Editor,

YOUR report on April 27th on the political reform appear to reinforce the idea that if we superimpose on Tonga a New Zealand style political boundaries with a so called 10% margin, it would necessarily mean equal representation than adopting option 2. The New Zealand style proposal by Government would be good if we lived in New Zealand, but we have a demographic that is unique to our way of life, which has been true for centuries.

Our culture and traditions has strong ties to the "Land" and our history is defined by this. We can not simply say - let's mix things up in order to come up with equal number of constituents. Do you realize what would happen if we mix up part of Vava'u and Ha'apai? The sentiments of the people to the land of their origin is too strong and would meet strong resentments. The votes of the nobles on this bill was a good indication, even themselves know that we can't simply mix up people of Vava'u and Ha'apai like that or worse yet, mix up with Tongatapu.

For starters, we all know that people of Vava'u hold strong sentiments to their place of origin; they want to be known as the people from the "Lolo" and people of Ha'apai hold equally strong sentiments they are from the "Fo'i 'One'one". These sentiments are equally strong for the people of the Niuas and 'Eua. There is deep sense of pride in this.

Even after years of economic migration from "motu" to Tongatapau, we still have people there who refused to be identified with Tongatapu, they still call themselves by their ancestral origin. And even second and third generations living in Tongatapu still refer to themselves by the land of their ancestral origin.

When there is strong and unique identity to the land of this kind, it is prudent to adopt option 2, where political boundaries would be divided into the island groups that voters identify themselves with, instead of the Government move to adopt a fourth New Zealand style boundaries. This 4th option would continue to perpetuate the long held tradition that Tongatapu dominates the political process. This was voiced by Vava'u PR 'Etuate Lavulavu in the house debate that if part of Vava'u were mixed with part of Tongatapu, the votes would be dominated by the Tongatapu constituents because there would be more voters living in the Tongatapu part of that political boundary.

The New Zealand style option would continue to under represent the political voice of those people from "motu". Suppose we bring the Vahenga Lulunga to let's say Vahenga Kolomotu'a as a political boundary, this would give rise to a political disparity because a candidate need only focus on Kolomotu'a to win the seat since there are more people in Kolomotu'a alone than all of the Lulunga Group. It would follow necessarily that the people of Kolomotu'a will control the political process for that boundary. This would also lead to how that PR will vote in the house and if he/she is nominated to be Minister, you would see more foreign aide, public projects and economic developments in general being funneled to Kolomotu'a because that Minister knows that if he wants to be re-elected he'd better pay attention to the needs of Kolomotu'a.

This political boundary issue we are now dealing with was a subject of heated debate in the formation of the United States. Those founding fathers could not come up with an equitable resolution to a single house political boundary so they created a two house political structure - the House of Representative and House of Senate. Each house of congress was designed to meet the unique needs of the people of each state and even within the state they created political boundaries to be represented, hence the House of Representative.

Our political reform under option 2 and selection of a Boundary Commission to oversee the political boundaries moving forward is a political design unique to Tonga. As I understand it, the commission would be an independent body to monitor the politicall boundaries and make necessary changes as they see fit for the time.

All we can do is add insights to the political debate, let's not add fear and uncertanties. I am sure we all pray for a peaceful political transformation in November. May the guiding lights of heaven be upon our leaders.

Regards,

Thomas M. (Soni) Uata

thomasuata [at] gmail [dot] com ( thomasuata [at] gmail [dot] com)