The final session of the Tonga Legislative Assembly under its current composition has been unofficially set for early April, but this date has yet to be confirmed.

Yesterday neither the Speaker of the House nor anyone in the office of the Legislative Assembly, the Chairman of the Whole House Committee, Noble Lasike or government could confirm when the House would reconvene for its final session.

When the House broke up for its Christmas Holidays on December 18 last year, the Prime Minister announced that, possibly, the House may resume in February 2010, but they would wait for a direction from the king before they informed the House on when to reconvene; but since then there has been no official announcement of when parliament will reconvene.

The House was not officially closed last year and the usual ceremony of school children lining the streets, brass bands marching through the streest of Nuku'alofa, and the king delivering his message from the throne was not done.

Instead, it was a quiet, tired and can't-wait to go home sort of a closure, when the House was closed before 5 am, on 18 December, after it laboured through the night to pass the final report of the Constitutional and Electoral Commission.

C&E Commission

The amended report of the Constitutional and Electoral Commission that the Tongan Parliament voted on and passed that night set out the new system of government and the composition of parliament that Tonga will have following the November election.

The coming final session under the current composition of the Tonga Legislative Assembly is expected to be a busy and a highly-charged session because of the amount of work that they have to get through, within eight months left before the November election.

At a glance there are a number of complex issues, legislation, the Commissions' report, Civil Servants' Reform, the economy and the national budget for 2010-11 that the House has to deal with before parliament is closed this year.

Noble Tu'iha'angana, the Ha'apai No. 2 Nobles' Representative who has been the Acting Speaker of the House whenever the Speaker is away overseas, but recently was appointed as the Governor of Ha'apai, told Matangi Tonga on February 9 that he had not been informed of any date for the house to resume, but he reckoned they might resume either on the last week of March or early April.

"To my knowledge work is still being done to drafting the relevant bills in relation to the reform to be submitted to the House when it resumes," he said.

The Chairman of the Whole House Committee, Noble Lasike also confirmed that he was still waiting on the Speaker to announce a date for the House to reconvene.