Ready to bite the hand that feeds

By WARREN GAMBLE

A cloud passes over the public face of the Tongan Government. For more than an hour Clive Edwards has been measured, sometimes jovial about the latest events in the Pacific Island kingdom.

The reputed hardman of the regime - he denies that his post as Minister of Police ever included being the kingdom's hangman - seems more like an uncle.

But his mood suddenly darkens as we discuss New Zealand criticism of the Tongan Government.

The 69-year-old shifts his considerable frame forward on the couch in the living room of the Auckland home he still owns, a home he visited this week for the first birthday of his granddaughter.

He stabs the air with his finger for emphasis. "You know, I've been talking to some of my colleagues and other Tongans," he says slowly.

"It was said New Zealand was trying to flex its muscles because of our special relationship, to threaten Tonga in the running of its own affairs.

"Have the rights of anybody been suppressed? Has anybody been killed? Has anybody been denied anything they have been entitled to?"

Edwards assumes the answer to each is no. There is no argument about killings, but the other questions are in fact the heart of the debate.

But now the former Auckland lawyer, former Auckland city councillor and unsuccessful National candidate is in full flow, and there is no stopping him. He rails about "ignorant" people comparing the Tongan regime to Indonesia in East Timor, about publicity-seekers accusing the Tongan Government of corruption.

He builds to a crescendo, a lawyerly cadence of words pronounced with increasing firmness.

"Unfortunately it's having a big impact on the present [Tongan] leaders. I think there is a feeling of resentment and I personally - and my trouble is I speak out too much - I will go back and ask at the next meeting in the cabinet and Privy Council and seek the consent of my colleagues to cut out New Zealand aid."

He subsides back into the couch. This, as the minister knows, is a big call.

New Zealand provides aid, mainly through training and education, totalling $5.6 million a year.

The country can hardly afford to turn any donors away.

In fact its recent history is littered with eagerly embraced but ultimately unfortunate moneymaking deals such as the American court jester who invested $48 million of the kingdom's reserves in a failed insurance scheme.

Nevertheless, "We are sick of being accused of corruption, absolutely sick of it."

Edwards later says he is disillusioned with the country he came to as a boy to sit university entrance at Auckland Grammar School.

He does not even know if he can support the All Blacks in the World Cup.

It's hard to know whether he is serious. His links here are strong.

Three of his four adult children live in Auckland (the other is a lawyer in Tonga), he has the house and many friends and contacts from 30 years of law practice and community service.

Against that are the sources of his displeasure: Progressive Coalition MP Matt Robson who has labelled the Tongan regime corrupt and greedy, the "overseas media", the confidential report from former New Zealand High Commissioner Brian Smythe issued this week, and the New Zealand Government's objection to the kingdom's proposed constitutional changes.

This is the heart of the matter.

The proposed changes introduced by Tongan King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV this month will end the right of the kingdom's judiciary to review laws passed by the King and his appointed Privy Council. They will also place wide-ranging conditions on free speech. Both moves are seen as a direct response to decisions from the kingdom's Chief Justice, Gordon Ward, a Briton, overturning a series of bans on the New Zealand-published paper Taimi'o Tonga. Edwards argues that the changes only reinforce the separation between the judiciary and the legislature.

He believes the court decisions interfere with the cabinet's right to make policy, and New Zealand's objections interfere with Tonga's self-determination.

Opponents argue that the court decisions are legitimately based on the 1875 constitution, which underpins the kingdom's laws. The fact that the King and his hand-picked cabinet, appointed for life, are now altering that constitution underlines how far they are prepared to go to keep the newspaper out, they say.

Edwards denies a personal grudge against the paper or its outspoken publisher, Kalafi Moala. But he has continually butted heads with the newspaper since the King appointed him Police Minister in 1996.

Edwards had returned to Tonga in 1993 leaving his Auckland practice behind. He says he "did not see any light at the end of the tunnel except work" in New Zealand.

The following year he won a precedent-setting court case to become a Tongan citizen because, although he was born in the kingdom, his father Charles was the son of British traders.

Edwards had sought election as an independent in the Tongan Parliament in 1996. Instead the King appointed him Police Minister.

Within months Edwards, who had preached reform of the political system before the election, was not only in a minister-for-life job but also seen as a hardline defender of the regime.

A Taimi'o Tonga journalist and a parliamentary candidate who wrote a letter to the paper accusing Edwards of trying to frighten pro-democracy campaigners were convicted on an unusual charge of inciting the Minister of Police to anger. The convictions were later overturned.

Edwards says he has heard all the labels attached to him, from tyrant and dictator to rich and hanging on to power.

He says he has worked hard for his properties, but is not rich. He lists among his assets 86 head of cattle, 3ha of crops, and a large family home leased to the peace corps.

He and his wife, Dona, live mainly in "moderate" quarters in a ministerial house at the police compound, or with their lawyer son at his coastal home.

As for power, Edwards says there are some cultural misunderstandings. He says no matter how much he encourages people visiting him to sit in chairs, many take a traditional seat on the floor.

He tells them he cannot sit with them because he would have trouble getting up.

His wife, he says indicating his rounded stomach, has put him on a diet. When he returned to the kingdom he says, a touch ruefully, he was unlikely to attend the three-day-old wedding feast of the King's granddaughter.

He says he has not partaken of the caviar and champagne that Smythe, in his report, said he enjoyed as guest of the royal family.

"You don't get caviar and champagne in the palace, so where else was he getting it?"

Edwards, the former city councillor, says democracy can work in Tonga, but not yet. When?

Not for at least another generation: "Not until it [the current system] runs out and you have things that should not be happening in a society. Then the time arrives for people to question it."

To the suggestion that people are questioning it now, he says the pro-democracy movement is small. New Zealand, he says, should not interfere.

How much longer will he carry on? "I don't really know. Maybe sooner than later, it could be any time."