Brigadier-General Ratu Epeli Ganilau, MC, MSD, (10 October 1951 – 23 March 2023) was a Fijian military officer and politician. His career 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 2006 Fijian coup d'état 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
He enlisted in the Royal Fiji Military Forces in June 1972, and attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK. He had served several tours of duty with the UN forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and with the Multinational Force & Observers (MFO) in Sinai, Egypt. In 1979, as a company commander with the Fijian battalion serving with UN forces in Lebanon (1st Battalion, Fiji Infantry Regiment) Ganilau was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for his leadership on operations at a time when UN forces and the Fijian battalion in particular, was being frequently attacked by armed groups in southern Lebanon. He attended the RNZAF Staff College in Auckland, NZ, and rose through the ranks to attain the rank of Brigadier. 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 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 2001 elections. He also contested the traditional title of Tui Cakau in 2001 which was vacant at the time. Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu succeeded to the title of Tui Cakau, the Paramount Chief of the Tovata Confederacy which encompasses the provinces of Cakaudrove and Lau.
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. Ganilau was elected chairman on 3 May 2001 after his predecessor, Sitiveni Rabuka, stepped down amid accusations that he (Rabuka) may have been involved in the George Speight-led ethno-nationalist coup that deposed Fiji's elected government in May 2000. The Bose Levu Vakaturaga was a formal assembly of Fijian hereditary chiefs, along with a number of specially qualified commoners, chosen mainly by Fiji's provincial councils. The Council of Chiefs also had a constitutional role in functioning as an electoral college to elect the President of the Republic of Fiji, the Vice-President of Fiji, 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 the ethnic politics promoted by nationalist politicians had resulted in coups that caused immense damage to the country. He spoke in support of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who was then becoming increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Qarase government's ethno-nationalist leanings and sympathies for the 2000 coupists.
Both Ganilau and Army Commander, Frank Bainimarama, viewed Qarase's appeals to the primordial instincts of indigenous Fijians with deep suspicion. They saw Qarase's affirmative action policies and his subtle use of imagined threats to indigenous Fijian interests as polarising society along ethnic lines. They resented Qarase's use of ethnicity as a device to mobilise indigenous Fijian support. As far as Ganilau and Bainimarama were concerned, Fiji under Qarase was sliding headlong down a slippery slope towards a divided society with the spectre of a failed state looming large on the horizon. More importantly, it was a view shared by the Army.
On 6 August that year, Ganilau said that all persons implicated in that 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 participated in the George Speight coup. 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. Ganilau argued that the chiefly system with its class distinctions and quasi-feudal values was incompatible with the democratic values underpinning modern representative government. To merge the two would create further confusion in the minds of indigenous Fijians who were already subject to two different administrative systems i.e. the laws and regulations of the central government viz a viz the laws regulating indigenous Fijian society under the Fijian Affairs Act (administered by the Ministry of i'Taukei Affairs).
Ganilau held the chairmanship until 21 July 2004 when Prime Minister Qarase did not renew Ganilau's membership on the Council and replaced him with Ratu Ovini Bokini, a former deputy chairman and the chief of Tavua.
He was a government appointee to the Council and the government decision not to renew his membership effectively removed him from that body.
The Qarase government gave no reason for its decision not to reappoint Ganilau but there were strained relations between Ganilau and the ethno-nationalists in Qarase's Cabinet who did not agree with Ganilau's multiracial agenda. Information Minister and staunch nationalist, Simione Kaitani, had criticised Ganilau for calling for the resignation of Vice-President Ratu Jope Seniloli, who in 2004 was on trial for his involvement in the 2000 ethno-nationlist coup led by George Speight. Defending Seniloli, Kaitani argued that Seniloli was legally entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty and until such guilt was proven, Seniloli should remain as President. Kaitani went on to accuse Ganilau of hypocrisy, saying that he (Ganilau) was involved in the forced resignation of his father-in-law, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, as President on 29 May 2000.
There were also accusations that Ganilau was undermining the so-called 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. Ganilau's call received support from a number of political factions, including the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party, but received a cold reception from Prime Minister Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua. They saw Ganilau's multiracial agenda as an unwelcome threat to the nationalist i'taukei vote they required to remain in power. Ganilau had hinted that he himself would play a role in reviving the proposed Alliance with its focus on multiracialism. The decision to oust Ganilau from the leadership of the Great Council of Chiefs was widely seen as a move by Qarase to prevent Ganilau from using the Council as a platform to advance his (Ganilau) political agenda. Clearly, Qarase regarded Ganilau as a threat and had set a course to neutralise him.
Both Qarase and Ganilau held visions of Fiji that were incompatible. Ganilau had ideas of a united multiracial Fiji that was modelled on Ratu Mara's Alliance government that governed the Dominion of Fiji from 1970 to 1987. In that set up the chiefs played an important mediating role among the various races in Fiji. Ganilau yearned for a return to those heady days when leadership was respected, political power was in the hands of respected Fijian high chiefs and race relations were stable. But in 1987 Mara and his chiefs lost power and indigenous Fijian paramountcy was restored through the Rabuka coup. After the coup of 1987, race and racial issues dominated the political discourse. Indigenous Fijian ethno-nationalism ran rampant. It divided Fiji society along racial lines. Ethnic minorities were marginalised. The Indo-Fijian community in particular was targeted. Many of them were thrown off the land they leased. Displaced Indo-Fijians congregated in refugee camps in some of the major towns. For the first time refugee camps were established in Fiji; indeed the whole South Pacific region. Thousands migrated overseas depriving Fiji of valuable human capital. This was the spectre that haunted Ganilau and other moderates like him who represented the silent majority in Fiji. They saw first hand the cost of racial politics and undertook to guard against its re-emergence. These issues provided the context for Ganilau's multiracial vision. It was a vision that competed against the primordialism pursued by Qarase and the ethno-nationalists behind him.
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 Waqa as party secretary, and Manu Korovulavula as treasurer. Ganilau said the party would be multiracial and would pursue national reconciliation, something he had attempted without 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.