Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka is a long-serving officer in the Republic of Fiji Military Forces. He has a Masters in Strategic Studies from Deakin University Australia and a post graduate diploma in Strategic and Defence Studies from University of Malaya. He has served overseas on United Nations peacekeeping missions and commanded the troops which put down the attempted mutiny of November 2000. He was promoted to Acting Land Forces Commander in January 2006, but was subsequently relieved of his command after urging the RFMF Commander to halt confrontation with the Qarase government. He comes from Naitasiri on Viti Levu and attended the Marist Brothers School in Suva.
Virisila Buadromo is Executive Director of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement. She was formerly a journalist working for the FM96 radio station.
Satish Chand is a Professor of Economics at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is also the Director of the Pacific Policy Project, which undertakes policy-relevant research on Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Originally from Fiji, Satish has a PhD in Economics from the ANU and has published on international trade, economic growth, labour markets, and development.
Mahendra Chaudhry is leader of the Fiji Labour Party. He was Fiji’s first Prime Minister of Indian descent, until being overthrown in the coup of 19 May 2000 and kept in captivity for 56 days. Upon appointment of the interim government in January 2007, he became Minister of Finance, Sugar Reform, Public Enterprise and National Planning, but he and his labour colleagues resigned from the government in August 2008.
Noel Cox is Professor of Constitutional Law and Head of the Department of Law at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, and a Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand. His main fields of research are public law, and technological challenges to the law.
Jone Dakuvula works for the National Council for Building a Better Fiji Technical Secretariat, and comes from the vanua of Natewa in Cakaudrove Province on Vanua Levu. During the 1990s he served as Chief Assistant Secretary and Press Secretary to Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and later worked for the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum. He appeared on a Close Up television programme on Fiji TV shortly after the 19 May 2000 coup, denouncing its perpetrators. As a result, a mob rampaged through Suva’s streets and smashed up the television station.
Tupou Draunidalo is a Fijian lawyer and a former Vice President of the Fiji Law Society. She is the daughter of 1999-2000 Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Adi Kuini Vuikaba Speed and former Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua cabinet minister, Savenaca Draunidalo. She was a candidate for the Fijian Association Party in the parliamentary election of 2001
Stewart Firth is a Visiting Fellow in the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, The Australian National University, and was Professor of Politics at the University of the South Pacific (USP) 1998-2004. He has written widely on the history and politics of the Pacific. He co-edited (with Jon Fraenkel) From Election to Coup in Fiji: The 2006 campaign and its aftermath, IPS and ANU E Press, 2007, and (with Sinclair Dinnen) Politics and State-Building in Solomon Islands, ANU E Press, 2008.
Jon Fraenkel is a research fellow with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program at The Australian National University. He previously lived in Fiji and worked at USP for 11 years. He is author of The Manipulation of Custom: From uprising to intervention in the Solomon Islands (Victoria University Press and Pandanus Books, 2004).
Russell Hunter is the former publisher and managing director of the Fiji Sun, who was deported in February 2008 by the military authorities after his newspaper ran a series of stories containing allegations of corruption against then Minister of Finance, Mahendra Chaudhry.
Brij V. Lal is Professor of Pacific and Asian History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. He was a member of the three-person Fiji Constitution Review Commission whose report forms the basis of Fiji’s 1997 multiracial Constitution. Among his many books on Fiji are Broken Waves: A history of the Fiji Islands in the 20th Century (1992), Another Way: The politics of constitutional reform in post-coup Fiji (1997), and Islands of Turmoil: elections and politics in Fiji (2006). He is currently working on a biography of the Fiji statesman Jai Ram Reddy.
Graham Leung is a Managing Partner of Howards Lawyers in Suva, and was formerly President of the Fiji Law Society and Chairman of the Electoral Commission as well as serving as Judge Advocate in the Fiji Military’s Court Martial of those soldiers responsible for a mutiny in May 2000. He was born in Levuka, and has previously worked in the Office of the Solicitor General, as Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations and at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
Kuini Lutua has been an active trade unionist for many years. She worked for the Reserve Bank of Fiji from 1973 to 1999 and was on the executive of the Fiji Bank Employees Association in the 1980s. She was a member of the Labour Advisory Board from 2002 to 2006, and General Secretary of the Fiji Nursing Association from 2001 to 2008. She has also served numerous organizations dealing with women’s issues, social services, training, productivity and labour issues in Fiji and beyond.
