Tonga

The new government of ‘Akilisi Pōhiva was tested to the limit by a number of political, economic, and policy issues after it came to power as a result of the 2014 election, the second under the amended 2010 constitution. For a reform-oriented government with minimal experience yet loaded with ambition and high expectations from the people, the stark reality of transforming and modernizing a society steeped in conservative traditional values, under the patronage of a monarch and a class of nopili (nobles), was a major challenge. Despite some of the institutional and symbolic reforms of the previous decade, some of the social issues of the previous era remained and frustrated plans for changes. One such issue was that of women’s participation in politics, which is the main focus of this review.

Although some progressive changes were made in the 2010 amended constitution, remnants of the traditional patriarchal political culture persisted. For instance, no woman was elected to Parliament in the 2010 and 2014 elections. This may appear ironic because under the cultural practice of vahu, women are traditionally accorded a unique social status within the kinship system, sometimes higher than men. (This is very similar to the Fijian practice of vasu, whereby one’s maternal link is considered special and sometimes more prestigious than one’s paternal inheritance.) However, political power has always been a male enterprise, and before July 2016, when the first woman was elected to Parliament, males made up 100 percent of elected people’s representatives and 100 percent of nobles representatives—a record that placed Tonga at the lowest rung of the parliamentary gender diversity scale in the Pacific. The election of Ms ‘Akosita Lavulavu after a by-election in July 2016 followed successes by a number of women in the local elections a couple of weeks earlier, a testimony to the intensification of campaigns by local civil society organizations, regional organizations, and international agencies for greater awareness of women’s role in politics. Nevertheless, the path to gender consciousness and empowerment in Tonga has been fraught with challenges as forces of progress and conservatism continue to clash over what is appropriate for Tongan society.

The tension between competing cultural and political discourses about gender was starkly manifested when the prime minister proudly told Parliament that his cabinet had agreed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (cedaw) on 9 March 2015 (see article by Helen Lee, this issue) and that Minister for Internal Affairs Fe‘ao Vakata, whose portfolio included women’s issues, had informed the United Nations in New York about the ratification. What was meant to be a celebrated event turned sour as a clash between supporters and opponents of cedaw erupted immediately after the announcement.

Pōhiva’s initiative was not surprising because he had been engaged in regional and international social activism as leader of the Tongan pro-democracy movement. Through this, he was actively involved in issues related to the nuclear-free Pacific, decolonization, human rights, and gender equality, among others. In many ways, these involvements further broadened his political and ideological understanding of democracy and provided an alternative policy prism from that of previous prime ministers who, except for Dr Feleti Sevele, were largely drawn from the monarchical or the nopili class.

The proposed ratification of cedaw was against the backdrop of the periodic review of the state of human rights in Tonga by the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Working Group, completed in January 2013, which was critical of the status of human rights in Tonga (UN ohchr 2013b). When quizzed about gender inequality during an ohchr meeting in Geneva, Lord Vaea, the minister for internal affairs at the time, responded by pointing out the number of women employees in public and private institutions and prosecution of perpetrators of family violence. However, a number of countries were very critical of Tonga for not ratifying cedaw (Fonua 2013). ohchr members recommended that concerted efforts be made to speed up gender equality and domestic violence laws and that ratification of cedaw should be a priority (UN ohchr 2013a). Because of...