Tupeni Baba next on list as SODELPA continues hunt for panel members
He is the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences. It is understood that he is likely to be given permission to participate.
Tupeni Baba looks set to join a panel to select SODELPA’s new party leader at the end of this month.
The University of Fiji veteran academic and former politician has confirmed he has been approached and he has accepted in principle. Mr Baba said he had accepted the invitation pending permission from UniFiji.
He is the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences.
It is understood that he is likely to be given permission to participate.
He is no stranger to the selection process.
Mr Baba was in the panel that selected Sitiveni Rabuka as new party leader in 2016.
He had worked closely with former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase in setting up SODELPA and its original constitution.
The other three panel members who have been proposed are former MP Semesa Karavaki, University of the South Pacific academic Esther Williams and public policy analyst Jone Navakamocea.
Mr Baba was a founding member of the Fiji Labour Party in the mid1980s and was elected in 1987 to the House of Representatives as a candidate of the Labour-National Federation Party Coalition, led by Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra. A month later, the new government was deposed in a coup led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.
Mr Baba went back to his academic career, taking a post as a lecturer at the USP where he remained until 1999, when he was again elected to Parliament and became Foreign Affairs Minister and one of two Deputy Prime Ministers in the government of Mahendra Chaudhry.
In the 2000 Speight coup he was among members of the government who were held hostage by George Speight.
He resigned from Labour and formed the now defunct New Labour Unity Party after differences with Mr Chaudhry could not be resolved.
He then aligned himself with SDL. Mr Baba has always championed democracy and multiracialism.