King Tomasi Kulimoetoke II (Wallis)
Hyfler/Rosner
King of Wallis
The Independent
08 May 2007
Alex Duval Smith
Tomasi Kulimoetoke, farmer: born Mata-Utu, Wallis 26 July
1918; enthroned 1959 as King of Wallis; married (six
children); died Mata-Utu 7 May 2007.
One of the first tasks facing President Nicolas Sarkozy is
likely to be the resolution of a looming constitutional
crisis in the faraway French territory of Wallis and Futuna,
after the death yesterday of King Tomasi Kulimoetoke II.
Tomasi, whose formal title was the 50th Lavelua of Uvea, was
foremost among three remaining monarchs in France's overseas
territories, subject to republican law but permitted to
exercise customary law in the resolution of local disputes.
That prerogative repeatedly set his clan at odds with Paris,
most recently in 2005 when French paramilitary police were
sent to quell an attempt to oust him.
Tomasi reigned, with two other elected customary regents,
over the 14,000 Wallisians and Futunans who live on a group
of 20 islets situated 500 miles north-east of Fiji in the
South Pacific. Strongly dependent on French and European
Union subsidies, and on money sent back by migrant workers,
their sole export commodity is trocas, a seashell used for
making buttons.
Elected in 1959, Tomasi, who came from a respected
subsistence farming clan, immediately understood the
economic advantages of remaining attached to France, of
which Wallis and Futuna had become a protectorate in 1887.
In 1961 - after a referendum widely believed to have been
undemocratic - he, the governor and the local bishop signed
a treaty that made the archipelago France's most distant
Territoire d'Outre-Mer (Overseas Territory).
The historic vote secured rights to free education and
infrastructure grants. But King Tomasi's greatest
achievement was to gain the support of French historians and
ethnologists in defence of Wallis and Futuna's unique ethnic
make-up - half-Samoan and half-Tongan. He argued that
traditional clan structures could cohabit with France's
highly centralised republican ideals, and thus secured the
survival of the archipelago's non-hereditary, aristocratic
monarchy. Thus, also, the monarch could continue to insist
that his subjects dismount from their bicycles when passing
his palace, and sit on the ground whenever in his presence.
Successive Supreme Administrators - French civil servants
with the rank of prefect - struggled to bring to heel the
excesses and favouritism of Tomasi's clan. Some threatened
to slash French subsidies, and did so; others arranged
rewards, such as appointment to the Légion d'honneur, for
clan chiefs and their representatives.
In 2005, King Tomasi objected to a court ruling that his
grandson, Tomasi Tuugahala, should serve 18 months in jail
for the involuntary manslaughter of a pedestrian he
allegedly hit after a drunken binge on New Year's Eve. The
French authorities finally convinced King Tomasi to give him
up for arrest.
After the crisis, reformist clans chose a new Lavelua,
Sosefo Mautamakia. and their attempt to oust King Tomasi
sparked riots which left one person dead. When France
attempted to send gendarmes from New Caledonia, Tomasi's
allies blocked the Hihifo airport runway with vehicles and
tree trunks to prevent their landing.
In the past five years, due to his declining health,
Tomasi's daughter Etua had taken over his ceremonial duties.
It will now be for her to negotiate her constitutional
future with the restive clans and with French authorities.