Island Kingdom Strikes Back: the Story of an Independent Island Newspaper--Taimi O Tonga.

• Author: Campbell, Ian
• Position: Book Review

Author: Kalafi Moala

Published by: Pacmedia Publications, Auckland, 2002, 303pp, $39.95.

Tonga features regularly in the overseas news media, and most of the publicity is bad, depicting the kingdom as a feudal, absolutist monarchy where political parties or trade unions are illegal, and where nine parliamentarians are elected by the kingdom's 33 nobles, and another nine by the 100,000 commoners. The allegation that there is no private property in land, which is all held by the king and the nobles, join the other half truths to suggest that the people live in a condition akin to serfdom. The academic pedant objects to all these statements, and might also reflect that the abuses of power and the extreme violations of civil rights and break down of public order that typify many other Pacific Island states are not found in similar degree in Tonga.

Nevertheless, Kalafi Moala has a profoundly disturbing story to tell of corruption and civil rights abuses. As a bright young student, Moala went overseas in his teens, and came back to Tonga 20 years later more idealistic than when he left to start a newspaper. It was a disillusioning homecoming to a society that he describes as inveterately dishonest, free with other people's property, scarcely capable of telling the truth and lacking a sense of fairness. But the bulk of the story is about victimisation by officials, who whether or not they are personally corrupt seem to have elastic and self-serving ideas about the limits and nature of their authority.

Moala established his newspaper in 1989. The venture passed through various vicissitudes, mainly financial. Some hard lessons were learnt, including one about the conflict between the aspiration to tell the truth and the alienation of business and friends through doing so. The heart of the story, however, is Moala's conflict with the Tongan government. His foreign acculturation combined with his shock at the moral deficiencies of Tongan private and public life, together with his professional desire to turn events into news, drew him inevitably to the critics of the Tongan government, of whom the most prominent was and remains the crusading parliamentarian, 'Akilisi Pohiva. They had complimentary needs, and a sympathy of outlook. Pohiva's campaigns for honest and open government frequently landed him in court, and Moala's association with him attracted resentment in official circles. Within a few years, Moala moved his operation to New...