René Harris

Harris was born on 11 November 1947 in Aiwo, Nauru. He was a member of the Emea tribe.

He obtained his secondary education from Geelong College in Victoria, Australia. Prior to his election to parliament, Harris worked for the Nauru Phosphate Corporation (NPC) and was the Manager of the Nauru Pacific Line.

He was first elected as an MP for Aiwo in 1977 as a replacement for Samuel Tsitsi. His first term lasted seven days as he had to resign following a court conviction for assault. However, he won the resultant by-election with a convincing majority. Harris was elected Deputy Speaker of the Parliament in 1978. He resigned his seat in 1981, but was re-elected in the subsequent by-election five days later. and Speaker of the Parliament in December 1986. In 1992 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NPC.

In 1998, Harris was convicted of assault and jail-breaking by forcibly freeing three of his relatives from the Nauru Police lock-up with the help of two accomplices. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program "Foreign Correspondent" also claimed that as Chairman of the NPC, Harris spent more than A$231,000 on luxury items, holidays and a property in Melbourne. Harris maintained a luxury penthouse suite on the 51st floor of Nauru House in Melbourne.

In parliamentary elections later in 2004, Scotty's supporters won a majority of the seats and Harris made no further attempts to be reelected president. In the parliamentary election held on 25 August 2007, Harris was the only opposition member of parliament to be re-elected; Scotty's supporters won an even larger victory and it was believed that Harris might have no political supporters in Parliament.

After Nauru's main police station was burned on 7 March 2008 by protesters in Harris' Aiwo constituency who were upset by phosphate dust, the government accused Harris of instigating the protesters.

Harris's periods as President of Nauru were sometimes owing to his alliance with the influential Kinza Clodumar, himself a former president, but also exercising considerable negotiating weight in the Parliament of Nauru.

During Harris' tenure as President, Nauru took, and defaulted on a 234 million loan taken from General Electric. As a result, Nauru's overseas properties in Australia were repossesed. Concurrently, Nauru under Harris was accused of involvement in a passport-selling scheme and allowing the Russian Mafia to launder 70 Billion through Nauru's shell banks, facing severe sanctions as a result. He was also accused of siphoning funds from the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust and living extravangantly while the Nauruans lived through an economic crisis.