Princess Regent can open parliament [1]
Monday, June 19, 2006 - 19:32. Updated on Thursday, October 2, 2014 - 16:46.
Editor,
As expected of-course, the Chief Justice has ruled that the opening of the Legislative Assembly by the Princess Regent on June 1st was lawful.
What an embarrassment for Clive Edwards as a legal counsel and the other 7 PRs and the ...lone ranger... Noble Representative as lawmakers, to have even pursued such a frivolous case in the courts! What a waste of public time and energy in this needless legal exercise!
The Chief Justice had also ruled that the question of cost is deferred to another time, and has asked both parties to make submissions. Obviously, the defendants who have won the case will be awarded the cost and I hope Harry Waalkens, `Aisea Taumoepeau and Samiu Vaipulu, and Linda Simiki, will all get fat checks to take home for their troubles.
Guess who will be paying for these checks? You got it right! It is going to be the Group of 8 clowns. But they will not really feel the expense, because all they will need to do is to sign over their basic salary checks for this year to the courts! It is most unfortunate that the truth of the matter, only two or three must have come up with this whole idea and the rest of the PRs followed. Ko e `atunga ia `a e tau p? `a e me`alele pea heka noa`ia kae `ikai ng?ue `aki `a e fo`i puupuu `oku tu`u `i he vaha`a uma!
It is already Monday in Tonga so the Legislative Assembly has exactly 9 days before the end of the fiscal year to deliberate over the 2006-2007 Estimates. The sessions run from 10am to noon and then from 2pm to 4pm for a total of 4 hours daily, which means that the House has only 36 total hours in the next two weeks for the budget. When you take off the 10 minutes breaks in the morning and the afternoon every day for the 9 remaining days, the total hours of 36 would be cut back by another 3 hours.
The country is currently in a financial fiasco and the last thing that we would like to hear from the Legislative Assembly is that they are going to meet overtime and be paid a day...s parliamentary allowance for each overtime hour that they meet in. This would be unacceptable!
A motion should be in order in the Legislative Assembly for a discontinuance of the ...overtime allowances... as laid out under the House Rules. A further motion should be lodged that the deliberation over the Estimates should be confined to the 33 hours that is left. This would be just as well because these PRs have not come up with any worthwhile economic initiative according to the minutes of the LA.
So what now? The clowns have blown it! This civil case has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that these PRs do not know what they are doing, and that they would go to any extent even if it would ruin and destroy the country. Enough is enough! It is time to wake up and boot the clowns out before more damages are done.
`Ofa atu
'Ofa-ki-Tonga
ofakitonga [at] comcast [dot] net