Moving out, and moving onwards [1]
Monday, April 27, 1998 - 09:00. Updated on Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - 09:14.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol.13, no. 1, April 1998.
Editor's comment by Pesi Fonua
This year, the retiring of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Crown Prince Tupouto‘a, the resignation of the Minister of Lands, Noble Fakafanua, and the rumour of an application for retirement by the Prime Minister, Baron Vaea, has taken Tonga by surprise.
But for Ministers to request retirement from Cabinet is definitely a move in the right direction, because it is a submission by our top decision makers that they have done enough and they want to go home.
Until recently, the general feeling among Tongans has been that if you are appointed by the King as one of his Ministers, you are there until you either drop dead, or until His Majesty tells you to resign and go home.
Those days are gone. Crown Prince Tupouto‘a has reaffirmed the trend that one should go into the civil service with a mission to complete a certain task during a set period of time. Once it is done, you should move on and make room for younger and more capable people to take over.
If this approach becomes the trend, imagine a Cabinet with Ministers who have definite missions to be completed over a set period of time. It would revolutionize the way things are done in Tongan government.
The investigation by the police of the goings-on at the Ministry of Lands, which resulted in the leveling of thirteen criminal charges, against the Minister, and led eventually to his resignation, is the first high level criminal prosecution in the kingdom.
The Minister of Police, Hon. Clive Edwards has kept his word. Following his appointment by the King as the Minister of Police two years ago, he promised that anyone who breaks the law of the land would be dealt with by the police. He later stressed that the police would take action once they had enough evidence that a crime had been committed. We are witnessing the beginning of this kind of operation, which in the long run will help to bring strength and stability and perhaps a more genuine respect for Tonga’s form of government.