MY first encounters with Barrie Sweetman were as a Fiji Times journalist in the early 1980s. Barrie was the Fiji Times lawyer. His job was to keep our ragtag band of reporters and troublemakers out of court (and maybe out of jail). We knew that if we were on the carpet before the great man in the offices of Munro Leys – and I was, a couple of times – it was not a good day.
My next encounter with Barrie was even less auspicious. Some of us may remember the infamous Travelodge incident of 1987, when I was pursued by a bunch of club wielding thugs into the bar of what is now the Holiday Inn. Barrie happened to be at lunch there. He waded into the scrap and threw at least two of my assailants out of harm’s way. Somewhere in the middle of it he took the blow from a club to his spine — and he always blamed me after that for at least one of the cricks in his back.
One wonders at the sense of adventure that drove a young Auckland lawyer of 29 to leave the comforts and promise of New Zealand in 1963 to take up a job in Lautoka. But that is what Barrie did when he accepted a position with Munro Leys’s then Lautoka office. This was mainly to do the work of South Pacific Sugar Mills Limited, the predecessor of the FSC and the businesses that dominated Lautoka’s economy.
Munro Leys later sold its Lautoka office to a lawyer called Kenneth Stuart, who later became a High Court judge — but not before he went into partnership with a young lawyer called Jai Ram Reddy and the firm became Stuart Reddy & Co. After 1987 the firm changed to Young & Associates, which it remains today.
So that is a little bit of Lautoka history – but that is only the first bit. Throughout Barrie’s almost 60 years in Fiji he became embedded in the history not just of Munro Leys, but of Fiji.
Barrie was transferred to Munro Leys’s Suva office in 1967. He joined a firm that already featured some of Suva’s leading legal lights. Sir Ronald Kermode was already the speaker of the Legislative Council, the predecessor of Fiji’s Parliament. Sir Robert Munro was soon to be appointed President of the Senate. Arthur Leys was a former Mayor of Suva who incorporated the Fiji Sugar Corporation and was its first chairman. These were days when FSC dominated the economy and much of national life.
A sense of history
Barrie understood and valued history and he was proud of our firm’s place in Fiji’s history. Not many of us know that Munro Leys’s origins go back to 1873, one year before the Deed of Cession, to a law firm founded by Joseph Hector Garrick.
The firm later became Garrick & Caldwell; then Caldwell & Ellis: then, on the arrival of Robert Munro (who first practised in Nausori), Ellis & Munro. The firm expanded to become Munro, Warren, Leys and Kermode. Later as some of its leading partners retired, it became Munro Leys & Co. Barrie knew that 150 years of history. And, for better or worse – and in part thanks to him – we are still here.
By the early 1980s Barrie was one of Fiji’s leading lawyers. He chose not to add his own name to that of the firm. He had too much respect for his predecessors and he was loyal to their memories. Loyalty was a quality Barrie valued and one for which he we all knew him. So, “Munro Leys” we still are.
Barrie was scrupulously ethical all his life. Even a few months ago Barrie expected me to send him a bill for something I had done for him — but I could at least tell him since he was no longer my boss that was an instruction I did not have to obey.
So what was Barrie’s contribution to national life? What did he do?
The better question might be – what did he not do? His CV is astonishing.
We begin with rugby – because with Barrie you always begin with rugby. Barrie led the Fiji Rugby Union as its Chairman for 10 years, between 1973 and 1982. He chaired the Fiji Sports Council between 1979 and 1984. He was a Rotarian. He was president of the Fiji Club. He was a trustee of FASANOC and a whole lot of other things that many of us may have forgotten. But for me anyway, all this was just the curtain-raiser.
Some of the current partners of Munro Leys star on social media or write newspaper columns. Self-promotion was not Barrie’s style at all. Even when he wrote a newspaper column (on rugby, of course) he did so behind the pen name of “The Ovalier”.
Public life
In public life, Barrie was the ultimate lawyer’s lawyer. He was a lawyer first, independent, professional and, in the execution of his professional work, uncompromising. Talking about his life with his family, we are all conscious of the word “duty”. It would be easy, I am sure, for someone in Barrie’s position to simply sit back and enjoy the power and privilege that came with his position. But that was not his style at all.
So let’s begin, in no particular order. Barrie was Chair of the Electoral Commission between 1982 and 1987. He was a Senator from 1992 to 1996. He chaired the Electoral Boundaries Commission, twice, between 1997 and 2006 and Chair of the Constitutional Offices Commission between 1999 and 2001.
Step back and reflect on these positions in this day and age, particularly in light of some current events. These are powerful and influential organisations which daily shaped politics and public life. Barrie wasn’t just a member of these organisations. He chaired them and he ran them, uncontroversially and without fanfare.
He was also chairman of the Consumer Council for eight years and President of the Fiji Law Society for two. He was the Norwegian Consul in Fiji for 20 years. I don’t have time to name everything he did; and I do know that he turned down an offer to be Speaker of Parliament and another offer to be Attorney-General. Those were two things he did not do, in a life of extraordinary public service.
And amidst all of this, he also worked his day job as a partner of Munro Leys. Barrie’s personal client list looked like a world who’s who of anybody who was anybody who owned something in Fiji. I am thinking of Raymond Burr, the actor; Malcolm Forbes, the billionaire. I think even Adnan Khashoggi, the Arab gun-runner, was on the Munro Leys books for a while. I suspect that in these more straitened days of global regulation, he would no longer make the cut.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were tough times for Munro Leys. The aftermath of the 1987 coup was devastating for the firm. Most of its best lawyers left the country. Competitors were starting to snap at its heels. Barrie recalled to me a few times how hard it was to keep things going over that time. The better financial decision for him would have been to abandon his partners and strike out on his own. But duty and loyalty — both to his partners and to Munro Leys’s history —won the day.
As a firm, we are a bit bigger and stronger now. But for all of us to whom the name Munro Leys means anything, it is to Barrie’s perseverance and loyalty that we owe a great debt.
And Barrie’s life and times — and his reputation for integrity, loyalty and duty — remind us that our God-given talents and experience do not just belong to us. They are to be used for the public good, in public service. That should be a constant reminder, which may be Barrie’s greatest legacy to all of us.
RICHARD NAIDU is a Suva lawyer and a partner in Munro Leys, Mr Sweetman’s former firm. This article is an adaptation of a eulogy given at Mr Sweetman’s funeral service on Tuesday 17 December. The views expressed in this article are the author’s.
