Parliament struggles to maintain quorum [1]
Monday, August 12, 2019 - 22:31. Updated on Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - 06:49.
From the House by Pesi Fonua
Finding a quorum to enable the Tongan Parliament to proceed with its 2019 session has been an issue since it was scheduled to resume on 5 August.
It did not have a quorum on 5 August so it was deferred to today, Monday 12 August.
There was a slight delay, but then it finally found a quorum, being half of the current 27 members.
After their lunch break at 2pm, the House againg did not have the quorum so the session was delayed for another 15 minutes.
Apart from the House struggling to have a quorum, a working program had not been firmly scheduled.
The Speaker outlined that the House is scheduled to break again on 29 August and then again in September.
The Deputy PM Semisi Sika, who is the Acting Prime Minister, said that instead of having another break in September, they should have it now, giving them opportunity to prepare their annual reports.
Amid trying to decide whether to have another break, the Vava’u People’s Representative Samiu Vaipulu, interspersed that they should petition for the King to dismantle Parliament, because they were just wasting their time.
He pointed out that Cabinet had enforced new taxes, bypassing the process of the House. Cabinet had enforced taxes on the sale of phone cards and the sales of tapaka Tonga, (Tongan tobacco) bypassing the authority of the House to pass just legislation.
There were a few vociferous exchanges over the issue, but in the end it was accepted that Cabinet can enforce a Regulation, if parliament is not in session, but once it is in session, the Regulation must be tabled into Parliament to complete the process and be legally enforced.
Lord Nuku pointed out that government was currently collecting tax illegally because some of these regulations had not been tabled into Parliament.
With regards to the proposal by Samiu Vaipulu for the House to propose to His Majesty the King to dismantle Parliament, the Speaker pointed out he could not find a way for the House to present such a request to the King.
He said that the claim that government was collecting tax illegally had to be proven in the court of law.
Retro reports
There was then a consensus for the House to deliberate over the annual reports of the Ministry of Education. These were Annual Reports from 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The Minister for Education, Hon. Penisimani Fifita, reminded the House that he became the Minister of Education in 2017. In another words there had been no annual report from the Ministry of Education since 2014.
The Speaker declared the House closed for the day, and tomorrow they would resume with the Annual report of the Minister of Police.