{"id":28928,"date":"2021-02-26T05:26:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T20:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/feb\/26\/sir-michael-somare-papua-new-guineas-father-of-the-nation-dies-aged-84"},"modified":"2021-02-26T09:20:18","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T00:20:18","slug":"sir-michael-somare-papua-new-guineas-father-of-the-nation-dies-aged-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=28928","title":{"rendered":"Sir Michael Somare, Papua New Guinea&#8217;s &#8216;Father of the Nation&#8217;, dies aged 84"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PNG\u2019s Grand Chief led the country to independence in 1975 and served four terms as prime minister<\/p>\n<p>The man who led Papua New Guinea to independence, the country\u2019s Grand Chief and longest-serving prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, has died in Port Moresby, aged 84.<\/p>\n<p>Known throughout the country as \u201cPapa blo Kantri\u201d \u2013 Father of the Nation \u2013 Somare served as prime minister for a total of 17 years, over four terms, and was revered as a pivotal figure in the country\u2019s peaceful transformation from colony to independent nation. He is depicted on PNG\u2019s 50 Kina banknote.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/feb\/26\/sir-michael-somare-papua-new-guineas-father-of-the-nation-dies-aged-84\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PNG\u2019s Grand Chief led the country to independence in 1975 and served four terms as prime ministerThe man who led Papua New Guinea to independence, the country\u2019s Grand Chief and longest-serving prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, has died in Port Moresb&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1739,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,874,267,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-pacific-islands","category-papua-new-guinea","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1739"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28928"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28943,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928\/revisions\/28943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}