From the House, by Pesi Fonua.

Tonga's parliament met yesterday, January 31, to pass a decision on a Motion for a Resolution to dismiss the auditor general for bad behavior, but the special session ran into some problems.

At the end of the first day of the special session the House could not agree on who should be dealing with the motion - the House, a Select Committee of the House, or the Standing Law Committee of the House.

The motion will effectively put the auditor general, Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa, on trial by parliament.

The fact that the Tongan Parliament is putting the auditor general on trial is complicated by the fact that the House is the judge, the prosecutor and also the plaintiff.

A difficulty is that for a trial, the auditor general should be able to call witnesses and to defend himself, but the auditor general can only do that in committees, but not in the House.

Under the Public Audit Act 2007 an auditor general is appointed by the Prime Minister in consultation with the Speaker, and for the auditor general to be removed from office, it requires a two-thirds majority vote of the Legislative Assembly.

The motion for a resolution to dismiss the auditor general was tabled into parliament by the Prime Minister, Lord Tu'ivakano and the Minister of Finance, Hon. Sunia Fili.

They claimed that the auditor general had insulted the New Zealand government when he told a TVNZ One News reporter that the New Zealand Minister for Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully was "two-faced".

They claimed that by insulting the New Zealand government the auditor general damaged the diplomatic relations between Tonga and New Zealand.

The auditor general made the comment after McCullly stated that an independent audit report found no fraud in New Zealand's financial contribution to Tonga's political reform, and that any irregularities were due to accounting errors.

The auditor auditor general's written response to the claims by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance denied that he had ever spoken to the TVNZ One News, but he admitted to have spoken to a Setita Finau and a companion. Setita was a former student of his who worked closely with the Tongan community in New Zealand. He said that he later discovered that Setita worked for "T News".

He said that his discussion with Setita was in Tongan and the question that Setita was particularly interested in was the "missing" amount of $212,196.40, and that if government was using it for something else other than the Political Reform Program, what was it?

The auditor general had stated in his response that all he knew was that the $212,196.40 was unaccounted for from over a million that was given to the Prime Minister's Office. That was his finding when he audited New Zealand and Australian financial contribution toward the political reform.

That was also the reason why he said that the finding of the Independent auditor, brought in to audit the same fund, was incomplete because he came to the same conclusion as he did, of a missing or unspent amount of $212,196.40.

He also stated in his response that he had received a letter from Australian and the New Zealand High Commissions in Tonga requesting that the remaining funds were to be returned, 55.6% to Australia and 44.4% to New Zealand.

The proceeding in the Tongan parliament continued all day today, Wednesday February 1, and by 4pm the House had not decided how to deal with the motion.