Te Kaharoa (E-Journal)
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She’ll wake up one of these days and find she’s turned into a Tongan: Agricultural Trade in the Kingdom of Tonga
Get PDFIn November of 2012, the Government of Tonga announced it had put $1 million Tongan pa’anga into setting up a fund for exporting taro, tapioca, watermelon, and yam targeted for sale on the New Zealand market. It took three months for this public notice to reach independent media, getting published by local news outlets in February the following year. Tongan farmers in villages and districts made no rush to grab the state’s money. It was in fact a loan that had to be repaid and was not intended for them. The middle men, meaning export businesses that bought produce from farmers to sell overseas were the benefactors. The development logic unfolded: If the middle man borrowed from the government to pay the farmer for his fruit and vegetables, he could trade these commodities with the New Zealand importer, thus, making money to pay back the loan as well as earning a profit.
The selling point was overseas trade. Exports could resuscitate the broken farming industry gagging for air in the broke Kingdom of Tonga. In reality, it did not look to happen how the Tongan state imagined their plan would take off. What was difficult about trading taro, tapioca, watermelon, and yam to New Zealand? These were crops that had established niche markets as tropical produce on the New Zealand market. Inside this small island developing state would the real impediment please stand up
Deep Sea Tension: The Kingdom of Tonga and Deep Sea Minerals
Get PDFThe Kingdom of Tonga was quick off the mark sponsoring deep sea mining companies for exploration licenses to the International Seabed Authority. On the 11-15 March 2013 a regional workshop on deep sea minerals facilitated by the Secretariat for the Pacific Community was held in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. Fifteen Pacific Island states attended. It was focused on state law and regulations, and enforcing compliances for safe mining and liability for seabed damage on the mining companies. Tonga’s bill reading for a deep sea minerals act was scheduled for parliament in August 2013, but in the meantime, the state permitted companies to explore without the legislative framework. In contrast to Melanesian states, the Kingdom of Tonga and deep sea minerals had not awoken an organised anti-mining movement from civil society and the general public. Why was that? And did this mean that Tonga’s experiences in a frontier commercial industry might travel a different course of development
Rethinking development in Tonga: Dialogues with Sefita Hao'uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka
Get PDFAcknowledging the work of the late Tongan professors, Futa Helu and Epeli Hau’ofa, this is the first in a series of four articles. Teena Brown Pulu revisits Helu’s criticism of development in Tonga by framing interview conversations with Sefita Hao’uli, Kalafi Moala and Melino Maka in a Hau’ofa-styled narrative that draws on satire and tongue-in-cheek prodding as a form of criticism. This is Tongan storytelling with a critical edge which will leave the reader much clearer about the convoluted circumstances and unpredictable politics driving development and democracy in the Kingdom of Tonga. 
What Reform? Reform Stories in the Kingdom of Tonga
Get PDFWhat is the likelihood that the Kingdom of Tonga will go to a general election in 2014 and the same pool of leaders, middle-aged and older men, will get voted back to parliament? For the small island developing state of Tonga that has a population of 104,509 thousand, the Legislative Assembly is elected every four years. Comprising of seventeen people’s representatives voted in by constituencies of registered voters on the general roll, and nine nobles’ representatives voted in by the landed gentry of thirty three estate holders, historically, parliament is overpoweringly men. Tongan society’s patriarchal structure and the widespread practice of Christianity as the state religion, has led to the prevalence of male political leaders being accepted as symbolic of culture.
What outside forces dismantle cultural constraints in an island Kingdom? Reform is said to be at work, stirred by Tonga’s 2010 shift to a democratised state. Parliamentary representatives from the people now outnumber the nobility. So who are the reformers? Is there resistance against free market trade because farmers and fishermen have less access to business? And how do New Zealand’s economic reform policies effect change for this small island nation
Forget China: No Shark Trade in Tonga. Yeah Right
Get PDFIn the South Pacific winter of 2013, Michael Brassington reported from Tonga that “China is now the South Pacific’s most valued VIP.” The Australian journalist was interviewing Pesi Fonua, longstanding Tongan publisher who commented: “They are definitely calling the shots. Whatever they want they can negotiate or take it.” Referring to China, he ranked this regional power as a twenty first century precursor for South Seas debt, diplomacy, and indebtedness.
By Fonua’s description China was the debt stress killer. In 2014, Tonga would start repaying Chinese soft loans worth 40% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on buildings, wharfs, bridges, roads. Ordinary people in this small island developing state were worried the government might default on loan payments. Then what would happen? Would China own Tonga?
What have Pakeha New Zealanders’ perceptions of Pacific Islanders got to do with any of this? Reconfiguring South Pacific relations with China as a contending power sparked off anxiety for the United States, Australian, and New Zealand governments. The question was how did political unease shape strategies to control the region? For Tonga’s national affliction of debt distress, did New Zealand’s regional engagement consider how an age old attitude towards Pacific Islanders weighed down this country’s excess baggage carried over from the 19th and 20th centuries, nudging them closer to China
Fish Tales: Local fishing in the Kingdom of Tonga
Get PDFIn the small island developing state of Tonga, an archipelago of 176 coral atolls scattered across 664,853 square kilometres of the South Pacific Ocean, power and resourcing differentials dictate which people are permitted to be commercial fishermen and what groups do the subsistence kind, customary fishing. A handful of Native Tongans engage in commercial exporting. The tuna industry is dominated by foreign vessels, by foreign countries, that can afford the state fishing license and the operation costs.
