Nauru’s Detudamo dies

By David North

NAURU’S de facto leader of the opposition died on a plane trip to Melbourne on June 5. He was Buraro Robidok Bagewa Detudamo, son of Nauru’s late Head Chief (Timothy Detudamo), a long-time member of Nauru’s parliament, and one-time cabi net minister. He was 62.

Detudamo was last in the news when he and several colleagues in the Nauru legislature voted down the govern ment’s budget 8 to 7.

Kennan Adeang, a former Finance Minister, will presumably become the de facto leader of the Opposition.

Adeang, brother-in-law to Detudamo, holds one of the multi-member seats in the legislature for the Constituency of Übenide, as had Detudamo.

Adeang has been a vocal critic of the spending and investment policies of the Dowiyogo administration; the island is running out of its phosphate riches, and

despite extensive overseas investments regularly runs on deficit financing. (See “Nauru’s Missing Millions” PIM Aug ust, 1993, pp. 25-31). Nauru tradition ally has no political parties, and no formal leader of the opposition.

Nauru also traditionally forgets past political rivalries at such times, and President Bernard Dowiyogo ordered that the body be brought back to the island on a special Air Nauru flight despite the costs of such a trip to the hard-pressed carrier.

Detudamo, though said to be in good health at the time, was headed to Melbourne for unspecified “periodic medical treatment”. Melbourne is the site of the offices of the Nauru Phospate Commission, which handles the sale of that commodity for the island govern ment, and is also the locus of the island’s skyscraper investment, Nauru House, and of a colony of Nauru’s expatriates.

As the only son of the head chief, Detudamo started life with many ad

vantages and a set of 40 names. None of this was helpful, however, when the Japanese conquered the island in 1942 and shipped young Detudamo and his family off to Truk in what is now FSM.

Two years after the Nauruans re turned, in 1946, Detudamo was sent overseas again, this time to study in Australia at the Knox Grammar School and later at the Australian School of Pacific Administration. Upon his return to the island in 1955 he began his career as a civil servant, and later a politician.

He was first elected to the Nauru Local Government Council in 1959, and served there until 1968 when he won a seat in the island’s new parlia ment, serving 11 consecutive terms in that body. As a member of the legis lature he was also at various times a cabinet member and Acting President.

He was buried next to wife Eliza’s grave on Nauru. He was survived by

sister Maisy (wife of Adeang), nine

children, 31 grandchildren, and two

great-grandchildren. □