Voice of silence in paradise

By THERESA GARNER

NUKU'ALOFA - From a small sky-blue weatherboard building in Nuku'alofa, a conservatively suited journalist with a camera slips out the door to take a photo of a new fruit and vegetable market that has been set up in Tonga's capital.

Inside, the newspaper manager, in an office which features little more than a pile of paper, a 12-pack of toilet paper, and a desk with a startlingly modern looking Apple Mac, fires off an email.

The phones are quiet. This is what some believe to be the nerve centre of press freedom and democracy, the offices of Taimi o Tonga.

Tonga is making headlines. There are calls for it to be banned from the Commonwealth, for its vital $5.6 million in New Zealand aid to be withdrawn. There is high level diplomatic intervention from New Zealand.

All over a new bill introduced to Parliament which would radically alter the constitution, ending judicial review and effectively quashing freedom of the press.

But the taxi driver is under the impression I have flown to Tonga to write about the upcoming royal wedding.

The drama lifting the tempo into the naturally sleepy island mood stems not from outrage over the actions over the near-absolute monarch, King Taufa'ahua Tupou IV and his handpicked Cabinet, but from a series of celebrations which include the King's 85th birthday and his granddaughter's wedding, with its voluminous marquee to seat 2000 invited guests, and, it is rumoured, a 12m (40ft) limousine flown in specially for the occasion.

Depending on who you speak to in Tonga, the local indifference to the Government's move is down to people not thinking it will make a squat of difference to their everyday lives, or because they have been kept in the dark by a Government-sponsored media which has moved to stifle the only independent newspaper.

In the Taimi office, there is naturally no doubt.

Manager Filo'Akau'ola was jailed in a maximum security prison along with the paper's editor, Kalafi Moala, and a pro-democracy politician, Akilisi Pohiva, in 1996, before being freed by the Supreme Court. Too distracted to even speak in full sentences, he says "the bill, the paper, financially", in response to what is wrong.

Three months of being banned from selling papers is taking its toll on the paper, and it is suffering financially. As'Akau'ola discusses the latest assault on press freedom, he alternates between a defeated slump and a "to the barricades" stance.

The 36-year-old says he is on a mission. "It is the Taimi against the Government.

"I walk down the street and people ask me every day 'where is our paper'."

The new bill was front page news in this week's Taimi, but no one in Tonga saw it.'Akau'ola says they didn't bother flying the paper to Tonga, knowing it would be held up at customs.

Was the paper a mouthpiece for the democratic movement? "What is so bad about democracy?" he says. "It is the best system in the world."

"We love our king, and we want to keep our nation royal. It's just the people who run the Government are not elected by the people."

He cautions me that, like his journalists, I will find it impossible to get any comment from the Government. The opposite turns out to be true. When I get back to my hotel there is a police car waiting for me.

A fax I sent the night before seeking an interview has prompted the Hon Clive Edwards, Minister of Police, into wanting to talk to me.

He is well aware of the bill and the controversy it has caused.

He seats his imposing form into a boardroom chair at the Police Training College and launches straight into justifying the Government's stance.

"From what I gather from the overseas news media the amendment to clause 7 of the constitution and some other constitutional amendments have been claimed to be repressive, and taking away the rights of freedom of free speech and the press."

I try not to take personally his expression of distaste whenever he mouths the words "overseas media".

NZ Foreign Minister Phil Goff had reacted to "misinterpretation of the situation here", he said.

"You only interfere where people are being repressed. The media here is not repressed and we cannot understand why the Taimi newspaper is printing so much false information and misleading the people of this country to cause hatred and possible disturbance."

He took particular issue with the "nonsense" of New Zealand's progressive MP Matt Robson, who has said the moves would make Tonga more of a police state "than ever".

"I don't think Matt knows what he is talking about. I'm disappointed that he makes pontificating statements about this country ... claiming that everyone is corrupt, even claiming that the Tongasat or power board are state resources being owned by the royal family. He doesn't know a damn about how those things were done."

In Tongasat, he is referring to the control by the king's daughter Princess Pilolevu Tuita of a company which has a 50-year contract to lease Tonga's geostationary orbital satellite slots over Asia. Power company, Shoreline, run by her brother, Crown Prince Tupouto'a, has the exclusive right to provide power to the state electricity company.

Edwards' account suggests the Government was lucky to get any money at all from these valuable assets, considering the infrastructure came not from the taxpayer but from the business-minded Royal children. "It was not them taking money, it was a matter of them putting money in."

"The Government is the beneficiary of somebody else's brainwave."

When I quiz him more on the need for a democratic system he says kindly: "I understand the strong feeling. You have been brought up in a democratic system. You can't see any other system."

"Democracy," he states, is not always "pure and simple". "Sometimes democratic countries are too much in a rush to impose their systems on people.

"Look at Africa, look at Solomons. We don't want to live in an unstable climate, an unstable country where you are not protected and you don't know where you are.

"Look at Fiji ... Nothing but disturbance and problems. Look at Hitler ... "

Despite linking democracy with the threat of a takeover by a fascist dictator, Edwards surprisingly does not rule out the prospect for Tonga.

However, it will not be in my lifetime, he assures me. [I am 29].

"Until such time as you've got a respectable and acceptable alternative from some of these political factions in Tonga, they are not going to make any impact. They are going to continue making a lot of international noises, but it's not going to work anywhere locally."

In this happy belief, he says it is fine for Phil Goff to send a message through his man in Nuku'alofa. "We have no problem with that. But if he intends to interfere in how we run this country, it is not going to be welcome."

The amendment that removed laws and ordinances passed by the King from judicial review was no different than the separation of the judiciary from the legislature in any other country, he said.

"If the courts interfere in the internal proceedings of Parliament in NZ and the judge tries to assume jurisdiction it would be committing contempt."

In an office down the road was NZ High Commissioner Warwick Hawker, who was faced with the task of delivering the NZ Government's concerns. He suggested to me the day before that he did not get the impression that revolution was imminent.

He said reaction to the bill could be a little premature. It could be debated any time in the next month, but was likely to be later than sooner, and he was of the view that the season of church conferences could be a good chance for leaders to consult the community.

Commenting on the Taimi, he said that there were people who felt it had gone too far, but that the bill was "hitting a pin with a sledgehammer".

Some people blame Taimi for the harsh Government stance now under way.

Accused by some as being a political party disguised as a newspaper, Taimi has won disdain in some quarters with its "I'm lying down in the middle of the road, run me over" red flags to the Government.

An irony in the losing of press freedom could be that Tongans are left with no sense of loss.

The democracy campaigners believe otherwise.

Campaigner Simote Vea found out about the bill from listening to Radio Australia.

If there was no Taimi O Tonga there would be a very biased view of what is happening. Sitting around the kava bowl with some "ordinary Tongan villagers" they were shocked and angry when he passed out a copy of the bill.

"It is too early to say the people will not be outraged. About 1 per cent of Tongans know about this yet."

He pressed the international community to stay focused on Tonga, and applauded the idea of removing the country from the Commonwealth.

"When Tonga is equated to Nigeria, I think it's about time for the international community to assist the Government to reform."

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Princess Salote Lupepeu'u Tuita's, the granddaughter of the King, will marry Matai'i'ulua Fusitu'a, the son of a Cabinet minister. Change could well be a long way off.