, Madraiwiwi announced in the second week of January 2007 that he was merely "on leave" as Vice-President of Fiji and intended in the meantime to resume private practice as an attorney at Howards law firm.
In 2010, Madraiwiwi was presented with a Tongan life peerage and the title of Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga by King George Tupou V of Tonga. Owing to his Fijian and Nauruan nationalities, he was nominated as early as 2013, and subsequently appointed in 2014, to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Nauru as its Chief Justice, the highest position in that country's judicial system, which he held until his death on 29 September 2016.
A lifelong legal scholar, Madraiwiwi was a prolific writer and public speaker who authored several articles and books, including A Personal Perspective, his last book.
Career
Descended from a long line of Fijian royal hereditary rulers, Ratu Madraiwiwi was the eldest son of Bau chief Ratu Jione Atonio Rabici Doviverata and Fijian Member of Parliament Adi Losalini Raravuya Uluiviti, and was the namesake of his paternal grandfather, Joni Madraiwiwi I, a Fijian Ratu and early colonial administrator in what was then the British Crown Colony of Fiji. He was born in Levuka, on the island of Ovalau, and subsequently titled Turaga na Roko Tui Bau, a vassal chief to the Vunivalu of Bau, Paramount Chief of the Kubuna Confederacy. He obtained a Law degree from the University of Adelaide in Australia, and then left for Montreal, Canada for graduate study in Law at McGill University. For his Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree which he obtained in 1989 at the McGill University Faculty of Law, he chose to specialize in comparative law. His LL.M. thesis on air and space law was titled The archipelagic regime under the United Nations convention of the Law of the Sea 1982 : its development and effect on air law He also pursued and obtained a Diploma in Air and Space Law (DipA&SL) from the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University a year earlier in 1988.
From McGill, Madraiwiwi came back to Fiji and worked for the Office of the Attorney-General of Fiji as solicitor, serving from 1983 to 1991. He was then appointed a permanent arbitrator in that office until 1997, when he became a judge of the High Court, which stands at the apex of the Fijian judiciary. He resigned from the bench in mid-2000 in protest against the coup d'état that saw the elected government toppled, the constitution abrogated, and the judiciary reorganised by decree. Thereafter, he practised law privately as a partner of Howards. In addition, he served as director of Fiji Times Limited (the nation's leading newspaper) and trustee of the Fijian Trust Fund. He was also a human rights commissioner and former chairman of the Citizens Constitutional Forum, a pro-democracy and human rights organisation.
In 2004, he was installed as Vice-President of Fiji. Rewa high chief Ro Jone Mataitini said the chiefs unanimously supported Ratu Madraiwiwi Vice-Presidential appointment because of his extensive knowledge of the law and because of his great rapport with other racial and religious groups. In this regard, he was regarded as a compromise between those who insisted on reserving the Vice-Presidency for a high chief, and those (including Ratu Epeli Ganilau, the former Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs), who believed it was time for a non-Fijian, to be appointed to the post as a gesture of goodwill to the Indo-Fijian and other minorities. Fiji Labour Party leader and former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry also welcomed Ratu Madraiwiwi's appointment. "Ratu Joni is an eminent scholar who served Fiji with distinction in the last 20 years holding high offices. He is fully conversant with the affairs of the State and he will certainly restore dignity and decorum to the high office," Chaudhry said. Tribal and regional factors played a part in the appointment. Fiji's tribes each belong to one of three confederacies – Kubuna, Burebasaga, and Tovata. One member of the Great Council of Chiefs explained to the media that they had understood that as President Iloilo is from Burebasaga and his predecessor, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara was from Tovata, the current vice-president should be from Kubuna. Installed as the Roko Tui Bau on 11 November 1995, Ratu Madraiwiwi is one of the highest chiefs of the Kubuna Confederacy.
