Transcript
MALAKAI KOLOAMATANGI: These are the proposals, for example, to take away the power of the constitutional power of the King to assent or not to bills before they become law, so to effectively take the King out of the law-making process, also to bypass the King in the appointment of the Attorney General and Commissioner of Police - executive appointments that are made by the King in the counsel. The proposal was to try and bypass that and also the King also has a power that he must assent to the assigning or ratification of treaties. His approval was not sought for the CEDAW, for example. So apart from the, sort of, more political actions or political reasons why the speaker offered his advice to the King to dissolve parliament, I think these constitutional issues are probably much more weighty and more important than the sort of political reasons.
JAMIE TAHANA: Of course because they go directly to the role of the nobility and the role of the King don't they?
MK: That's right. So effectively the King has actually given up and surrendered some of his executive powers to the executive. For example, the appointment and dismissal of the prime minister is now, of course, with parliament and the appointment and dismissal of government ministers are also now with the Prime Minister, rather than the King. So he's given up, he's surrendered some of these powers.
JT: This would suggest, though, that he's not prepared to cede any more?
MK: It seems like these powers he wants to keep for himself. I mean, there are reasons why. If we put it this way, there are more ceremonial powers in the sense that they shouldn't affect day-to-day politics which was one of the issues before the political reform process began and the monarch was seen as having too much power in the day-to-day running of the government of the country. And so the withdrawal from day-to-day politics was preferred, so the monarch agreed to surrender his powers that would see him being active in day-to-day politics. So there's also, I think, a misunderstanding from possibly the point of view of the government in that they probably misunderstand the idea of the separation of powers and power sharing. In democracy, power should not reside in just one arm of the government. Some of these powers ought to be kept and retained by the monarch in case there is an emergency, for example. In case the government of the day acts unconstitutionally. From the perspective of the Speaker of Parliament, possibly he saw that role of the monarch to be person of last resort was being threatened by the proposals from government.
JT: And that has been a criticism of Mr Pohiva's government in the past, hasn't it? That he is trying to remove this check and balance, to circumvent the process.
MK: That's right. It's ironic because it seems like the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Where in the past all the powers were with the monarch, now the pendulum has sort of swung to the peoples' side where the government has wanted all the powers to themselves.
JT: Will this reignite that whole constitutional debate again? Because you seem to have two quite entrenched camps and something like this where that clash has happened would surely reignite positions again.
MK: Well yeah I think it will. I think once people understand what has happened and the reasons why these things took place, I think there will be a debate and discussion around constitutional powers and the limits as to which the reform process will go up. I think the government may have been acting too swiftly to take away the King's powers from him at this stage. I don't think Tonga is ready for that. I think the evolution of democracy in Tonga has still some way to go and I think the government may have been pushing too hard and too swiftly for the King to surrender his remaining powers.
