It’s called the Core Team, but it is the ruling board that is in control of the political party known as PTOA, founded by the late ‘Akilisi Pohiva. The Core Team consists of all the PTOA members of Parliament.
The Chairperson is Semisi Sika (TT2), Assistant Mateni Tapueluelu (TT4), Losaline Ma’asi (TT5), Semisi Fakahau (TT6), Penisimani Fifita (TT10), Mo’ale Finau (Ha’api 12), Veivosa Taka (Ha’apai 13), Saia Piukala Vava’u 14). And Siaosi Pohiva of Tongatapu 1, until he quit the Core Team last week.
Siaosi Pohiva, eldest son of ‘Akilisi Pohiva, and People’s Representative of Tongatapu 1 for almost 3 years, has declared he is no longer part of the PTOA Core Team.
He reiterated in a special meeting of about 100 people in Nuku’alofa on Thursday 29 April, that his departure is not from PTOA but from the Core Team. He no longer acknowledges the Core Teams’s leadership and relevance in advancing what he calls his late father’s vision and work.
“It is my choice to leave,” he told the meeting that was chaired by Rev. Simote Vea, and Lopeti Senituli doing the MC services. He cited serious differences between him and the Core Team, but most particularly with his brother-in-law Mateni Tapueluelu of Tongatapu 4.
Siaosi claims that Semisi Sika is the chair of the Core Team but Mateni Tapueluelu is the one controlling it. “They are in a “lockdown” for any useful action in and out of Parliament, so that almost everything I have suggested for action have been rejected outright. I also feel the people are our basis of support are being left out in the cold,” Siasi said.
“I cannot go on as part of the Core Team as we have reached a state in which I am finding myself as well as the people who support us being suffocated by the way things are at the Core Team,” he told Talanoa ‘o Tonga.
“The voice of the people of Tonga are being suppressed within the Core Team and the way it operates because of the personal aspirations, behavior, and ways of doing things by the Tongatapu 4 Representative,” – a reference to Mateni Tapueluelu.
Unconfirmed rumors circulating this week is that Saia Piukala of Vava’u 14 has also left the Core Team.
PTOA is the Tongan acronym of the Friendly Islands People’s Democratic Party (FIDPD), founded by the late ‘Akilisi Pohiva, but since his death has been split every which way especially among supporters, and especially among the huge following from Tongans overseas in USA, New Zealand, and Australia.
As one supporter groaned, “Our in-fighting does not reflect our ‘Friendly Islands’ name. Far from it!”
No single leader has been able to fit into the shoes of ‘Akilisi to be able to lead the popular movement that has been in place, in one form or another since the mid-1980s.
The formation of the Core Team in the first place, was an attempt to bring some order and cohesion into a movement without its charismatic and forceful leader of many years.
Siaosi is the eldest of ‘Akilisi’s children, and has been actively involved with his father in politics since 2014 when he returned from Fiji where he was involved in consultancy in regional education.
“I was in a situation in which I felt suffocated with the way the Core Team made decisions,” he told Talanoa ‘o Tonga. “They seem to be satisfied with doing nothing about issues that arise in Parliament, issues which we should oppose.”
Siaosi gave an example of one of the issues that disappointed him. “I felt we were disconnected with people, and so I suggested we ask each of the 17 constituencies to select two representatives that will together form the governing board of PTOA. But the Core Team would not have it. We continued to operate without accountability to the people,” he said.
He was also disturbed by the fact the Core Team was inactive in opposing issues the present Government raised, including non-participation in petitions against Government policies.
“On the last budget, we lacked the necessary debate needed, and I was the only Core Team member that abstained from voting to approve the budget. It was our highest budget ever, and also created the biggest deficit in history,” Siaosi said.
“I am accepting a higher calling to pursue the things that are important to the people of Tonga. Instead of listening to the people of Tonga, our Core Team has made decisions without the people’s consent.”
“Our actions should be determined by what people wants rather than what we want as a Core Team. People must be included… there must be accountability to the people.”
And it makes Siaosi’s departure from a group his father founded quite significant to the future of a movement and party that has defined the political landscape of Tonga in the past three decades.
There is nothing new politically that has taken place in Tonga since the death of ‘Akilisi Pohiva in 2019, with the exception of the fact that the party he founded is falling apart from lack of credible and effective leadership.
All political groups and activities in Tonga, in a weird way have revolved around the person (what he did or did not do) of ‘Akilisi Pohiva. Love or hate him, but Tongan politics could not move on despite the fact the man has been dead for over two years.
Even his son Siaosi, the most politically active in the Pohiva family is riding on the incredible charisma and “unfulfilled vision” that has been part of the Pohiva magnetic social pull of thirty years.
A reform making Tonga’s governance system more democratic came to being in 2010, but that does not seem to work well yet. A succession of three different governments with three different prime ministers have proven ineffective in carrying out the proclaimed vision of good governance.
Each government since 2010 has had its own issues and problems to deal with, let alone the national issues affecting people’s lives. And even the current government has turned out in just two years to be the most corrupt, unaccountable, and ineffective ever since 2010.
Siaosi Pohiva’s move may save PTOA, and it may save his political career, but it may also be the final dismantling factor for a party in disarray due to lack of effective leadership.
It is only six months away from the November general Parliamentary election, and that would be the deciding factor in how wise a decision this is for Siaosi, even though he sincerely claims he “wants to do what is right, and not what is just convenient.”
END.
