Politics
Not a good start for Tonga
Cyclone, embarrassment mark 2002
Tonga had an unfortunate beginning for 2002 with a cyclone which, after giving the French territory of Wallis and Futuna a moderate dusting, gave the Vava'u Islands, in northern Tonga, their worst battering in memory.
Winds of up to 130 knots destroyed or badly damaged at least 300 houses, sank several yachts and small boats, and caused heavy crop damage. There was only one death.
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Australia and New Zealand were quick to offer emergency aid like tents and food.
In Nuku'alofa, after the hurricane's passage in the first week of January, the government was faced with the minor embarrassment of learning that a Tongan-registered ship had been seized in the Red Sea by Israel. Israel claimed that it was loaded with 50 tons of weaponry consigned to Palestine's freedom fighters.
The ship was reportedly owned by an Iraqi with an address in Yemen. Pacific Magazine learnt that last year Tonga gave a Greek businessman a contract to operate a Tongan shipping registry in Athens. The small ship was registered there after its purchase from a Lebanese shipping operator.
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The government announced that March 6-7 would be the timing of a general election for 18 of 30 parliamentary seats.
About 50,000 registered "commoner" voters will choose nine members of parliament. Another nine will be elected by 33 nobles.
Tonga's monarch, King Taufa'ahau Tupou, appoints 12 members who form the cabinet.
As representatives of the nobles invariably all support the monarch's appointees, the nine commoners have no real say in how the small economically weak country of 100,000 Polynesian people is ruled.
Last year Tonga's Human Rights and pro-Democracy Movement, which has been agitating for a fully elected parliament since the 1980s, got no response from the government to its request for a constitutional convention to agree on political reforms prior to the election due this year.
The 83-year-old monarch, who is the ultimate power and whose orders are obeyed by the cabinet, frowns on any move to deprive the monarchy of political dominance. His youngest son, Prince ŒUlukalala Lavaka Aka, is prime minister.
The democracy movement director, Lopeti Senituli said since it was a people's movement, not a political party, it would not sponsor candidates for the election.
Senituli expects pro-democracy supporters to contest all nine commoner seats, but purely as independent stand-alone candidates.
A petition in which the pro-democracy will urge the king to reform the government's financial structures to avoid a repeat of the loss of money to foreign conmen will be presented to the monarch before the election.
Senituli said the number of signatures collected on the petition would be a gauge of popular support for the movement. "A debacle like this must not happen again," he said. "The conman clearly saw loopholes and walked through them."
Last year was a disastrous one for the government culminating with the revelation that about US$24 million earned from passport sales to mainly Asian buyers had been lost, possibly through fraud and bad investments in the United States.
The loss amounted to most of Tonga's savings. According to local political activists, it caused serious harm to the prestige of the monarchy in the eyes of increasingly restless commoners since the king and his advisers appeared to be responsible for it.
It was a disaster for a country with fast dwindling foreign reserves, which depends economically on pumpkin exports, money sent home by expatriate Tongans and foreign aid.
The king is in declining health and makes frequent trips abroad for heart treatment. In early January he was in the United States.
According to Senituli, commoner Tongans, most of whom live on or just under the poverty line, are alarmed by indications of business and power rivalry between Crown Prince Tupouto'a, who has extensive local brewery, banking, electricity generation, telecommunications and property interests, and Princess Pilolevu. She is generally regarded now as being the power behind the throne. Her business interests include a government-awarded management of Tonga's satellite slot rights, said to have brought her a large personal fortune.
