"Nothing is secret in this country...", says 'Eseta Fusitu'a [1]
Thursday, June 1, 2000 - 10:00. Updated on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - 15:55.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 15, no. 2, June 2000.
Interview by Pesi Fonua
‘Eseta Fusitu‘a, a key government spokesperson on Tongan affairs denies a claim that there is no accountability in the Tongan political system. She says that Tongans must find their own way and not be herded into accepting a foreign system. ‘Eseta is Deputy Chief Secretary and Deputy Secretary to Cabinet, and heads the Government Information Unit.
Pesi Fonua - Are there limitations and conditions for transparency, and accountability as outlined by the United Nations and the Pacific Forum?
‘Eseta Fusitu‘a - Once we are accepted to become a member of the UN, it means that we qualify under UN criteria. We were accepted unanimously by the General Assembly, there was no debate, and likewise, we became a member of the Security Council. The question of whether we abide by the conditions of the United Nations surprises me.
The question of accountability?
I think it is obvious that there is accountability, and that fact has not been disputed. I am not aware that accountability has been blocked. This is a different matter to political questions that have been raised about the composition of the House. Based on that argument, their interpretation is that the existing structure of the House does not accommodate accountability. There is nothing wrong with that interpretation, but not to present it as though we have a principal of non-accountability, that there is an official doctrine of non-accountability, and there is an official system to stop accountability. If that is the question then we can say that this propaganda has made an impact, in misleading people to think so.
The best place to test that the doctrine of the government is accountable and the actions of the government are accountable, is in the House. Is there a clause in the Rules and Regulations of the House that obstructs accountability? I am trying to deal with the notion that because we do not operate under a party system and that People’s Representatives are not a majority in the House, therefore there is no accountability. I deny that strongly. There is accountability in our system as there is in the New Zealand system, they both abide by a principal of accountability, and they both use their vehicles of accountability. Honestly, our system of accountability is more real than in a lot of other countries, firstly because this is a small country and, secondly, we are accessible to each other. So our system of accountability extends beyond government. There are social channels, and ours is a dual system, and because of that anyone could go to the Prime Minister and tell him that he has heard the debate in the House and he would like to know why were they behaving in such a manner. Such an approach is not at all out of order in our system.
In this office people are always turning up wanting to know this and that, something that I think is not possible in bigger countries.
So what you are saying is that the government has an accountability doctrine. But are you aware that it may not be working because with the poor state of the economy information is not being disseminated effectively by journalists?
Yes. One area that I am aware of is that it affects the capacity of the journalist to be able to do his homework. All the news organisations are short staffed, and getting hold of someone requires more than one phone call, and they are working on more than one story. Overseas journalists become specialised to get the job done.
On the other hand, the ministries can’t afford Press Secretaries, which they should have, because you are asking the practitioner for the information. It as though you ring the hospital and the surgeon has to stop his operation to answer your questions. It is nobody’s fault. I am even having a hard time trying to get information!
You know, I think that the people are scared of the media, and only the media will solve that problem. Over the years, I notice that whenever we are about to release some information to the media about such and such a ministry, they come begging please don’t because they are scared that the paper will say something about their mother and father. The other matter is our press releases, but the media keep printing or broadcasting them wrongly, then the question is, why am I doing this, disseminating correct information but they keep interpreting it wrongly?
Indonesia has been hailed as the best example of how lack of accountability leads to the collapse of the economy and the political structure of a country. Even if we have a doctrine of accountability but it is not functioning, could we fall into the same hole?
I fail to see the similarity. Nothing is secret in this country, it is just a question of time. A lot of people come here looking for government information, including parliamentarians. I tell them that very little government information is embargoed. Beside this openness there are still claims that information is being withheld. The passport issue, for example, after the financial report was audited, gazetted and publicised during the early 1990s, I still read today in papers that the account of the passport sales has never ever been audited. The same with Tongasat. Accounts and other information about Tongasat were publicised and made available, but some media and individuals are still claiming that information was withheld.
A political system such as ours—a Constitutional Monarchy, is not acceptable to people who push for good governance, transparency and accountability because there is a notion that government is accountable to the King and not to the people.
Firstly, I don’t care about outsiders views because in the same way they do not accept the concept of an ‘Ulumotu’a (head of the extended family), the same as they don’t accept the authority of a church minister, it is the nature of Western Society and their perception. What we should bear in mind is that they do not have a family culture, where grandparents with children and great-grandparents live together. Because of that they do not appreciate or think there is merit in a society that lives like that. The danger is, that when they look at a monarchy they think it is bad, even the monarch in the form of Jesus, they think is bad.
