Dear Editor

It is time your publication and others come out of the bush and state things for how they are. The royals are plundering the country taking millions and millions of dollars while they have the people distracted looking in the wrong direction. The Crown Prince continues to load debt on the government, debt it could never repay. Lavaka was fired for refusing to sign a $100 million dollar loan for the government to ...“buy back...” Shoreline that was stolen from it earlier. Princess Pilolevu makes millions of dollars a year off Tongasat. HRH makes millions of dollars a year off .to (Tonic). They both get government to sign for loans, loans where most of the money goes in their pockets. Look at the homes of the Tongasat people. The Ramanlals all have multi-million dollar homes in New Zealand. Neither HRH nor Pilolevu pay a fraction of the taxes they are legally obligated to pay. This while in your magazine HRH refers to the very people whose future he plunders as ...“squatters....”

Meanwhile mothers have their babies dying from diarrhea and other curable illness. Most of the hospitals in Tonga have little or no medicine, not even aspirin. The hospitals have to borrow oxygen from welders because they have none. Men in their thirties and forties are dropping dead. Many of these could be revived if the adequate healthcare existed. Fakafanua had his family live in New Zealand so they could get a better education and be around better healthcare. When his time came, it did not really help. Ma...’atu as a royal had the same opportunity, but when his time came, it did not really help.

One could go on for pages describing the way the "new royal" are ripping the country off. Things will not improve until they are run off. Save Tonga; lose the royals.

Diane Sandlin

DSandlin [at] hawaii [dot] rr [dot] com