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British judge
Sir Frederik Gordon Roy Ward
OBE
is a retired British judge who has served in various countries of the
Commonwealth
.
Early life
[
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He was educated in England, obtaining a BSc in botany, zoology and geology, and then taught biology in Northern Ireland.
Career
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Ward studied law and was
called to the bar
at the
Middle Temple
and practiced from chambers in London for 12 years.
[1]
In 1979 he went to the South Pacific, where he first worked in Fiji for six and a half years. He then served as a judge on the
Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands
where, from circa 1988 to 1992, he was
Chief Justice
.
[2]
He then moved to Tonga to become
Chief Justice of Tonga
and a judge of the
Supreme Court of Tonga
.
[3]
In 1995 he moved to serve as a judge in Cyprus before returning in 1998 to serve a second term as Chief Justice of Tonga, resigning in 2004 in protest at attempts to ban the
Times of Tonga
newspaper, a paper unsympathetic to the government, a move which he considered to be unconstitutional.
On leaving this post he took up a new position as the President of the
Appeal Court
of
Fiji
.
[4]
In 2007, following the
December 2006 military coup
, Ward and five other judges resigned as judges of the courts of Fiji.
[5]
He was the Chief Justice of the
Turks and Caicos Islands
from 2008 to 2012 and was
knighted
in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to the judiciary in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Commonwealth.
[6]
Ward was the Chief Justice of the
High Court of Tuvalu
from 2001 to 2016.
[3]
[4]
In May 2013 the Chief Justice ruled on the application of the Tuvaluan Opposition regarding the calling of a by-election for the vacant seat in
Nukufetau
,
[7]
which led to the
2013 Nukufetau by-election
.
[8]
The Chief Justice was forced to conduct the legal proceedings by email as a consequence of being unable to travel from New Zealand to
Tuvalu
via Fiji as the Fijian regime refused to provide Sir Gordon Ward with a visa that allowed him to travel from New Zealand to Fiji and then to transit to Tuvalu.
[9]
[4]
[10]
[11]
In 2019 he was appointed as acting Chief Justice of Tuvalu,
[12]
pending the appeal by the Hon Charles Sweeney QC against the termination of his appointment by a resolution of the Parliament.
[12]
References
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