Milestones

At 1.96 m and with the proud bearing of a hereditary high chief, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who has died at 83 from the effects of a stroke, towered over Fijian politics for three decades. Trained as a civil servant under British colonial rule, he helped draft a constitution that gave equal status to ethnic Fijians and Indians and in 1970 became the independent nation's first Prime Minister. After a 1987 military coup ousted Mara's left-wing political rival, he resumed the prime ministership and assented to a new constitution favoring ethnic Fijians. (He later apologized to Indo-Fijians for doing so.) Six years later he became President, but in 2000, during a botched coup whose leaders accused him of selling the country out to Indo-Fijians, he stood down under pressure from the military. The turmoil of recent Fijian politics only served to underscore Mara's achievement. Imperious he may have been - visitors were enjoined to approach him on their knees - but he gave Fiji the basis of a stable democracy and laid the foundations of its current prosperity. And he never stopped reminding Fijians that racism was the enemy of both.