Since the 2010 constitutional review and subsequent elections in 2010 and 2014, the Kingdom of Tonga’s forays into the world of democracy have been fraught with multiple challenges. This is to be expected from a nascent democracy journeying through a transitional phase, toward a new political culture based on popular electoral choice and away from the age-old hereditary system of rule that has been at the cornerstone of Tonga’s sociopolitical power structure since 1875, when the first constitution was devised. Between June 2016 and the end of August 2017, the government of ‘Akilisi Pōhiva—the first elected commoner prime minister—went through a series of crises leading to a failed parliamentary vote of no confidence in February 2017.