Transcript
CLIVE EDWARDS: It is rather concerning because of what has been happening with the present government in the short time that they've been in office. Now he wants more power of getting the commissioner to come under his control and appointment as well as the attorney general. The attorney general was proposed before to be part of government and he was the leading spokesman against it and he opposed it strongly because he believed that it should be a counterbalance to any action against government and the attorney general should be independent and not controlled by government.
JAMIE TAHANA: This is 'Akilisi Pohiva in the last parliament, wasn't it, opposing similar proposals.
CE: Yes, that's right. But now he's gone back on that - what he said then - and now he wants the attorney general to be appointed by the PM and cabinet. So he's turned a lot. And the result to date of their actions and the way that they're behaving is rather concerning to us outside and this sort of attitude that's surfacing now doesn't look too good at all. So for that reason, we are not in favour of having these posts or offices under the control of the prime minister and cabinet. We want the police in Tonga to be independent. We want them not to be politically controlled and we want fairness.
JT: So this is about maintaining separation of power in Tonga; creating a check and balance that the royal family, through the approvals they're making, creates?
CE: The check and balance are being attacked at the moment so there's nothing there to stop them from doing what they want to do and, frankly, we're not very happy with that, particularly with some of the calibre of the ministers and their involvement with certain actions that give us cause to fear that things are not right.
JT: It sounds like you're suggesting that the current government's pursuing, basically, absolute power.
CE: Yeah they're wanting more power. That's what they want. They want power, they want control, and they want absolute power - that's what it is. Not the democracy that they were clamouring for and that was given by the King to have a democracy in Tonga. Having given that right of democracy to Tonga they want any power that's left and all under control of the prime minister and cabinet, which is a form of dictatorship because they're trying to take the power away from the King and privy council that was running the country before and they want to take all that power and start all over again. The same, but start again to cabinet level and that's not very good.
JT: One thing though is this government's accountable to the electorate. I mean you can hardly claim they're going for a dictatorship when they could be thrown out at the next election, which is coming up.
CE: I think people are very uncertain about it. We'll be able to see how they react in the next election next year whether they condone this sort of thing that's going on or they will be against it.
JT: Roles such as the attorney general, police commissioner and such. It's not overly uncommon for them to be appointed politically in other countries around the world. What is unique about the Tongan situation that this is allowable, in your view?
CE: Well you're quite right. The commissioner of police is normally appointed from government. But in an early stage of democracy, for check and balance, I think the police and the independence of the police at this stage is very important. Now if the act of cabinet giving orders to the commissioner of police and the police to prosecute and take certain cases without evidence and the commissioner and the police in Tonga refused to do anything about what they've been told by cabinet, you can see that there would be some advantage of the protection there at the present time. In due course, when we have a mature democracy, I'm sure it can go back to the normal way of doing things, but at this stage I think it's necessary to have some check and balance in place.
