By Pesi Fonua

'Inoke Hu'akau is one of 28 candidates who are contesting the three Tongatapu People's Representatives seats in Tonga's April 24 Parliamentary election.

'Inoke has lived in Australia for a number of years, while maintaining his links with Tonga. He is one of Tonga's most active political thinkers, and before the end of last year he presented to King George Tupou V two volumes of what he referred to as his "suggestions for political change for Tonga."

Of all the 71 candidates for next month's general election 'Inoke appears to be the only one expressing strong views against the proposed reform program that was passed by parliament before it closed last year, that politicians are working to introduce in 2010.

Pesi Fonua: In your TV program you stressed that if the proposed political reform program is allowed to take place it will lead to more problems and trouble. What did you mean?

'Inoke Hu'akau: I don't think it is difficult to see. What I did, I measured the proposed political reform against the democratic principles, which are required in any modern day government structure, principles such as the fair distribution of power, accountability and transparency, and it fails in every step. It does not fulfil one single requirement of a democratically-structured government.

So that is my concern. A long time ago, about ten years ago, the main agenda for political reform was fair distribution, accountability and transparency, but when it comes to a stage when parliament and the government are seriously looking at implementing political changes, some of these objectives have disappeared and what you are left with is a straight-forward grapple for power.

But it appears that the proposed new composition of parliament, with more People's Representatives, is very appealing to people who like the idea that there will be more People's Representatives in the House. The people will have the majority and the power?

Yes, and that is the bargaining chip, you tell the people that they are electing more People's Representatives, and that you will be controlling parliament, but no one stops to think: what exactly is the people's role? When you look at this exchange the only thing that is promised is that you come back every four years and put your ballot in, apart from that there is nothing, totally nothing. Because when you have this concentration of power in the hands of the same people there won't be any accountability, there won't be any transparency and you look at it, you can't separate these powers. If you ask the people to have a look at it and see what they can get out of it, they won't find anything. They will realise in the end that they are surrendering more rights to this centralised system than they get out of it, and when you have this high concentration of power, nothing is impossible, they can change anything they want. As soon as these people get in, it will be very hard to get them out. Even though you may say that there will be an election every three or four years.

The proposed composition of the House, 17, 9 and 4. Your area of concern is that the representatives will not be accountable to their electors. The four-yearly election will be the deciding factor.

The misleading thing is that you elect people [representatives] for a role, but then they elect themselves for a totally different role. Say, to be a Minister. The requirement to be a Cabinet Minister is far more complex and far more demanding than the requirement to be a member of parliament. Because the constitutional requirements for a member of parliament are that you can read, write and you are not intellectually handicapped, and you don't have punishable court case for more than two years.

When you get into parliament, out of the 26 - your elected members [consist of] 17 People's Representatives and nine Nobles Representatives. Then a PM is elected, then the PM will choose 14 ministers out of remaining 25, so of the People's Representatives it is not an impossible assumption to say that every single one of them wants to be a minister.

Say, you take 14 ministers out of the 16 People's Representatives then it will leave you with only two People's Representatives.

But what these people are saying is that the people will not lose any of their representation in parliament!

The 14 Cabinet Ministers have a totally different role, their task is different, they are working according to a budget, they are working according to a set agenda and you compare that with the two people who are left behind as the representatives of the people. Their role is to be People's Representatives. There is no sense of similarity between the two roles.

What do you think is the answer? Because right now the quest is for a more democratic form of government with a credible opposition in the House, but the proposed political reform to be introduced in 2010 does not offer either of those.

The proposed reform will collapse the system, because they are trying to do the reform on the basis of this system, but I have no doubt that this type of reform will make the system totally useless, in a political sense, because the long term goal for some of these that once they are in the government, they can do whatever they want.

We have never had anyone committed to the simplest way, and that is to try and work together with the nobles, to control the government. That is the simplest thing to do, and it is to knock some sense into the nobles that they are there and the People's Representatives are there to check the government. That is the easiest way to deal with the issue, but they have got into a state where the People's Representatives alienate the Nobles Representatives in the House, and there is no sense now of getting their support. Instead, they go for the total control of government as a solution, by increasing their number in the House. They are not going for the parliament any more. They just use the parliament to get into government. That will destroy the system, when you have the parliament, the Cabinet and the Privy Council as one entity. This is a prerequisite for dictatorship.

If you look at how a dictatorship arises out of any system, this is how they did it. This is how it is done, to lump the political power together and then you rise on top of it, whoever rises on top of it controls the whole thing, and that is how dictatorships are made in modern time.

