Results for Pesi Fonua

As we are getting closer to Tonga's 2005 Parliamentary General Election on March 17 the idea of political change is still the popular campaign issue, and it is clearer now that we are looking at three different proposals, or models of government. - Editor's Comment by Pesi Fonua.

The growth in the use of mobile telephones and the Internet in Tonga since 2002, after government allowed a second telephone company, Tonfön to enter the market and compete with the government's own telephone company, the Tonga Communications Corporation, has been unparalleled in the region.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES December 6, 2004. In this age of globalisation and Free Trade we are told we need to label our precious products. Therefore we should make sure that our "Made in Tonga" stamp sticks as Tongan youth move overseas to pursue their careers. Tonga has to handle its citizenship issue carefully. After years of being relaxed with the dual citizenship issue, why is government now disowning Tongans who have made us proud in the world sporting arena? - Editor's Comment by Pesi Fonua.

A new professional organisation of Tongan news media was officially registered in Nuku‘alofa as an incorporated society on 11 November 2003. From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 18, no. 3, December 2003.

Although public reaction is heating up to a Tonga government move to control Freedom of Speech by changing Clause 7 of the island kingdom's 127 year old Constitution, few people yet realise the enormous and serious implications of what that change might mean. Objections so far have been based on the glaring illegality of the change, but there is more to it than that. By Pesi Fonua.

The Tongan way of life is not based in the right of the individual but that of the extended family, the church and the whole country. We have a collective peoples value, and that is where our strength is, and we do not want to give that up, says ‘Alisi Taumoepeau, Tonga’s Solicitor General. From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 18, no. 2, August 2003.

When ordinary people reach the age of 64 years they are expected to retire and stop working, but if the King of Tonga, HM King Taufa‘ahau Tupou IV, at 83 years, reduces his work load and looks very tired at the end of an ordinary working day, some people seem to think that something is terribly wrong. The New Zealand media in late October ran a news story that the King’s health was deteriorating, and claimed that there was a battle for power within the Tongan Royal family. Interview by Pesi Fonua, Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol. 16, no. 3, December 2001.

While Tonga’s economy is under pressure from the Reserve Bank, because of a steep dive in the Foreign Reserve; and while the Private Sector and the government are preoccupied with far-sighted new projects in telecommunications, power generation and the marketing of Tongan produce overseas—projects that could secure a place for Tonga in the global economy of the 21st century—Parliament, somehow, has been looking inwards, and preoccupying itself with its internal affairs. From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 15, no. 3, September 2000.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES 2000. "It seems to me that the whole approach to life in the Pacific Islands forever sails very closely to what we refer to as ethnicity, which is the way anthropologists and paternalistic aid donors forgive our basic racism....Another example nearer home was the racially motivated and cowardly violence, which young jobless, and dare I say it, hopeless Tongans, visited on our Chinese owned shops last year; an act of such barbarity that it shamed and disgusted me and every other Tongan of my generation...." Crown Prince Tupouto‘a comments in an interview with Pesi Fonua. From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 15, no. 2, June 2000.