The Government of Tonga has confined coastal communities to customary fishing as the sustainable development model, a solution beset with tension. There is resource scarcity of inshore fishing stock. When local fishermen are denied access to deep sea commercial fishing their chances at exporting and making profit are limited, tempting some to poach undersized stock and pressure the government to remove conservation sanctions on species at risk of depletion. What options for livelihood from the sea do coastal communities have? Related to this, what tensions emerge between the Tongan state and coastal communities wanting to be included in the commercial fishing industry
Report went to court: Tonga's Parliamentary report on the Nuku'alofa Reconstruction
Get PDFChief Justice Michael Dishington Scott signed a court order in the Supreme Court of Tonga on December the 4th 2012, signifying structural reform in the South Pacific Kingdom. Whether the Kingdom of Tonga was ready or not, clued-up on what a judicial review was or not, the legal process for initiating one to get a judge to review parliamentary procedure was underway.
Dishington Scott’s Supreme Court order issued by the Nuku’alofa Registry “ordered that the application for leave to apply for Judicial Review is to be heard inter parties on 23 January, 2013 at 09:00 am in Court” (Supreme Court of Tonga, 2012). The application was made by Tonga’s former Prime Minister, Feleti Sevele, and a former Minister for Transport in his cabinet, Paul Karalus. The other party, meaning the people defending themselves against the application, were six men. They were named on the court order as “Samuela ‘Akilisi Pohiva, Lord Lasike now known as Hikule’o Havea, Lord Tu’i’afitu, Dr Sitiveni Halapua, Pohiva Tu’i’onetoa, and Posesi Bloomfield” (Supreme Court of Tonga, 2012). These men were contributors to the Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee: The Nuku’alofa Development Council/Corporation and the Reconstruction of Nuku’alofa Central Business District, dated 5 June 2012 (Parliamentary Select Committee, 2012). And it was this very report of 181 pages, which had brought about Sevele and Karalus’ joint application to the Supreme Court for a judicial review. Put simply, Sevele and Karalus wanted the report quashed.
What compelled the Prime Minister of Tonga Lord Tu’ivakano to call for a parliamentary select committee headed by the opposition leader and deputy to write this report? What did it allege to prompt court action from Sevele and Karalus? If there was a judicial review of the parliamentary system governing how and why the report was carried out, then what constitutional principles might come under the court’s examination? At the 2010 general election, this small island developing state was applauded by New Zealand, Australia, and the United States of America for moving to a more democratic system of parliament and government. In 2013, what did the report that went to court indicate about political climate change and how key actors in the new system measured up
Modern Colonialism: Dialogues with Sefita Hao'uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka
Get PDFFor this second article in a series of four stimulated by conversations about present day Tonga, Sefita Hao’uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka discuss whether there is a Tongan frame or explanation for development. And what about concepts and practices of self-determination? How can sovereignty and self-determination be realised as a national development plan when aid donors have such a tight grip over Tonga, they shape reality in the present and prospects for the future? Linking the discussants’ ideas with the work of the late Tongan professors Futa Helu and Epeli Hau’ofa, Teena Brown Pulu examines why Tongans in the homeland state are socialised by a zealous nationalism that does not question, whose development history is this
The job of thinking people: Dialogues with Sefita Hao'uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka
Get PDFHoward Zinn wrote “it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners” (Zinn, 2003). Democracy by Zinn’s view operates beyond state nationalism and a capitalist economy. Represented in people movements, it is the grassroots activism, protests, and boycotts of the people from below that gives democracy meaning. This third essay of four prompted by dialogues with Sefita Hao’uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka explores the political climate in which people movements are transmitted and spread in present day Tonga. If it is “the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners” then which side is the executioner? (Zinn, 2010). Considering the Nuku’alofa riot of November 16th 2006 muddied pro-democracy believability, how have people movements regrouped and recovered? Social activism in this age of political reform conveys what exactly about development? And how do people movements influence Tongan critics, the thinking people, to write social criticism and political commentary
Maketu’s Execution and the Extension of British Sovereignty in New Zealand
Get PDFThe execution of a minor chief in 1842 in Auckland Prison for the crime of murder would normally be of little significance in the evolution of a nation’s statehood, unless it triggered some form or rebellion or even revolution. The history of colonial rule in the British Empire in the nineteenth century contains many examples of murderers receiving capital punishment for their crime. However, the constitutional significance of the Governor’s determination to execute the criminal was of substantial, principally because it signified the Crown’s willingness – at this relatively early stage in Crown Colony Government in New Zealand – to extend its jurisdiction so that British law would apply to Maori communities. Too often, it has been taken for granted that the Treaty of Waitangi asserted (initially in principle and gradually in practice) British sovereignty over Maori as well as Europeans in the country. However, what the Maketu example illustrates is that the limits of British sovereignty in New Zealand prior to 1842 were confined exclusively to the non-Maori population, as had been the expectation of the Colonial Office in the two years leading up to the conclusion of the Treaty