I think the serious error that we make is in trying to defend our position after someone made a claim, no way.
We can teach them a lot of things—that parents don’t kick their children out at the age of 18 years.
Our thoughts come out of our way of life. Our survival is not due to the government, but is because of our extended family. If we take away the family tie, we will cut off the flow of remittances, but our way of life will never enable us to have surplus in order to have social security. All we have is the family system, and if we take that away the whole political system will collapse. Those are the matters that we have to focus on, and not to allow
Westerners to come and lead us astray. We should look carefully at our pluses and minuses.
There may be no need for us to be defensive because Western nations and the UN have presented some of these things, which they expect us to accept?
No, not me, because there are issues that have been raised by the United Nations but we have already passed them, for example, the concept of NGOs, which is pushed by the UN. We have people coming from the WHO, UNDP, to teach us how to operate NGOs. As far as they are concerned it is a new concept, but that is how we have been living for centuries, we have survived because of that social organisation, our community operation is not new to us, that is how we live. We organise as a group.
We have a heck of a time trying to explain, then they turn around to tell us that there is a division between government and the NGO. We then try to understand what they are talking about, because there is nothing that the government can do without the support of the people, that is all we know, we have never ever heard of a situation where government can function independently.
So when they are talking about transparency, that is what we have been doing all the time, but we do not call it transparency. Your work, and wanting to know the work they are doing, and for what reason, that is transparency. Government tabling things into the House, that is transparency. The auditors auditing our work, that is transparency. The presenting of church affairs into the conference, that is transparency. It is not a new concept that they are going to teach us. There is no point for us to be defensive and argue with them over whether we have been transparent or not.
If we look at the concept of accountability, this is where the Westerners are having problems. We have a dual approach to the issue, we accept the financial accountability for the money of the people, we also accept different criteria. For example, your children send you some money from overseas to build a family home, so you spend half of the amount to build a house and the rest on other matters. From a Western perspective you are accountable to your children, but from a Tongan perspective you are not accountable to anyone, they are your children and you are doing what you think is best for the family. If you bring the same line of thought to government, with regards to the position of His Majesty, when he decides that certain thing should be done. What we would question is the quality of a certain decision, whether it is a good or a bad decision, but with regards to accountability we do not have any problem with that. When the budget goes into the House we have to account for every cent that is spent, and the money is spent accordingly, and we think that is right. So you can say we have a multiple approach to accountability.
When we are talking about accountability in the House, the point being made is that there is no accountability in the House, because there is a minority representation of the people?
I think that issue needs to be looked at carefully, but with an open mind, and we should involve as many sectors of the population as possible. Unfortunately, we have not approached the issue from that angle, what has been done is outside views on the issue according to their perception of what the component of the Tongan parliament should be. So I think a politicised approach is not the answer, I think it will do more damage. The historian, Ian Campbell, made a strong comment saying that it was the wrong environment for proper academic dialogue. When I was asked to take part in a convention of the Pro-Democracy movement, I turned it down because it was not a scholarly exercise as it would be in a university, where an open discussion can take place. I don’t have the answer, but I believe that we should approach that issue in a friendly environment. With regards to your question I agree that the issue deserves to be looked at.
I am comparing the current push for democracy, accountability and transparency, to the spread of Western thinking, which came with the colonisation that swept the Pacific during the time of Tupou I. They were powerful waves, like today, where big Western countries like the USA are willing to finance this drive.
I think the waves that you are referring to in the past were more powerful, like the move to annex and colonise these countries. Because at the time no one in all these small island nations could speak English and they did not have a clue what the Europeans were talking about. So for them to target their most powerful bomb at the weakest target was the biggest test of our ability to make the right decision and to survive. There was confusion in most of the island nations, Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and so on. Our answer to the problem was the one that no one likes, which was to say that this is our country and we will run it the way we think best. The others thought that the Palangi knew better and let them run their affairs for them, but we didn’t. Today, if you look at it all these island nations that were run by Palangis they are no better off than we are. I was at a lawyers’ conference in Fiji and all these countries were working to amend their Constitutions, which were drafted by the Palangis. They were all studying the Tongan Constitution, not so much for its content but for its basis, which has a Tongan context. Look at the problem with the Council of Chiefs in Fiji, where there is dislocation of the traditional leaders by the Constitution that was drafted by the Palangis. So what happens is that an elected government is on one side and the traditional leaders with all the land are on the other side, and so they are struggling to make sense out of the situation. I am using this as an example because I believe that the Tongan media has been swept away, because they are being led by overseas media. We forget about our independent thought, we forget our history, we are following the trend only because internationally it is acceptable, but wasn’t that how the Western world went out to colonise the whole world?
