Transcript
SIAMELIE LATU: It's always good to have another party, not only one party to control the running of the government and the whole of Tonga. There should be another party to sort of really examine how this current government is running and all these things but most importantly for this political party is that the ultimate goal is for unity and peace and of course for a prosperous kingdom of Tonga. How we see it today [it] is not moving in the right direction. The People's National Party and its supporters aim, and of course first of all, we wish to recognise and reconfirm out special Tongan identity. It's maintained as God and Tonga are our inheritance that is very, very important to us. We also wish to maintain the rule of the monarchy in the Constitution forever and as Christian country we believe that Christian belief is to lead the performance of the party. We also aim at maintaining our Tongan values which I think is a bit disintegrated at this stage. As you may have probably realised, Tongan society is guided by four core values. First is mutual respect. Second is sharing, cooperating and fulfilment of mutual obligation. Thirdly is humility and generosity and last is loyalty and commitment. We recognise that there will be times of disagreement and argument but we can address this by building on our tradition of respect and reciprocity. That just does not exist these days I guess. We will seek a peaceful and harmonious transformation to create a more progressive Tonga with a higher quality of life for all Tongans.
KORO VAKA'UTA: So would you say this has come about out of dissatisfaction with the current government?
SL: I am not in a position to criticise the current government. I leave it up to the people to say something about it but the establishment of this party is to bring Tonga together because we know, as far as we are concerned now, people are confused, people are split. That is the reason for the establishment of this party.
KV: How about the timing of the launch? We know there was an election so there is going to be a while before the next election, why the launch the party now?
SL: Because there were a few parties established last year just for the purpose of the general election and after the election it disappears. So this new political party is to bring together people who do not believe the agenda of the current Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands. There have been a lot of people who have been asking me to please set up a political party and we will give you our full support. In the next three years or more, what we are doing now, we are trying to move out to the grassroots people in the community, run workshops and training with them of what democracy is all about because that is the problem today, people don't understand what democracy is all about. They think democracy is an icecream, they will eat icecream tomorrow. We need to have some kind of a dialogue people and then reach out to find out, what exactly they want.
KV: What makes your party, the National Party, different from the Democratic Party?
SL: Because we believe that democracy is not in our roots. One thing that we Tongans should always remember is that no one else knows what is best for us other than ourselves. We all talk about democracy but we do not know what it looks like. It has a different shape and a different colour for different countries.
