No dramatic signal from Tongans in poll

Transcript

Most results from the Tonga election are in and while long time democracy campaigner Akilisi Pohiva has easily retained his seat the Democracy Party has failed to dominate as it thought it would.

It has failed to win three of the ten seats on Tongatapu and support in the outer islands is mixed.

Publisher and broadcaster, Kalafi Moala, has been working with the Democrats and told Don Wiseman they will be disappointed.

KALAFI MOALA: For example they had expected to take all the ten seats from the main island of Tongatapu, they were also expected to take one or two seats from Vava'u but the way it is now, an official declaration says they have lost three of the seats on Tongatapu and there is a probability, though we don't have the official announcement, there is a probability they will not win any seats from Vava'u.  

DON WISEMAN:  So, what went wrong.  

KM:  I think there were two things most probably, there were perceptions that the party had split and there were a number of those that were members of the party who had run basically against the party.  The interesting thing though, is that almost all the incumbents, who were part of the party, they all failed to win any seats either in Tongatapu, like the guy who was one of their supporters out of 'Eua did not win a seat.  But others have come in and I just got word that they have already put into action a plan B which is what they are really wanting to do is to form a government of the people, that is a government made up of Peoples Representatives, so they have already talked to the winners [other] Tongatapu seats, two of them have pledged they are going to come in with them, they have talked to two of the winners from Vava'u and they have made their pledge.  So if they also win Ha'apai, we don't have any official announcements from Ha'apai, the two seats there, but if they get those two seats it means they will have a majority to form a government.

DW:  There's a lot of speculation in that of course, isn't there.  The thing is the nobles have voted back in eight of the nine who were there before and we know that they are this very tight unit and the most likely thing is that again, the nobility is going to dominate the government.

KM:  Yes, that is very likely to happen also. It is something that we hope against hope that that will not happen because it will be just a repeat of same thing that we have experienced over the last four years.  This is why there was a push for change, obviously there are a lot of people that feel the status quo and the way things have been happening - they would rather stick with that.  But we are going to have to leave it for the next week or so to see what kind of horse trading is going to be happening after all the official countdown has taken place and I think at the end of another week, we will really see who is going to be holding the power here for the next four years.