National Federation Party Leader, Professor Biman Prasad says the late Justice Jai Ram Reddy understood that the security of Indo Fijians lay in a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Fiji’s indigenous people.
Reddy who was the former Leader of the Opposition, former Judge of the International Court of Rwanda, former National Federation Party Leader and former Attorney General, passed away yesterday.
Reddy was the Leader of the Opposition from 1992 to 1999, Attorney General in May 1987, President of the Court of Appeal in 2000, and 2002 to 2003, and Judge of the International Court of Rwanda from 2003 to 2008.
He was also the first Indo-Fijian to be invited to speak to the Great Council of Chiefs.
While paying tribute to Reddy in Parliament, Prasad says Reddy worked all his political career to pursue a meaningful relationship with the indigenous community, often in times of deep division and misunderstanding.
He says Reddy was the acknowledged leader of Fiji’s Indo-Fijian community during its most difficult and challenging period after elections.
He says his pursuit of reconciliation and tolerance with Sitiveni Rabuka in the post-1987 coup period led to the ground-breaking 1997 Constitution, cementing him into Fiji’s history as one of our most important national leaders. Prasad says Reddy’s electoral partnership Rabuka in 1999 was unsuccessful, rejected by the voters where he then embarked on his next career as a judge, first as President of the Fiji Court of Appeal and later as a member of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sitting in judgment on the horrors of the genocide that had taken place in that country.