There is no doubt that we will end up with the same thing because part of this reform is to take the king out. If you take the king out and you delegate the authority to the Prime Minister who will sit on top of this lump of power. What do you get? You are going to end up with only one guy at the top.

These so-called parties. Will it be possible for one of these parties to have a majority representation in the House?

No. They can't. There is a misconception about political parties. Political parties were created as a demand to put political goods into the market.

The only kind of people that you will get to buy those goods are party people. It is a market place for politics. Whoever will come up with the most consumable image will win.

Now we have three parties, how do you think they will fit in with the proposed reform when party is not mentioned in the proposed reform program?

There is no place there for parties. And parties, there's danger if we go unprepared and uneducated into this concept of parties. Parties only work if people rise above it, the small groups they have now, like Churches, and towns. You have to rise above to look at the political goods that are out there, disregard your churches, we have to rise above all that in a neutral way. But now we have not done that we have not done any educating at all about what is the right kind of mentality we want for a political party system. If we are confused now with this proposed composition, the thought of introducing a party system without any preparation at all, without any political education at all it will be very complicated and confusing.

Right now people are preparing for 2010 for this proposed reform to be put in place, but already there is impatience and frustration for the reform to take place?

We are not even ready for 2050. We have not done anything, not a single thing. Because if I succeeds, in forcing this issue back to a referendum, which I believe 99%, that people will take because they don't understand what has been proposed. My approach to this election is to clarify a lot of issues to the people so that they can make up their mind, because the politics of free choice, which is what we a trying to incite people with, is based on understanding what it is.

The credibility of my proposal is based on what people know now. What they know now about the system, what I am proposing is no different from that. Because I set the agenda only on two things, first let's complete the structure of the system that we have now by putting the local government in place. Right now we have only district officers and town officers, we should have worked on introducing a local government 14 or 20 years ago to meet the needs of the society that we have instead of leaving it dormant, for over hundred years now.

So what are you proposing? What are you looking at, a city council type structure?

Yes, I would like to have a corporate body with business aspects, welfare sides of the operation within the district. If we have seven districts, and every village hooks up to it, because we have no choice but to put this in place, because every village is already thinking of forming a council. They already have village police.

In addition we have to take the Privy Council away from the control of the Cabinet. We have to make the Privy Council an independent body. And my proposal for Cabinet to pick only five members to go into the Privy Council, including the Minister of Finance and the PM, and three others. The public can directly elect five representatives into the Privy Council, one from each district. The nobles can also elect three nobles to the Privy Council, plus the two governors, so we will have 15 members in the Privy Council. That is much more effective body, because immediately we will have a fair distribution of power. We have a Cabinet, which controls the government and we have the House of Representatives. Now, no one dominates the authority of these bodies.

Are you talking about the proposed reform or the existing system?

The proposed reform has nothing to do with it. I am talking about the current system. We are only adjusting a system that the people know, and are familiar with, we already have the electoral system for this. We can have senior people in the Privy Council, such as Futa Helu and others.

There will be a different election for the Privy Council.

With the local government, it will create competition at the village level. Say between Kolofo'ou and Kolomotu'a, when the local people get involved in their development it will work better.

There is no huge education process to go though. The corporate body is a good political training ground for people to be more democratic. It is the foundation of our economic reform, because if you ask all these district officers, who has seen the five-year-plan; no one has. But this is where the plan should be.

You are trying to stop a reform program, that although fragmented but it is on the roll. What is your chance of stopping it?

It is an educational challenge. What started it is that politicians get into the idea of marketing political goods without understand the concept of it, so they market the wrong goods, and label them with hatred. They did not know that the people who did not really want to sweat are the first people to be attracted.

The buzz word is democracy. Taking into account the constitution of 1875. What is your view of the status of democracy in Tonga?

There is a big confusion, people confuse Freedom with Democracy. They think that Democracy equals Freedom.

At first it looks like a class struggle, but with the development of technology and economics it became a safety net. For those who fail then democracy seems to be a machine that weaves a safety net for them, and it keeps changing.

The most modern view on Democracy has not come to Tonga, may be it will in the next 20 years. The people who have the wealth look at it as a control mechanism. Their definition of democracy is a system that makes the people who don't have wealth believe they are in control, while they don't control anything. In any country in the world the wealth is in the hands of a very few. The way they control the people, is that they use the market to control the people. Whether it is economic or political.

The concern of learned men is that a majority of the people do not know what is going on, so every democratic system now has a safety mechanism for that issue. The welfare system was invented for that purpose. There is no such thing that the political system is controlled by the people.

The worst thing is that we don't understand our constitution well enough.