Kuini Speed
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Adi Kuini Teimumu Vuikaba Speed (23 December 1949 - 31 December 2004) was a Fijian politician, who served as Deputy Prime Minister in 1999 and 2000.
The widow of Fiji Labour Party founder and former Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, Adi Kuini became the leader of the Labour Party after her husband's death in 1989, but was deposed in 1991 by Mahendra Chaudhry. In 1995 she left the Labour Party, objecting to the direction in which Chaudhry was taking it, and became the leader of the short lived Fiji Labour National Federation Party, but later that year joined the Fijian Association Party (FAP) of former Finance Minister Josefata Kamikamica. She served as vice-president of the FAP from 1995 to 1998, when she became the party leader. Under her leadership, the FAP won 11 seats in the 71-member House of Representatives in the election of 1999. Forming a coalition with her husband's old party, Adi Kuini became one of two Deputy Prime Ministers in the coalition government led by Mahendra Chaudhry.
The Chaudhry government was deposed on 19 May 2000 in a coup organized by George Speight. After the coup had been put down, she refused to support the possible return of Chaudhry as Prime Minister, however, claiming that Fiji needed a less controversial leader to bring about reconciliation among Fiji's ethnic communities and repair fractured multiracial relations. In poor health following repeated brain tumor operations, she contested the elections held to restore democracy in September 2001, but she and all of her party's candidates were defeated as the ethnic Fijian community rallied around the United Fiji Party of Laisenia Qarase.
Adi Kuini was the daughter of Ratu Aseri Qoro Latianara (1924-1998), whom she succeeded as Tui Noikoro Paramount Chief of Navosa, and of Lanieta Vuni; she herself is to be succeeded in these roles by her brother, Ratu Tomasi Latianara. She was the head girl at Adi Cakobau School in 1968, and went on to graduate from the University of the South Pacific and from the Australian National University in Canberra. She subsequently pursued a career in the Public Relations Office, which later became the Ministry of Information. On behalf of the Fiji Public Service Association, she lead several delegations to the United Nations.
Adi Kuini was married three times and had four children and eleven step-children. By the end of 2004, when she lost a long battle with cancer, she was the grandmother of three. She is buried in Korolevu, a two-hour drive from Sigatoka.
Politicians remembered Adi Kuini as a committed Christian and champion of racial tolerance, and as one who fought for reform of the chiefly system by insisting on standards of accountability for all chiefs.
| Preceded by: Ratu Aseri Qoro Latianara | Tui Noikoro ???–2004 | Succeeded by: Ratu Tomasi Latianara |