China a "non-judgemental" friend Princess tells new Pacific-China Friendship conference
Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 18:15
An inaugural Pacific-China Friendship Association conference was opened by HRH Princess Pilolevu, who welcomed the new regional alliance which she hoped would strengthen co-operation in the region and form a framework for Pacific nations to interact in a single forum. Participants from six countries met on October 26 at the Loumaile Lodge in Nuku'alofa.
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A true friend might also
A true friend might also forgive some debt lol.
I hope the Government will cut away superfluous red tape and bureaucracy, where it takes forever for something to happen. Imagine a captain seeing an iceberg ahead and orders the vessel to turn, and it takes forever to move and ends up hitting the iceberg anyways. Government needs a plan to reduce the deficit and also to be effective and efficient enough to put those plans into action.
But before that we need a strong and effective Anti-corruption Commission put into place, because many of those extra steps are because of protection against corrupt activities.
Once that is done, we need to swerve the vessel away from aid dependence. Aid is ok but because it tends to make countries dependent on it is why it's bad as well. I'm worried too many of us Tongans might end up thinking that Tonga cannot at all develop without foreign aid, that's the dependency mindset we need to stop. Not trying to put down the generosity of donors but for ourselves we need to learn how to stand on our own 2 feet, let's remember many of these donors would not want to be aid dependent themselves, so in the long run we need to look at foreign investment instead of aid. God bless