From the House by Pesi Fonua

Tonga's parliament last week appeared to be rehearsing how to prepare, present, and to process a Vote of No Confidence in a Prime Minister and his Cabinet.

The script is based on an amendment to the 2010 Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Assembly that has been presented by the Standing Committee on Privileges.

In its current Rules of Procedure, the Tonga Legislative Assembly does not have a written procedure on how to deal with a Vote of No Confidence.

There has been a previous failed attempt to remove a Prime Minister.

The first Vote of No Confidence to be served on a Tongan Prime Minister and his Cabinet was on 28 June 2012 - but it failed to remove the Prime Minister at the time, Lord Tu’ivakano, who is now the Speaker of the House.

In 2012 the leader of the so-called 'Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands', 'Akilisi Pohiva, who is now the Prime Minister, led the charge to remove Lord Tu'ivakano and his government.

Tonga’s reformed political system, introduced in 2010, is not a party system. A difficulty is that while the Constitution was amended setting out a procedure on how to table a Vote of No Confidence into the Tongan Parliament, it was not written into the Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Assembly.

This meant that the parliamentary processing of the 2012 Vote of No Confidence was tedious and costly.

The intention now is to speed up the process of removing a Prime Minister.

Unhappy

The Standing Committee on Privileges has amended the rules and presented its report to the Whole House Committee to debate the wording of the amendments for the House to pass or reject.

But instead, members wanted to express why they were so unhappy with the Prime Minister Hon. 'Akilisi Pohiva and the debate became a rehearsal for removing him.

From the outset of the debate, routinely every day last week from October 17-20, members pointed out how the Prime Minister had failed to play his role as the leader of the country. They called him "incompetent", "undemocratic" and "dictatorial".

“Too many things have gone wrong in the country,” Lord Tu'ilakepa told the House on Monday morning, October 17.

Mangroves destruction

He said that the Prime Minister had back-stepped his decision not to destroy the mangroves at Manamo'ui to extend the Golf Course to 18-holes for the 2019 Pacific Games. Instead, he had been wasting taxpayers money to destroy mangroves to build a park at Patangata.

The site used to be public rubbish dump in a low-lying swampy area of exposed reef at the eastern end of the Nuku'alofa waterfront. Several highly controversial issues surround the Park Project. An extensive and important archaeological site is located in the swamp that is being destroyed by mangroves removal and land allocations for houses.

Asbestos

On the site of the proposed park, in the middle of the former rubbish dump, is a mound containing buried asbestos material removed from the roof of the old Vaiola Hospital.

“Why not fix the houses of the people at Patangata. The park is better than the houses around the park,” said Lord Tu'ilakepa.

Sabbath

Lord Tu'ilakepa went on to criticise the government's policy to stop bakeries from baking and selling bread on Sunday, because under Tongan law, Sunday should be "kept Holy".

He argued that there is a double standard in the decision to stop bakeries from baking and selling bread on Sundays, while there were restaurants open in town and people can go out to islands resorts and do whatever they want to do on Sundays.

Assurance

The Prime Minister assured the House that no government money was going to the construction of the Patangata Park “excepting contributions from two Boards [Public Enterprises]. They like the idea. Even the Private Sector. The idea is for people to go there and rest,” Hon. 'Akilisi Pohiva said.

With regards to the intention to build an 18-holes golf course for the 2019 Pacific Games, the Prime Minister confirmed that they had decided to just upgrade the existing 9-holes course, and he said it should be fine for the Games.

“You are involved in too much, give sports to a new minister!” said Lord Tu'ilakepa.

The Prime Minister who is also Tonga’s Minister of Education, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently took over the management of Tonga’s preparations to host the 2019 Pacific Games.

To rub salt in a wound, Lord Vaea told the House that the Prime Minister had appointed him as "the leader of Tonga’s Opposition Party".

“He told the New Zealand Prime Minister and the leader of the New Zealand Opposition Party,” said Lord Vaea, who had accompanied the Prime Minister on his first official visit to New Zealand recently.

“These two should be punished,” said Lord Tu'i'afitu, the Deputy Speaker of House. “They went and did something wrong. They lied to New Zealand. Out of protocol, unconstitutional. It was all wrong.”

Debate on report

The report of the Standing Committee on Privileges was introduced into the Whole House Committee but debate did not really get started until the following day, 18 October.

The day started off on a very low note, with the Prime Minister outlining how sports in Tonga in general was in a disastrous situation.

He said that during the recent tour of New Zealand by the Tonga National Netball team, they lost all their games against New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti and North Harbour.