What is important now is for the media to solidify the importance for Tongans to make a stand, for us to assess our own formula, and if we think that that is the way to go than let it be, instead of just being herded in.
The formula for accountability and transparency that the world is talking about is supposed to function only in a party system structure. But it does not work under that structure. Take the USA for example, look at all the information that is hidden by the CIA and the FBI. All the underhand financing of anti-government groups overseas, Iran, for example, still has not forgotten how the USA funded the Shah. How can they have the nerve to point at other countries for accountability, if you look at their history. New Zealand and Australia are the same. We can go on, they have the nerve to point at us while theirs is in an absolute sham.
The issue that is pushed by the West is for government to be accountable to the people, but in our system government is accountable to the King?
The way things stand in this country, government is accountable to both, and that is the reality. His Majesty the King chairs Privy Council, to whom the executive reports what they have been doing, so you can say that the executive is accountable to His Majesty. With regards to finance and the law, they are presented to the House, so you can say that the executive then is accountable to the people. The fact that we are accountable to both the people and to the King will be hard to grasp for foreigners, because they have never ever heard of such a situation, but that is the reality of our situation. It is entirely up to us to decide what to do with it, if we are happy with our present state of accountability then we remain as we are, but if we want to review the situation then we should proceed, it is entirely up to us to decide. But just because others have a single accountability process via an elected party, to a parliament, then it is the right thing to do, I dispute that strongly, because at the end of the day, you get both good and bad results from both an elected government and an appointed government.
The issue of accountability is related to a drive for a global economy and its administration and control?
There is a drive by the West that they are the source of knowledge and know how for the whole world to follow. That is fine. My personal view is that our social doctrine and behaviour is far superior than that in the West. They may be superior financially and scientifically, but when it comes to human relations we are way ahead. We have seen that the drive for change has caused a lot of problems socially in other countries with families breaking up.
The fact that Tonga’s Royal Family has become so actively involved in business, gives the Western media ammunition to liken us to corrupt states such as Indonesia, for example?
Now that you have asked that question, I am sorry because it means that the propaganda media rules Tonga. In principal I don’t know why it is wrong for the son of the King, but it is alright for my son to do business, I don’t see the point, excepting if you have a personal grudge against the King. I think that is where the bad feelings come from.
What is needed is for the media to dig in to how some of these media organisations operate. The Tongan media has compared the children of the Royal Family to that of Suharto, and it has brought a very bad name for Tonga, what is left to be done is to expose this devastating error and to rectify the situation.
Since the establishment of the OTA for handicapped children about 20 years ago, they have been fed daily by the Queen, but no one bothers to report that. No one reported that the Queen borrowed from the bank to build that. So the children of the Royal family have been unfairly treated by the press. Bad media presentation has a devastating impact on our lives.
There is nothing wrong for a member of the royal family to be in business. But if there are wrong business practices, then they should be taken to court. Thirdly, why isn’t the business interest of Feleti Sevele being analysed?
This global wave of IMF and WTO?
During the meeting of the heads of the Commonwealth in South Africa last November the WTO concept, which was dressed up by Tony Blair was rejected by the Africans as a new form of colonisation.
The accusation that Tongan Ministers spend too much on travel?
If the issue is just to talk about Ministers and their travel then I am happy to talk about it. As for the rate: the Speaker of the House is the same as the Ministers; and the members of the House are the same as the Chief Secretary. The problem is not the rate but the number of trips. The problem came because of the attempt by some people to politicise the issue. The number of trips is a matter of opinion to be assessed regarding cost of the trip and the reason for the trip.
But within our system are there areas where you think there is a need for some changes?
I think the desire and our work toward improving the service of government goes on every day, for example, the decision by government to adopt program budgeting, where an allocation is targeted for a particular project. That is one example of an effort to improve the service. The other is that all public servants have a job description, and a requirement for performance assessment, so the system to improve our performances is already in place. Implementation is another issue.