The late former Deputy Prime Minister, Professor Tupeni Baba has passed away.<\/p>\n
University of Fiji Vice Chancellor, Professor Shaista Shameem says not only was Professor Baba the University’s senior-most Professor of Education and Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts, he was also an accomplished scholar, humanitarian and generous colleague.<\/p>\n
She says Professor Baba had been a statesman holding ministerial positions as both Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education in past governments and was honoured by all communities in Fiji as a courageous\u00a0parliamentarian and a true gentleman.<\/p>\n
Professor Shameem says Professor Baba had been a Professor at the University of Fiji since 2017.<\/p>\n
She says in company with other eminent professors over an eight year period, Professor\u00a0Baba provided intellectual leadership to his students and, indeed, to the entire University.<\/p>\n
Professor Shameem says Professor Baba was kind, good humoured and generous with his time.<\/p>\n
She says his students loved him and his faculty admired his resilience and his constant admonition\u00a0to them all that ‘the curriculum was dead’.<\/p>\n
Professor Shameem says certainly the higher authorities sometimes found him difficult to understand so deep was his capacity to express strong feelings about the state of education in Fiji.<\/p>\n
She adds the University has lost a great academic, and the nation a deep intellectual – and they will miss him.<\/p>\n
She expresses her heartfelt\u00a0sympathy and condolences to Professor Baba’s dear wife, and their colleague, the Vice Chancellor of the Fiji National University, Professor Unaisi Nabobo-Baba, and to Professor\u00a0Baba’s family.<\/p>\n
Professor Baba had served as a cabinet minister in the government of\u00a0Doctor Timoci Bavadra\u00a0until removed from office by the\u00a01987 coups, and then was one of the two\u00a0Deputy Prime Ministers\u00a0in the government of\u00a0Mahendra Chaudhry until they were removed from office by the\u00a02000 coup.<\/p>\n
He had founded the\u00a0New Labour Unity Party\u00a0to contest the\u00a02001 election, but failed to win a seat in Parliament.<\/p>\n
He contested the 2006 election\u00a0under the former\u00a0Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua, and again at the\u00a02014 election\u00a0as part of SODELPA, however he could not make it into Parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The late former Deputy Prime Minister, Professor Tupeni Baba has passed away. University of Fiji Vice Chancellor, Professor Shaista Shameem says not only was Professor Baba the University’s senior-most Professor of Education and Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts, he was also an accomplished scholar, humanitarian and generous colleague. She says Professor Baba […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10697,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions\/10697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}