Editor,
When read through the health debates in your website, I was interested in one of the letters from Mr Kavaha'apai where he touched very briefly on what is expected of our representatives, and their important roles and the impact of their roles on us, the people that they represent. This is an important and much relevant issue for us commoners. We must understand what qualities do we want our people's representatives to have and what we want our representatives to do in parliament, considering the paths we came and where we are now and the political climate that is prevailing in the country at the moment. From some of the comments made by Tongans I can tell that there is a good number of Tongans that understands the role of the people's representatives but there still many who do not understand what our representatives should be doing. I have heard parliament sessions broadcasted in the radio Tonga and TV and was confused with the questions people's representatives asked in Parliament. Sometimes the questions asked were, to me, the answers should have been found in the government department's annual report or the budget, but the people's representatives failed to understand that and so the questions asked was irrelevant. I hear some of the questions asked is, to me, outside the mandate of the parliament and the issue being raised is something entirely up to the executive government to decide. This is where I categorised most of the questions asked by our people's representative, and to me, our representatives has lost focus on their primary role which is making law to manage, control, monitor and evaluate the performance of the executive government and most of the time they try to do what legal functions of executive government is, and there is great confusion here, and has extended in a great length to the people and has affected the whole country. I am looking forward to share views of Tongans in this area with the objective of rebuilding a better Tonga for the best interest of our people.
I must thank Kavaha'apai for touching on this important issue though many people may not fully grasp the concept, but trust that many Tongans out there, such as Mr Tapiaka who has made balanced contribution to enlightenment of the power crisis, can also share comments on this issue and so as to those of you who can help out, please do so, so that we are better equipped to elect our new representatives to parliament in the next session.
Thank you for the opportunity
Losena Vai
rose_vaimoana [at] yahoo [dot] com