In Rugby League, Tonga lost all of its three games to qualify for the World Cup. It was beaten by Samoa 40-14.

The 'Ikale Tahi also lost all of its games during the Pacific Cup, and was beaten by Fiji 18-23.

“Shame! Shame on our Minister of Foreign Affairs [PM],” said Lord Tu'i'afitu. “This is our main source of foreign revenue,” referring to remittances from Tongan sports men and women who are playing overseas.

The Prime Minister said, “My point is that we are bigger than the Cook Islands, but they beat us in Netball (67-42). These results are a shame.

“How are we going to fix this? We should restore the talents of our children.”

Heavily in debt

Hon. Pohiva then went on to explain that the Tonga Amateur Sports Association and the National Olympic Committee TASANOC are heavily in debt.

“What is going to be the result in 2019? It is our fault. We should go back and rearrange these sports committees. If not, there will be no good results in 2019. A lot of people don’t want the sports here because we are half-hearted,” said the Prime Minister. 

Lord Tu'ilakepa responded, “If you can’t do the job, resign! It is a shameful response by a leader of a country.”

Lord Nuku reminded the Prime Minister that Parliament had passed legislation in 2013 on how Tonga was going to host the 2019 Pacific Games, and there was an Organising Committee and a Facility Committee. He called on the Prime Minister to allow the Legislation to work.

“We passed the law,” said the Prime Minister, “but our agreement with Papua New Guinea has changed. The responsibilities of the Organising Committee has been lowered to the Facility Committee. [The Organising Committee is headed by Lord Sevele, and the Facility Committee by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister ordered Lord Sevele to resign, but a court ruling overturned his decision].

“What happened to [your agreement with] Papua New Guinea?” asked Lord Nuku.

“The PNG government will approve their annual budget in November,” said the Prime Minister.

Lord Nuku said that the Prime Minister was talking on the radio about the possibility of moving the Games to Samoa or Fiji.

“Don’t think about stopping the games,” pleaded Lord Nuku. “Change your style…It is a bad style. You are breaking the law…to say you alone decide what to do,” he said.

“I never said that…my decision is what will be done,” said the Prime Minister. “It was bad. We need good leadership. That was why I raised the issue. I was not happy about what was in the news,” he said referring to radio news, on October 19.

Rules of Procedure

Despite the fact that the House was facing the important task of writing new Rules of Procedure for a Vote of No Confidence, the House kept talking about other issues.

The debate kept diverting to Tonga's commitment to host the 2019 Pacific Games and sports in general.

On Thursday, October 20 the final day before the House broke for the weekend, the Prime Minister expressed his concern over sports that year after year “nothing happened"

“You are the [Tonga Rugby Union] President. All you are doing is mourning. You have the power,” Lord Tu'ilakepa reminded the Prime Minister.

“It is easy for you to tell us the problems, but how are you going to solve the problems?” the Speaker and former Prime Minister Lord Tu'ivakano asked Hon. Pohiva.

The former Minister of Internal Affairs, responsible for sports, expressed his hope “for the Pacific Games to go forward."

Tinful of crabs

The Minister of Finance, Hon. 'Aisake Eke, told the House, “There is no problem with the sports…We have the money.

"We are the problem, we are like a Kapa Kuka [a tinful of crabs, scratching on the tin and making a lot of noise].”

Signatures required

The two clauses in the amended Rules of Procedure of the House that sparked a few loud exchanges were Clauses 84c and 65.

Clause 84c, proposed that the signatures of seven members were required for a Vote of No Confidence to be tabled into the House.

Initially, Hon. Penisimani Fifita, the new Minister of Internal Affairs, proposed 12 signatories, but later reduced it to 10 signatories.

Samiu Vaipulu, Chairman of the Committee, proposed to increase the signatories from 7 to 9.

When the Chairman called for votes, 11 voted for 10 signatories; and 8 voted for 9 signatories.

Vote of Speaker

The next controversial clause was Clause 65, which allows the Speaker to step down so that he can vote in a Vote of No Confidence. Under the existing Clause, he remains as the Speaker and is allowed to vote only if there is a draw, when he can make a casting vote.

The argument from the Committee was that if the Speaker was one of the 10 who voted to table the Vote of No Confidence, it was not fair that he could not cast a vote on whether the Prime Minister should step down or not.

The Chairman of the Whole House Committee, Hon. Light of Day Taka, called for votes on Clause 65 and there was a draw 10-10.

The Chairman gave a casting vote against the amendment, so the clause was rejected.

Debate on the report to amend the Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Assembly will continue today, 24 October.