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Tomasi Puapua

Prime Minister of Tuvalu

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ919316 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sir Tomasi Puapua (born 10 September 1938) is a political figure who represented Vaitupu in the Parliament of Tuvalu. He attended the Fiji School of Medicine and the Otago University Medical School. He married Riana Puapua.

Prime minister

He was the second Prime Minister of Tuvalu from 8 September 1981 to 16 October 1989. In a country which sees frequent changes among its head of government, Puapua also held the role as foreign minister.

The first elections after independence will not held until 8 September 1981. 26 candidates contested the 12 seats. Puapua was elected as prime minister with a 7:5 majority over the group a members of parliament headed by former Prime Minister Toaripi Lauti. Tomasi Puapua was re-elected in the general election held on 12 September 1985 continued as Prime Minister.

The next general election was held on 26 March 1989.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tomasi Puapua” is prime Minister of Tuvalu. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tomasi, Puapua and Prime, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938, 1981, 1989, 1985—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1938-09-10. For this dossier, Tomasi, Puapua and Prime is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “prime Minister of Tuvalu” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q919316. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1981, 1989 and 1985.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tomasi Puapua”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tomasi Puapua primary sources, Tomasi Puapua archive and Tomasi research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tomasi Puapua” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.