Sir Frederick Gordon Ward, knighted in New Year's Honours [1]
Friday, January 6, 2012 - 15:15. Updated on Friday, May 2, 2014 - 15:38.
Tonga's former Chief Justice, Hon. Justice Gordon Ward, has been made a knight bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in her 2012 New Year's honours list, for his services as the Chief Justice for the Turks and Caicos Islands, and his judiciary service for the Commonwealth.
Sir Frederick Gordon Ward was also the Chairman of the Court of Appeal of Fiji.
He has served two terms in Tonga, first becoming Chief Justice in 1992 and serving until 1995. He became the resident judge in Cyprus until 1998 when he was re-appointed by the Tonga government as Tonga's Chief Justice, until he resigned in 2004, before the end of a 10-year contract.
Sir Gordon Ward chaired Tonga's Constitutional and Electoral Commission, which was tasked with the preparation of a proposed new system of government for Tonga, that was put into place early this year, January 2011.
In an interview with Matangi Tonga Online before he left for Fiji in June 2004, the then Chief Justice Ward talked about the difficult role of the judiciary in overturning unlawful privy council ordinances, and said that Tonga's laws are there to protect the people who have no power.
"I don't think that Tonga is any different from anywhere else, but the trouble is that people, once they get power, they use it so often without regard to the rules. . . . The reasons why rules are there, why the restrictions are there is to protect the people who do not have the power, and against whom the power is exercised, and that is where the courts are terribly important, " he said in the interview.
See: Tonga's laws are there to protect the people who have no power: Justice Ward. [2]