Leilani Reklai (born December 27, 1966) is a Palauan politician and businesswoman. She has served as the chairperson of the board of directors of the Palau National Communications Corporation.
Leilani Reklai was tentatively elected the governor of the state of Aimeliik in the state elections of November 13, 2007. [1] Early results showed Reklai leading her opponent and cousin, Abina Etpison, by just 35 votes. [1] Reklai had 218 votes while Etpison, a Palauan legislator, had 183 votes. A total of 468 were cast in the Aimeliik election. [1] 58 absentee ballots were still to be counted to determine the winner. [1]
Leilani Reklai became the first female governor of Aimeliik and only the third female governor in Palau's history. [1] Palau's other two women governors were Governor Vicky Kanai of Airai State and Governor Akiko Sugiyama of Ngardmau. [1]
She became the editor of Palau's newspaper the Island Times [2] In October 2024 she and her newspaper were sued by Surangel and Sons. Surangel and Sons are one of Palau's largest corporations and they alleged that they had been libelled in an article on 29 October. [2]
 | This Palauan biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Aimeliik is an administrative division of the island country of Palau. It is one of the Republic of Palau's 16 states. It has an area of 52 km2 and a population of 334. The state capital is the village of Mongami. The four other villages are Medorm, Imul, Elechui and Ngmechiangel.
General elections were held in Palau on 4 November 2008 to elect the President and members of the National Congress. The presidential election was won by Johnson Toribiong. Incumbent President Tommy Remengesau was ineligible to run because he had served the maximum two consecutive terms allowed and announced that he would run for a seat in the Senate.
Roman Tmetuchl was a Palauan political leader and businessman. He grew up in Japanese-controlled Palau and joined the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police, during World War II. After the war, he became the leader of Palau's Liberal Party. He worked in the Congress of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from 1964 to 1978 and advocated for Palau gaining a separate status from the rest of Micronesia. He became governor of Airai and engaged in three unsuccessful Palauan presidential campaigns. As a businessman, Tmetuchl led several construction projects for his business holdings and for the Palauan community, including the Palau International Airport and a Seventh-Day Adventist clinic.
Johnson Toribiong is a Palauan attorney and politician. Toribiong became the president of Palau, following his victory in the November 2008 election, and left office in 2013. Before 2020 elections, Toribiong has run for president four times - in 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012.
Joshua Koshiba is a former member of the Senate of Palau. After his re-election in 2004, he became the longest-serving member of that body in the history of Palau. Koshiba was elected seven consecutive terms as Senator from 1980 to 2008.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to the Republic of Palau.
Peter Lawrence Naoya Sugiyama was a Palauan politician.
Akiko C. Bedor Sugiyama is a Palauan politician, and widow of Palauan senator Peter Sugiyama. As late as 1995, she was the only woman who had ever been elected to the Palau National Congress. In 2005, she was elected governor of Ngardmau in a special election after the impeachment of Schwartz Tudong over the misuse of public funds. Along with Vicky Kanai of Airai, she was the first woman to be elected governor of any of the states of Palau.
Surangel Samuel Whipps Jr. is a Palauan businessman and politician, who has served as the president of Palau since 2021. He served as senator from 2008 to 2016. He is from the State of Ngatpang. Whipps assumed office as the President of Palau on 21 January 2021.
J. Uduch Sengebau Senior is a Palauan lawyer, judge, and politician who has served as the Vice President of Palau since 2021. She was previously a member of the Senate of Palau from 2013 until she took office as Vice President.
Yutaka Miller Gibbons was the ibedul of Koror from 1973 until his death in 2021. He was also an anti–nuclear weapons activist and political candidate.
Palau has several traditional chiefs of its 16 states. A factor that resulted in the decline of chiefly authority in Palau was the introduction of elected governors, called upon in the Constitution of Palau which came into effect on 1 January 1981.
Temmy L. Shmull is a Palauan politician who served as Governor of Peleliu for 3 terms from January 2013 to January 2022. He previously served as the Minister of State of Palau from 2001 to 2009 and was also the vice president of Palau National Olympic Committee.
General elections were held in Palau on 5 November 2024 to elect a President and the National Congress. Incumbent President Surangel Whipps Jr. faced former president Tommy Remengesau Jr. in the election, and was reelected in a landslide.
The following lists events that happened during 2021 in the Republic of Palau.
Emais Roberts is a Palauan politician and physician who has served as Governor of Peleliu since 2022. He previously served as the country's Minister of Health from 2017 to 2021 and led the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Palau.
Jackson R. Ngiraingas is a Palauan politician and businessman who served as Governor of Peleliu from 1995 to 2001 and 2004 to 2009. He resigned during his fourth term to become Minister of Public Infrastructure from 2009 to 2013.
Gloria Salii is the bilung of Koror which is the female counterpart of ibedul and highest ranking female chief title in Palau.
There was a succession dispute following the death of Yutaka Gibbons, the ibedul of the state of Koror, Palau, on November 4, 2021. Gibbons' younger siblings, rechucher-ra-techekii Alexander Merep and bilung Gloria Salii, both initially claimed the title, but Salii would later relent her claim in favour of her son, James Lebuu Littler. Merep was accepted as ibedul by the traditional chiefs of Koror and the Council of Chiefs, although Salii maintains that her son is the ibedul.
Yukio Mengirarou Shmull was a Palauan politician who served as the first Governor of Peleliu from 1983 to 1986.