From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 18, no. 2, August 2003.

During the past few years Tonga has become a Lali of the New Zealand media, and of some fringe New Zealand politicians. A Lali is a drum that is beaten hard with a stick, and in these people’s hands it has meant a thrashing for the Tongan Royalty and the Tongan government.

The spin, including the ridicule, insults, misinformation, and recently the leaking of an intelligence report by a former diplomat, that we have read in the New Zealand Herald and The Dominion, is shocking. In a small country and a tightly-knit community like ours the insults hurt because they are directed at what we hold reverent to our Tongan sense of identity—our King, our royalty, and our country. While this kind of miserable slop, presumably, feeds the taste of the New Zealand infantile-reader market, the questions must still be asked: why are these people doing this, are they trying to make Tongans angry?

The Tongan media and Tongan politicians are neither meddling in the internal politics of New Zealand, nor ridiculing the physical features of their Queen or their Prime Minister. Tongans are not labelling New Zealand as a racist country, and they have not called on the marginalized people of New Zealand—the Maoris and the Pacific Islanders—to stand up for their rights.

So why are the tin-can Lali-beaters trying to destabilise Tonga? Do they not realize that if they succeed in doing so, it will definitely mean destabilising this part of the world, and New Zealand as well?

One consolation to this unhappy scenario is that the traditional leaders of New Zealand, the Maori Queen; and the Governor General, the representative of the Queen of New Zealand, Queen Elizabeth II; by their presence in Tonga during the 85th birthday of King Taufa‘ahau Tupou IV, in July, have succeeded in showing us that there is some truth in the saying that, if you are with us then you are not against us.