The Constitution of Fiji assigns a purely ceremonial role to the vice-president, apart from the power to exercise the functions of the Presidency should the President be unable to perform his duties. With the 84-year-old President Iloilo suffering from ill health, the appointment to the Vice-Presidency of a respected individual who could assume the Presidency in the event of an emergency was regarded as a priority. Madraiwiwi, in fact, was acting President of Fiji in the absence of Iloilo in 2005 and 2006.
Career after the Vice-Presidency
In 2008, when a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in the Solomon Islands, in the aftermath of ethnic conflict, it was to have five commissioners, including two foreign nationals. Madraiwiwi was asked, and accepted, to serve as one of the two foreign commissioners. The Commission noted that he brought "strong international human rights experience to the TRC".Truth and Reconciliation Commission Solomon Islands
In January 2010, King George Tupou V elevated him to the Life Peerage in the Kingdom of Tonga, with the title of Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga."Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi appointed Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatonga" , government of Tonga, 4 January 2010 Ratu Joni became the Chief Justice of Nauru following the resignation of former Chief Justice, Geoffrey Eames QC. He died in service as Supreme Court Chief Justice of Nauru.
Opinions
Madraiwiwi is noted for his outspoken calls for political and cultural moderation, and for his efforts to encourage people to come up with creative and practical solutions to issues that have caused tension in Fijian society.
Ethnic tensions and human rights
Madraiwiwi says that ethnic Fijians really have nothing to fear from the large Indo-Fijian population, as native ownership of most of the land is enshrined in the Constitution. Madraiwiwi has called for a national discussion on adopting an inclusive label for all Fijian citizens. He pointed out that the Fijian label is very often taken to mean the Fijian ethnic group, rather than the citizenry as a whole. "While I personally have no problem with the term Fijian, I recognise many others in my community are not," he said in a speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club on 14 March 2005. "But let us not leave it there. Let us find other options," he proposed.
Addressing the Fiji Law Society convention at Warwick Hotel on Fiji's Coral Coast on 2 July 2005, Madraiwiwi said that the feeling of insecurity felt by many indigenous Fijians would disappear when more of them became better educated. He said that most members of his ethnic community did not trust the Constitution or the rule of law sufficiently, as both instruments could be impugned by whatever government was in power – an attitude that needed to be changed. His people needed to understand, he said, that the rule of law was not an alien Western concept, but one that was, in fact, rooted as much in Fijian as in Western traditions.
At an education workshop in Suva on 13 July, Madraiwiwi said it was a mistake to view indigenous rights as superior to human rights in general. He said that the ILO Convention 169 (the Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries) clearly stated that indigenous rights were not separate from human rights and could not be asserted at their expense. Articles referring to a self-contained system of governance for indigenous peoples were, he said, for traditional and cultural matters, and did "not legitimise or authorise indigenous supremacy."
Madraiwiwi also rejected arguments by some politicians that when the United Kingdom granted independence to Fiji in 1970, they should have handed power back to the chiefs, calling this position legally untenable. "To say that power should have been returned to the Fijian chiefs is to ignore what occurred between 1874 and 1970," Madraiwiwi said. He said there was a legal continuity from the chiefs, through British colonial rule, to the modern Fijian state. Universal rules, he said, required Fijians to temper their indigenous rights with the fundamental human rights enjoyed by other communities, though he admitted that many found that difficult to accept. "It is an unpalatable truth for Fijians because it flies in the face of everything they have been brought up to believe and conditioned to accept," he said. Madraiwiwi said tensions often arose because fundamental rights were collective, while indigenous rights were individual in character.
He reiterated this position in his closing address to the Roundtable on Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, and Nationalism, organised by the Fiji Human Rights Commission at Suva's Holiday Inn on 23 July. He insisted that indigenous rights and fundamental rights are mutually dependent and neither can exist without the other.
In a message to cadets at Xavier College in Ba on 27 July, Madraiwiwi said that the cycle of blame trapped Fiji islanders into racially polarised politics. He said that Fiji was the richer for its ethnic and cultural diversity, and commended the cadet corps for having overcome ethnic divisions to operate as a cohesive whole.
Relationship between church and state