Marcus Ajemada Stephen (born 1 October 1969) is a Nauruan politician and former sportsperson who previously was a member of the Cabinet of Nauru, and who served as President of Nauru from December 2007 to November 2011. The son of Nauruan parliamentarian Lawrence Stephen, Stephen was educated at St Bedes College and RMIT University in Victoria, Australia. Initially playing Australian rules football, he opted to pursue the sport of weightlifting, in which he represented Nauru at the Summer Olympics and Commonwealth Games between 1990 and 2002, winning seven Commonwealth gold medals.
After his retirement from weightlifting, Stephen worked at the Bank of Nauru before being elected to parliament at the 2003 elections. Having occupied various portfolios in the Nauruan government under President René Harris, Stephen was sworn in as president after moving a no confidence motion against his predecessor, Ludwig Scotty. His term as president was marked by allegations of corruption and accusations of a coup d'état, as well as the declaration of a state of emergency and a suspension from parliament by the Nauruan Supreme Court in 2008. Two separate elections were called in April and June 2010 after accusations of bribery of government members of parliament, with another state of emergency declared in the period between elections. Stephen resigned from the presidency in November 2011 after further allegations of corruption were raised by opposition factions, and was succeeded by Freddie Pitcher, but was re-appointed to the Cabinet in June 2012 by Pitcher's successor as president, Sprent Dabwido. On 27 August 2019, Stephen was elected as the new Speaker of Parliament during its inaugural session.
Family background
Marcus Stephen's father, Lawrence Stephen, served as a Member of the Parliament of Nauru from 1971 to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1986. He is related to the prominent Keke family of Nauru.
Education and background
Stephen received his high School education in Australia, attending St Bede's College, Melbourne. He has a Diploma in Business Accounting from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. From 2001 to 2003 he was employed in management at The Bank of Nauru.
Sporting career
He initially played Australian rules football for the local team the Aces, but opted to pursue the sport of weightlifting. In 1989 the Nauru Weightlifting Federation (NWF) was founded, primarily to give Stephen, the sole top-class weightlifter in Nauru at the time, the opportunity to compete internationally.
In 1992 he took part in his first Olympic Games in Barcelona. Since Nauru had no Olympic Committee at the time, he successfully applied for Samoan citizenship and was allowed to compete for Samoa. In 1993 the committee was founded and Stephen was able to represent Nauru in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
When the Olympic torch was carried to Sydney in 2000, Stephen had the honour of being a torch bearer during its stopover in Nauru.
It was at the Commonwealth Games where most of his successes came: In the 1990 Commonwealth Games he surprisingly won a gold medal in the Snatch in the 60 kg class. In the 1994 Commonwealth Games he won three gold medals in the 59 kg class and in the 1998 Commonwealth Games in the 62 kg class he collected three more golds. In his last Games, the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester he won three silvers in the 62 kg class.
At the 1999 World Championship in Athens, he was runner up in the clean and jerk in the 62 kg class."Getting that elusive Olympic gold medal" , Islands Business
In 2005 he was elected member of the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame.
In March 2008, it was reported that Stephen had been appointed to the presidency of the Oceania Weightlifting Federation, the Pacific region's official continental weightlifting body."Nauru president to head weightlifting body", ABC Radio Australia, 30 March 2008
In January 2009, he was elected president of the Nauru National Olympic Committee, defeating Vinson Detenamo, who had been president of the committee since its recognition by the International Olympic Committee in 1994."Nauru president claims national Olympic committee ledaership" , ABC Radio Australia, 26 January 2009
Political career
Since 1997 he has been the Treasurer of the Nauruan Olympic Committee. On 3 May 2003 Stephen was elected to the Nauru parliament with a score of just over 215 points, achieving first place in the Ewa and Anetan Constituency.Nauru uses a preferential voting system, where each voter awards 1 point to their first choice candidate, 1/2-point to their second choice candidate, 1/3-point to their third choice candidate, and so on. See
During the presidency of René Harris, Stephen was and Minister of Finance and of Education from August 2003 until July 2004, a post he had to relinquish when Ludwig Scotty became the new president. In October 2004 he was re-elected to parliament. Following his re election in October 2004 into the Parliament of Nauru, Stephen was appointed as Minister for Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust; During his first term, due to the nature of a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) such as Nauru, with a political system relying on independent politicians, Stephen synergised several ministry posts including Minister for Economic Development & Industry; Minister responsible for Good Governance; Minister for Justice; Police & Prisons and Internal Affairs. Between November 2004 and May 2006 Stephen held Chairmanship of the Nauru Fisheries & Marine Resources Authority later becoming Minister for Nauru Fisheries & Marine Resources on 13 November 2007.
After Nauru joined the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on 15 June 2005, Stephen was nominated as a delegate for Nauru. He represented Nauru at the IWC-Congress in June 2005 in the South Korean city of Ulsan.
