Tall and broad-shouldered like many Fijians, he wears a traditional sulu skirt and flashes a smile as he climbs into his gleaming, Japanese car -- a neat metaphor for Fiji's tribal past of chiefly rulers and its modern future.

Ganilau is probably the most powerful man in Fiji, a former British Colony riven by three coups since 1987 -- all inspired by ethnic tensions between native islanders and Indians brought in as indentured labor more than a century ago.

As chairman of Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), which consists of chiefs from 14 provinces set up by Fiji's former colonial rulers in 1874, he heads what is now the most influential political body in Fiji, Reuters reported.

The 52-member council -- "Ratu" means chief -- was set up to represent the fierce warrior clans who had ruled "the Cannibal Isles" for hundreds of years before the British arrived.

It now sees its role as a mediator in ethnically divided Fiji growing steadily.

That is probably not what the British had planned for the council when the old capital sat on the picturesque island of Ovalau.

Fiji is now probably best known for two things -- hundreds of miles of unspoiled, palm-fringed beaches on its 300-odd tropical islands and political instability in the modern capital of Suva on the main island of Viti Levu.

Three times governments have been overturned, the latest in May 2000 when Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, and most of his multi-racial cabinet were held hostage for 56 days by armed nationalists and ultimately overthrown.

Ganilau said that the 2000 coup led by George Speight, who now sits on a heavily guarded prison island off Suva serving a life sentence for treason, and two earlier coups in 1987 helped escalate the importance of the GCC.

"Ever since the events of '87 and recently in 2000, the Great Council of Chiefs has had to involve itself in an area where it was not legislated to be involved in ...

it was required to come in and solve matters of national interest," he told Reuters.

While Ganilau said he was happy with the status quo and saw no reason to change the way the council was set up and run, others argue it has missed an opportunity after the events of 1987 and 2000 to have a newer, expanded role as a community-wide mediating body written into Fiji's constitution.

--- Truly National Body? --- "They simply failed to live up to the expectations of them as a truly national body to look after the best interests of all the people of Fiji," said Brij Lal, a respected Fiji academic who had a hand in drawing up Fiji's 1997 multi-racial constitution which allowed Chaudhry to come to power.

The two 1987 coups were led by Sitiveni Rabuka, the man who preceded Ganilau as head of Fiji's military and then as chairman of the GCC. Fiji's largely hereditary chiefs named Ganilau their new chief last year after Rabuka's term expired.

Under Fiji's constitution, the GCC elects Fiji's president, or titular head of state, and vice-president, and has 14 guaranteed seats in the 32-seat Upper House senate.

The 1987 and 2000 coups boiled over out of simmering discontent among indigenous Fijians that ethnic Indians were gaining too much political power.

Indigenous Fijians, most Melanesian, make up about 51 percent of the population of about 800,000 people.

Indians, descendants of contract laborers brought to Fiji from the 1800s to work sugar cane farms, make up about 44 percent and dominate the tourism and sugar based economy.