Prime minister sir michael somare photo

With the death of Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare – the man who led Papua New Guinea to independence in 1975 and became Papua New Guinea’s longest-serving member of parliament – the Pacific has lost one of its most prominent and respected leaders.

Somare was born in 1936 in Rabaul, where his father was serving as a policeman in the colonial administration, but returned to his father’s home province of East Sepik at an early age. His schooling began in Wewak during the Japanese occupation of New Guinea and continued at Finschhafen High School and Teachers College at Sogeri. During the 1950s and 1960s Somare taught in New Ireland, East Sepik and Madang, served as an interpreter for the Legislative Council and the first House of Assembly, and worked as a broadcast officer with the Department of Information and Extension Services. He also became vice-president of the Public Service Association and an advocate for localisation and better working conditions for Papua New Guinean workers.

Somare went on to attend the Administrative College in Port Moresby, where he became a member of the Bully Beef Club, from which emerged Papua New Guinea’s first locally initiated political party, Pangu Pati. In 1968 Somare was elected to the House of Assembly, becoming leader of the parliamentary

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