Participants at Tonga's National Development Summit. 20 March 2025 Photo: Facebook / PM Press
A strategic planning meeting in Tonga last week tossed up "some very good" ideas for the country's way forward.
That's the assessment of our Tonga correspondent Kalafi Moala after the four-day summit dubbed, 'A Resilient Tonga through Transformative Action: Safeguarding Our Heritage'.
It was the first such meeting in Tonga in ten years.
RNZ Pacific spoke with Kalafi Moala about the event.
(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Kalafi Moala: A positive thing about it was the fact we had four days where there was discussion about a number of national issues. It was important, and people from the civil society, NGOs, media, were given a chance to ask questions and make comments.
It was a phase of all that going on: things from the delivery of service by government services, to what is lacking, good governance, all of that stuff, and chairing that was the prime minister and a number of his ministers.
They were listening to all of the things that was happening. There were panel sessions as well as key people that were addressing the summit. It was mixed in the sense that there were people that were sharing things that should never have been shared in there. In other words, some were bringing their complaints and their allegations into it, but they were given a chance to air their ideas and their thoughts.
I went in there as a media person with some critical thinking, just thinking, 'wow, this is a major campaign for this year's election'. But I think overall, there was something good that came out of it. It was the first opportunity that I have seen in many years where people were given a chance to talk, to give an input, and the leaders in government were listening.
Don Wiseman: Well, it's all very well to to list the issues. The thing is, whether the government's listening to the extent where it will ensure that something's done about at least some of these things.
KM: That's correct. It was a talkfest; you think those things have been talked about before in various areas, but is going to be action on it. The other thing that I thought was significant, is that because the men have held this summit early enough in their administration, it means that if there were any complaints they came up concerning the lack of service or good governance, or whatever it was, it pointed to the government before them, and it pointed to the guys in the governments before that.
In other words, excuse them because they have hardly been there a month or two to carry out their governance. So, they appeared to sit there in the middle, quite securely, listening, and making some promises that some action was going to be taken.
DW: Are there any specific things that you can expect to change over the next period of this? I guess it's five or is it 10 years?
KM: No, there is nothing really, I think the 10 year period is try to copy off what other governments, mostly Western governments, do in terms of strategic, long-term planning.
I think in Tonga, they should have had the plan, three or four-year plans according to governments, because a government can come in and just change the plan.
So, having a 10 year plan does not obligate any government that comes into power to carry that out. I think the 10-year thing is maybe a good idea for somebody else, but I do not think it works in Tonga.
DW: In terms of any idea of any commitments that this government might make in view of what it's learnt.
KM: Well, I will give you an example. In the area of education, things like the previous government served lunches and fed breakfast for kids primary school kids. This government comes in and says, 'you know, we are going to do away with that. Let the kids eat at home'. And there is another thing in education - the previous government decided to no longer have a Form 5 (Year 11). Remember the old days where there was a Form 5 school certificate, and they felt that that was no longer relevant, because a kid goes to Form 6 (Year 12) and sits their final exam for high school, and some go on to Form 7 (Year 13) to prepare for university and so on. This government comes in and says, 'No, we are going to go back and have the Form 5. Those are the kind of things that were talked about and changes that was going to be done.
I think one key thing that came up, for example, was one of the private owner from the private sector of a boat that traveled inter-island. She came in and said, 'Well, here is a domestic wharf. It was built by the Japanese government [for] millions of dollars. And they build a huge, nice building there, with the purpose of when the local ships come in, that people, if it is raining, they are offloaded, they go and wait in that building, and then they wait to board the ship, or they just come off and wait to be picked up'. She says that has not been used for that. It is a party building [for] the government cocktail parties, or [for] somebody that hires it for a party. That is what the building is used for.
She says, 'when her boats come in and her people are floated? And wait outside the building, rain or sunshine, that's what happens'. So she was sharing passionately that kind of thing, saying, there is a lot of government services and, of course, the Japanese ambassador was sitting there listening to all this.
This lady was saying, 'our ship can do all the services between the islands, and yet the government goes out and get the Japanese to give them a ship, and this ship has not been working as well as their own private ship'. So, she was saying that if tthe government is serious about building the private sector, that they need to be serious about allowing the private sector to thrive and helping them to thrive.
Those are the kind of things that we were discussing. It went on for hours of sitting there without a break, just listening. As I said earlier, some very good things. Good to allow the people to air their ideas and some of the things that they have experienced.
There are also other things that we were just a waste of time to talk about.
