Joses Tuhanuku

Who is Joses Tuhanuku?

Joses Tuhanuku is a Solomon Islands politician and former trade union leader. He served three terms in Parliament before losing his seat in the 2006 general election.

Having studied at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and then at the Australian National University, he worked at various times as a secondary school teacher and as a senior lecturer and course coordinator at the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education.

In 1975, he assisted Bartholomew Ulufa'alu in founding the Solomon Islands General Workers' Union, and replaced him as General Secretary the following year and remained the head of the union to this day, when Ulufa'alu was elected to the country's first ever Parliament and became its first Leader of the Opposition. By 1980, the SIGWU had 10,000 members, half the country's workforce, and renamed itself the Solomon Islands National Union of Workers.

In 1988, he was one of the founders of the Solomon Islands Labour Party, born from the National Union of Workers.

He was first elected to the National Parliament in the 1989 general election, as MP for the Rennell-Bellona constituency. He was subsequently re-elected in 1993, but lost in 1997 to Joses Tahua. He won reelection in 2002, but lost his seat in the 2006 election to Seth Gukuna. During those years he was, at different times, Minister for Commerce, Employment, Labour and Industry; Minister for Forestry and Conservation; Leader of the Official Opposition; and Shadow Minister for Finance. In the early 1990s, as Leader of the Opposition, he criticised Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni, "accusing [him] of failing to acknowledge the extent of the country’s financial difficulties", while the Solomon Islands Council of Trade Unions was demanding Mamaloni's resignation for the same reason.