Joiji Kotobalavu is the former Chief Executive Officer in the Prime Minister’s Office under Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. He was dismissed from his position after the military coup of 5 December 2006. Kotobalavu previously served under successive prime ministers, including Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Sitiveni Rabuka, and briefly Mahendra Chaudhry. He served as Fiji’s ambassador to Japan in the 1970s and as head of the South Pacific Geoscience Commission.
Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi currently works as a lawyer with Howards Law firm in Suva. He was formerly Vice President of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, until being removed by the Fiji Military Forces following the coup of December 2006. He is also Roko Tui Bau, one of the highest chiefly titles from the powerful island of Bau off the coast of Viti Levu. He trained as a lawyer in Australia and Canada, and worked in the Attorney General’s chambers as a solicitor from 1983–1991, before becoming permanent Arbitrator and then a High court judge. He resigned in 2000 in protest at the coup d’état of that year.
Vijay Naidu was born in Fiji and educated there and in the United Kingdom. He is Professor and Director of the Development Studies program at the University of the South Pacific, and was Professor and Director of Development Studies at Victoria University of Wellington from 2003 to 2007. He has written on aid, migration, ethnicity, higher education, electoral politics, land tenure, the state, development and poverty, and taken an active role in the civil society movement in Fiji over many years. He has recently served a term as co-chair of Aotearoa New Zealand International Development Network (DEVNET).
Wadan Narsey is a Professor of Economics at the University of the South Pacific. He is also a regular columnist for the Fiji Times, a former Fiji parliamentarian, and a prolific commentator on the key economic, social and political issues facing Fiji and the Pacific.
Lynda Newland is a social anthropologist. She works in the Division of Sociology and Social Work in the Faculty of Arts and Law, USP. For her PhD, she conducted fieldwork on the state's family planning program in rural Muslim villages in West Java, Indonesia, but since arriving at USP in 2001 has engaged in research on Christianity in Fiji.
Robert Norton is an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, where he taught from 1969 until 2004. He began researching the politics of race and ethnicity in Fiji in 1966. His book Race and Politics in Fiji was first published by University of Queensland Press in 1977, and in a revised edition in 1990. He has also published numerous papers on Fiji in various academic journals.
Samisoni Pareti currently writes for the regional magazine, i, and was formerly the Fiji correspondent for ABC's international radio service, Radio Australia. He began his career at national radio in 1986 and covered the two coups in Fiji. He has also worked at the Fiji Times, commercial radio FM96, the Pacific news service, Pacnews, and the Fiji Sun. He writes about politics in the Pacific as well as development issues like HIV/AIDS and the environment.
Jonathon Prasad is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, UK. He has conducted 20 months of fieldwork in Fiji, researching at the idea of community, land and spaces in the construction of Hindu religious identity in Fiji. He has previously undertaken research on the importance of dharma for kingship in classical Indian thought. His other research interests include global political economy, the application of the Sen/ Nussbaum Capabilities approach, and mental health in developing countries.
Laisenia Qarase is the ousted Prime Minister of Fiji, who was removed from office in the coup of December 2006. He became Prime Minister on 4 July 2000 and subsequently formed the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua to successfully contest general elections held in 2001 and 2006. He was born on Vanuabalavu in the Lau Group, and educated at Suva Grammar School and Auckland University. He served as Managing Director of the Development Bank (1983-98), and then the Merchant Bank of Fiji (1998-99), before becoming a Senator and then Prime Minister.
Sandra Tarte is the Coordinator of the Division of Politics and International Affairs in the Faculty of Arts and Law at the University of the South Pacific. She is the author of Diplomatic strategies: the Pacific islands and Japan, Canberra, 1997, and her major research interests are Pacific marine resource management, the politics of aid, and regional cooperation amongst Pacific Island states.
Akuila Yabaki is a Fijian human rights activist and a Methodist clergyman. He is currently the Executive Director of the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, and a member of the National Council for Building a Better Fiji.