Stephen was re-elected to parliament in the August 2007 parliamentary election. He unsuccessfully stood as a presidential candidate in the vote held in parliament on 28 August, in which Scotty was re-elected."Scotty returned as Nauru president", AAP (smh.com.au), 28 August 2007.
However, following a successful vote of no confidence in Parliament against President Scotty on 19 December 2007, Marcus Stephen was sworn in as President of Nauru."MPs oust Nauru's president" , The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2007.
President of Nauru
2007
In the initial period of his Administration, Stephen moved to continue the practice, commenced by former President Ludwig Scotty, of appointing a separate Foreign Affairs Minister, when Dr. Kieren Keke (a cousin of Stephen) was installed in that post in December 2007. Previously, each President of Nauru had concurrently acted as his own Foreign Affairs Minister, although this was customary rather than a constitutional requirement. Stephen also appointed Frederick Pitcher as Finance Minister, and his Administration inherited the austerity measures associated with the outgoing Scotty Administration.
Regarding constitutional affairs, however, one of the major issues facing the new Stephen Administration was the process of constitutional revision consultations, started by former President Ludwig Scotty. These centred mainly on proposals to elect the President of Nauru by direct, popular election, rather than indirectly by the Parliament of Nauru, and which would thus restrict somewhat the frequent recourse to the vote of no confidence, which has been a feature of Nauru's political life for many years. Since Marcus Stephen came to office in circumstances involving the overturning of the previous government's Parliamentary majority in just such a manner, it remained to be seen what the Stephen Administration's formal position and practice on this issue would be.
At a personal level, the appointment of Marcus Stephen as President of Nauru at the age of 38, together with a youthful ministerial team, marked somewhat of a generational shift from some of the political figures who have dominated Nauruan politics in recent years; e.g., he was nearly 40 years younger than Derog Gioura, who served as President of Nauru in 2003, having entered the Parliament of Nauru in 1968, before the birth of Stephen. However, the appointment of youthful heads of state in the Republic of Nauru is by no means unknown; Bernard Dowiyogo assumed the office of President of Nauru at the even younger age of 30 in 1976. It may be added that since Stephen's presidency was to last a few years, his actual experience of office was to grow to be much longer than that of several previous holders of the same office.
2008
Political turmoil
In March 2008 moves in the Parliament of Nauru to unseat the Administration of Marcus Stephen by means of a vote of no confidence were thwarted by the resignation of the Speaker, Riddell Akua. Unrest on the island which involved threats to export trade and the torching of a police station were events which occurred shortly prior to Parliamentary moves to remove President Stephen and his Administration from office.
At the end of the first three months of Stephen's presidency there was thus widespread unrest in the country.
Stephen and Speaker of Parliament accusations
On 22 March, the Speaker of the Parliament of Nauru, David Adeang, called a Parliamentary session, allegedly without informing government ministers, who therefore did not attend. Opposition MPs, Adeang included, constituted a majority of legislators present, and passed a ruling outlawing dual citizenship for Members of Parliament. The ruling, if applied, would have affected senior Cabinet ministers Dr. Kieren Keke and Frederick Pitcher. Had they been compelled to resign from Parliament, the Opposition would have controlled a majority of seats in Parliament. The government rejected the legitimacy of the ruling, stating that it was unconstitutional because of the lack of parliamentary quorum. President Marcus Stephen accused Adeang and the Opposition of passing the ruling "after dark on Easter Saturday", "under candelight". On 31 March, Adeang claimed that the Stephen Administration had mounted a coup d'état because the loyalty of the police to the rule of Parliamentary law was no longer present, after the police refused to eject Keke and Pitcher from the chamber of the Parliament.
Coup allegations
The Stephen Administration, in response, denied the claim of a coup d'état, stating that they were awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on the issue.
The crisis continued into early April 2008, with Adeang stating that he would consider the Supreme Court's ruling as "just an opinion", and Keke responding that the Supreme Court, not the Speaker, had the jurisdiction to determine a member of Parliament's eligibility.
Supreme Court ruling
A ruling by the Supreme Court in April 2008 that the Speaker of the Parliament of Nauru had erred in seeking to exclude from Parliament two key ministers, who also made up the Government's majority, was seen to have enhanced the constitutionality of the Stephen Administration's make up.
Relations between the Stephen Administration and Adeang remained under severe strain, however, and the Administration's ministers continued to exercise executive powers without the support of an absolute parliamentary majority.
Stephen suspended from Parliament
By 10 April, the tenuous connection between the rule of the Stephen Administration and the Parliament of Nauru was further diminished. President Stephen and the eight other members of the 18-member Parliament who supported his Administration were suspended from the Parliamentary sitting, amidst rowdy scenes, by the Speaker, David Adeang, who had difficulty in making himself heard when commenting on the recent Supreme Court decision regarding dual nationality for MPs.
State of emergency and 2nd Administration