Kamisese Kapaiwai Tuimacilai Uluilakeba Mara was born on 6 May 1920, in Sawana, Lomaloma, Vanuabalavu in the archipelago of Lau, the son of Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba III, Tui Nayau and head of the chiefly Vuanirewa clan of Tubou, Lakeba and Lusiana Qolikoro from the Fonolahi Family of the Yavusa Tonga clan in Sawana.

Mara was distressed to abandon his medical studies, but, dependent on Ratu Sukuna for financial support, followed his orders without question, and graduated with an MA in 1949.

Their eldest son, Ratu Finau Mara, was a Cabinet Minister and parliamentary leader of the Fijian Association Party from 1996 to 1998, when he resigned to take up a diplomatic posting.

[citation needed] After serving (from 1950) as an Administrative Officer in the Colonial Services, Mara was nominated to one of five seats on the Legislative Council reserved for ethnic Fijians in 1953.

In 1959, Mara was appointed to the Executive Council, and in 1963 was given responsibility as Leader of Government Business and Member for Natural Resources (officially an advisor to the Governor, but in reality roughly equivalent to a modern cabinet minister).

In 1966, he founded the Alliance Party, which, supported overwhelmingly by the ethnic Fijian and European communities (but not by most Indo-Fijians), won a majority of the seats in the 1966 election.

The Executive Council was transformed into a modern Cabinet, and its members, who had hitherto been answerable only to the colonial Governor, were made fully responsible to the legislature.

Most Indo-Fijians rejected this proposal, believing that it would prevent them from obtaining a legislative majority, even though they numbered more than half of the population, and demanded that all Parliamentary seats should be elected by universal suffrage from a common voters' roll.

In April 1970, Mara and Sidiq Koya, leader of the mainly Indo-Fijian National Federation Party, met in London and negotiated a compromise.

The official representative of Queen Elizabeth, Governor-General Ratu Sir George Cakobau, ended up calling on Mara to form a new government.

Many Indo-Fijians were outraged at what they saw as a deliberate cynical move on his part to keep the government of Ratu Mara, his fellow-chief (and distant cousin) in power at all costs.

A subsequent election to resolve the impasse in September that year, however, appeared to vindicate Cakobau, when the Alliance Party won a record 36 seats out of 52.

Two military coups led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka seriously undermined the social and economic stability, and the international prestige, of Fiji.

Mara was recalled to head an interim administration, with a view to restoring Fiji's international reputation and rebuilding the country's shattered economy.

[citation needed] After the military coups of 1987, Fiji had severed its links with the Monarchy and become a republic, with a president and two Vice-Presidents chosen by the Great Council of Chiefs.

Modelled on the Monarchy, the presidency filled a largely honorary role, but was nevertheless vested with important reserve powers, to be used only in the event of a national crisis.

When he refused, ("If the Constitution goes, I go," he defiantly declared) the group, including the army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, former Prime Minister and 1987 Coup Leader Sitiveni Rabuka, former military commander Ratu Epeli Ganilau (a son-in-law of Mara's), and a former Police Commissioner Isikia Savua, are alleged to have asked for, and possibly forced, Mara's resignation.

On 29 April 2001, Mara publicly accused the police chief, Colonel Isikia Savua and former Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, of instigating the coup.

Mara also declared that the Counter Revolutionary Warfare officers who joined Speight's coup had trained on a farm owned by Rabuka.

Commodore Bainimarama has defended his role in the incident saying it was "necessary" at the time, and that Mara's resignation was, in fact, voluntary and that he had refused offers of reinstatement.

Mara's government led the way in negotiating special preferential marketing agreements with nations importing Fijian sugar, through the Lome Convention.

Today, pine plantations, virtually nonexistent 40 years ago, cover close to 480 square kilometres throughout the Fiji Islands, and there is an ongoing programme to further expand area in all parts of the country.

[citation needed] Yet another significant Mara achievement was his contribution to the negotiations that led to the signing of a new United Nations International Law of the Sea Convention in 1982.

Although he did not officially recognise the Republic of China, he never hid the fact that his true sympathies lay there, and the Taipei regime, in gratitude, helped to finance the publication of his memoirs.

He was also a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of St John, and became Chancellor of the University of the South Pacific at Suva, which was founded with the support of his government.

Mara defended his role in the post-coup era of 1987 to 1992, arguing that he was doing the best he could in circumstances that he could not fully control, and that it had seemed better at the time to connive in the writing of a discriminatory constitution than to risk civil war at the hands of ethnic Fijian extremists.

[citation needed] Mara suffered a stroke late in 2001 while visiting Port Vila, Vanuatu, with two of his longtime friends, businessmen Hari Punja and Joe Ruggiero.

[3] His state funeral, led by Roman Catholic Archbishop Petero Mataca, which was spread out over three days (28 to 30 April) saw an estimated 200,000 people – almost a quarter of Fiji's total population – line the streets to pay their last respects to the man they regarded as the father of the nation, in an outpouring of public grief not seen since the death of Mara's presidential predecessor, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, over a decade earlier.

"On one hand they want to praise him but on the other they are working to free those people who ousted him through the Reconciliation Bill," she said, referring to controversial legislation introduced by the Fijian government in 2005, aimed at establishing a Commission empowered to propose amnesty for coup-convicts.

[citation needed] Jioji Kotobalavu, the chief executive officer of the Prime Minister's Department, rejected the criticism, saying that the government was not financing the book and that its involvement was limited to ensuring that Scarr had access to information sources.