Adi Koila Mara Nailatikau

Adi Koila Mara Nailatikau is a Fijian career diplomat and politician.

She was born in 1953, the daughter of the Fijian statesman Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and Adi Lady Lala Mara. Her father, considered the founding father of the modern Fijian nation, was Fiji's first Prime Minister (1967-1992, apart from a very brief interruption in 1987) and later served as President (1993-2000). After a serving her country as a diplomat in the 1980s and 1990s, Adi Koila decided to follow in her father's footsteps, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1999 as a candidate of the Christian Democratic Party. In the coalition cabinet that was subsequently appointed, Adi Koila became Minister of Tourism.

Adi Koila's cabinet career was brought to a sudden end on May 19, 2000, when George Speight, an extreme Fijian nationalist who objected to the presence of Indo-Fijians in the government, seized power, kidnapping the Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry and most of the Cabinet, including Adi Koila, and forcing her father to resign as President. A period of political turbulence followed. Following Speight's arrest by the military, a number of short-lived transitional governments were set up to prepare for the return to democracy; one of these was led by Adi Koila's husband, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau. Democracy was restored in 2001, and Adi Koila was chosen by the Great Council of Chiefs to fill one of fourteen Senate seats reserved for Fijian chiefs. She has since played an active role as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In 1981, Adi Koila married Ratu Epeli Nailatikau. The scion of another chiefly family, Ratu Nailatikau (born 1941) has had a distinguished career of his own, serving variously as Army Chief of Staff in the 1980s, High Commissioner (equivalent to an ambassador in Commonwealth countries) to the United Kingdom in the 1990s, and briefly as Prime Minister in 2000. He currently (2004) serves as Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Fijian Parliament is thus one of the few legislative bodies in the world in which a husband and wife have had simultaneous parliamentary careers. They have two children: a son, Kamisese (named after Adi Koila's father), and a daughter, Litia.

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