Fiji's military leader Frank Bainimarama is set to resign as military chief, clearing the way for him to contest long-awaited general elections in September this year.
Mr Bainimarama, who used the army to seize power in 2006, will officially end on Wednesday a military career spanning almost four decades as he bids to win over voters.
After years of silencing opponents by issuing decrees that limit freedom of speech and assembly, the 59-year-old said he was excited at the prospect of waging "a battle of ideas" for Fiji's future, AFP reports.
"Everything my government and I have worked for over the past seven years is coming to a climax with the general election," he told a function in the capital Suva in February.
"When the new parliament is chosen... our revolution will be largely complete. But our task of building a new and better Fiji will be only just beginning."
Mr Bainimarama's bloodless coup in 2006 - the fourth in Fiji since 1987 - took place against a volatile backdrop stemming from tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians descended from sugar plantation labourers shipped in by the British during the colonial era.
He took power vowing to root out corruption and introduce a one-person, one-vote system that would end racial inequalities in the nation of almost 900,000.
His authoritarian regime did bring stability, but in the process tore up the constitution, sacked the judiciary and tightened media censorship.
When he reneged on a pledge to hold elections in 2009, major allies Australia and New Zealand led a push to isolate Fiji diplomatically, resulting in suspension from the Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum.
