Tupeni Baba

Tupeni Lebaivalu Baba is a Fijian academic and politician, who founded the now-defunct New Labour Unity Party. Most members of this party later merged with several other centrist parties to form the Fiji Democratic Party (now part of the National Alliance Party). A former Professor of Education at the University of the South Pacific (USP), he later served as a senior research fellow at the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, from 2001 to the end of 2005. In the general election scheduled for 6–13 May 2006, Baba attempted a political comeback, this time on the ticket of the ruling Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL), a political switch that generated a considerable degree of public discussion. Although his bid was unsuccessful, he was subsequently appointed to the Senate as one of nine nominees of the Fijian government.

Baba was a founding member of the Fiji Labour Party in the mid-1980s and was elected in 1987 to the House of Representatives as a candidate of the Labour-National Federation Party Coalition, which brought Timoci Bavadra to power. A month later, the new government was deposed in a coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka. Baba returned to his academic career, taking a post as a lecturer at the University of Suva, where he remained until 1999, when he was again elected to Parliament and became Foreign Minister and one of two Deputy Prime Ministers in the government of Mahendra Chaudhry. During the coup of 2000 in which most members of the government were kidnapped by George Speight, Baba's courage as one of the hostages earned him considerable public respect.

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