From the House, by Pesi Fonua.

Tonga's parliament today decided to defer their deliberation on a Vote of No Confidence in the Prime Minister for one month from today.

Yesterday, August 22, the Speaker Lord Fakafanua told the House that because the House did not have a procedure on how to process a motion for a vote of no confidence, he had decided how the House should process the motion that was before the House.

Since Tuesday the members who supported the motion have been giving their reply to the Prime Minister's response to the motion.

The Speaker had stop the clerk from reading some clauses of the reply because they were either defamatory of people who were not in the House, or concerning issues that are in committees or that government was currently working on.

These confidential clauses, however, remained in the hard copies that were distributed to the House.

The Speaker did not announce what he had decided to do with the motion, until he was challenged by Lord Nuku, on where he got the authority to amend the wrap-up speech of the supporters of the Motion Lord Nuku said that this changed the meaning of their reply. He suggested for members to take back their wrap-up speech, and amend it before resubmitting it to the House.

Lord Nuku was very concerned that with the Speaker amending the speech, it would change the meaning of what the members were trying to say.

The Speaker however reaffirmed his right under the Rules of Procedure of the House to decide how the House should process the motion.

The Clerk then continued to read the report, and at the end of each part of the reply, the floor was opened for comments.

Yesterday's reading included Parts 3, 5, 8 and 11.

The claims of illegal work by government in not stopping the construction of Vuna Wharf, taking legal against Tongasat, pressuring the Tonga Broadcasting Commission to be biased against supporters of the Motion, and that Financial Reports for 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 had not been presented to the House.

Some of the supporting arguments that were presented dated back to issues in the 1990s. Lord Nuku and Lord Tu'ilakepa queried the relevancy of these arguments to the motion because they were before the Lord Tu'ivakano was elected Prime Minister. They also questioned the credibility of some of the supporting documents, because some of the letters did not have any letterheads and some had no signatures.

The argument from the supporters of the motion was that the government of Lord Tu'ivakano did not take action to stop the illegal activities that were still going on.

Before the end of the day Lord Tu'ilakepa thanked the members for raising some of the issues, which for him were like reminding Ministers of their responsibilities but not a part of the motion. The comment appeared to have rung a bell, and there was an uproar in the House, before the Speaker announced the closure of the House for the day.