Joni Madraiwiwi
Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga (10 November 1957 – 29 September 2016) was a prominent Fijian lawyer, legal scholar, jurist, and politician. He served as vice-president, and also acting president, of Fiji, and Chief Justice of Nauru. Ratu Madraiwiwi was ceremonially sworn in as vice-president on 10 January 2005, following his nomination by President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, and his subsequent approval by the Great Council of Chiefs on 14 December 2004. He served as vice-president beginning 14 December 2004 to complete the unexpired term of his predecessor, Ratu Jope Seniloli, who had resigned in disgrace on 29 November 2004 in the wake of his convictions for treason concerning his role in the Fiji coup of 2000. Madraiwiwi's first priority was to restore dignity and respect to the vice-presidency. However, on 5 December 2006, Madraiwiwi was informed of pending abolition of the vice-presidency, to take effect officially on 15 January 2007, by the Military Commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who had seized power in a military coup. He was forcibly evicted from his official residence and his office on the night of 6 December. Yet, Madraiwiwi announced in the second week of January 2007 that he was merely "on leave" as Vice-President of Fiji and intended in the meantime to resume private practice as an attorney at Howards law firm. In 2010, Madraiwiwi was presented with a Tongan life peerage and the title of Lord Madraiwiwi Tangatatonga by King George Tupou V of Tonga. Owing to his Fijian and Nauruan nationalities, he was nominated as early as 2013, and subsequently appointed in 2014, to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Nauru as its Chief Justice, the highest position in that country's judicial system, which he held until his death on 29 September 2016. A lifelong legal scholar, Madraiwiwi was a prolific writer and public speaker who authored several articles and books, including A Personal Perspective, his last book. Career Descended from a long line of Fijian royal hereditary rulers, Ratu Madraiwiwi was the eldest son of Bau chief Ratu Jione Atonio Rabici Doviverata and Fijian Member of Parliament Adi Losalini Raravuya Uluiviti, and was the namesake of his paternal grandfather, Joni Madraiwiwi I, a Fijian Ratu and early colonial administrator in what was then the British Crown Colony of Fiji. He was born in Levuka, on the island of Ovalau, and subsequently titled Turaga na Roko Tui Bau, a vassal chief to the Vunivalu of Bau, Paramount Chief of the Kubuna Confederacy. He obtained a Law degree from the University of Adelaide in Australia, and then left for Montreal, Canada for graduate study in Law at McGill University. For his Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree which he obtained in 1989 at the McGill University Faculty of Law, he chose to specialize in comparative law. His LL.M. thesis on air and space law was titled The archipelagic regime under the United Nations convention of the Law of the Sea 1982 : its development and effect on air law He also pursued