Results for Letters

Many of your readers will, I know, share the sorrow and regret at the news of the passing of Emeritus Professor Ronald Gordon Crocombe on Friday, 19 June 2009 in Auckland en-route to Rarotonga from Nuku'alofa. He will be remembered most of all by the thousands of people whose lives he touched through his teaching and writing on the Pacific and through the person he was. -Morgan and Eileen Tuimaleali'ifano

A huge and a standing ovation is here now extended to Sione Posesi Bloomfield for his achievement as a Harvard Graduate. Posesi's (name best known in high school) achievement means a lot of things. - Lucia

Perpetrators of women abuse are to be held accountable for their own actions. This is not a Tongan societal problem. In old Tonga, the brothers or uncles of the abused women would descend on women abusers and beat the crap out of them, and may have even killed them in the process. But in a modern "democratic" society, we provide professional help, and then prosecute them under the law of the country as a deterrence mechanism. Unfortunately, we may have to see some of the guilty murderers hung before Tongan abusive men get the message. -Sione A. Mokofisi

I must say I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the King's speech at the opening of parliament. I used to feel a mounting anxiety as 2010 drew closer and closer for the political reforms, and we had only just begun to see real changes to how things are run (e.g. great access to information with the new ministry web sites). -Josephine Latu

I am a Tongan now living in Australia but originally from Vava'u. After 23 years I returned to Vava'u with my wife on a cruise ship and was totally dismayed with what I saw. - Sione Tupou

By chance I see it reported in the media this week that Tonga Power will spend 16 million dollars replacing rotten and leaning power poles in a network upgrading programme commencing from the "city". From where I sit, we will have spent these millions only to find that we will remain vulnerable to falling branches as well as hurricane borne damage and still wedded to non-renewable imported and expensive diesel, the price of which is expected to return to stratospheric levels once the world takes the crunch out of credit. In short, not a great deal better. -Sefita Hao'uli

FROM OUR ARCHIVES: I am raising attention to the ranking of the winners of inter college sports in Tonga - a more real analysis of the individual schools performance will be more sensible and respectable if you consider the schools that have boys or girls only.- Siosaia Mila

I strongly believe that the current system of government is the best for Tonga. All Tonga has to do is improving minor things here and there. Major changes to the current structure of government would bring disastrous consequences that the people of Tonga would regret and hope that they were not born to this earth. A new system would be disastrous to the nature of our religion and culture which are the corner-stone of peace and harmony in Tonga. - Siosaia Fatani

I find it amazing, how the Tongan public in general are not fully informed of the actuality of what the temo's are asking for. Any form of government suggested for Tonga that has a cabinet picked from within the legislative assembly concentrates tremendous power in the hands of a few and paths the way for a dictatorship in Tonga. The current checks and balances that do currently exist between government bodies will deteriorate until they no longer exist. This means we are moving in the opposite direction of where we actually want to arrive at. Numerous articles on Matangitonga Online and letters to the editor have clearly pointed these obvious things out. For your reading pleasure and for the sake of being more informed please readers check them out. - Daniel K. Fale