Corruption in Tonga was even worse than ever, pioneering publisher Kalafi Moala said yesterday.
Speaking at forum on corruption in New Zeaand and the Pacific organised by Transparency International, Moala said his news organisation, which began with the newspaper Taimi ʻO Tonga, had been exposing corruption for 30 years.
The urge to expose corruption in Tonga had driven the news through its first 10 years.
Moala told the forum that the newspaper wanted to expose “every dirty thing.”
Among the key scandals exposed by Taimi ʻO Tonga was the passport scandal in which the Tongan government made US$35 million selling Tongan passports to Hong Kong Chinese.
“Tongans are very good opportunists and that’s why they decided to cash in on the Hong Kong crisis and sell the passports,” Moala said.
“They just forgot it was illegal.”
Tonga’s Parliament held a special meeting in 1991 to legitimise the passport trade.
Moala recalled that he once met a wealthy Chinese in Tonga who showed him a map and asked him where the land was that he had bought. Moala said the land turned out to be a portion of reef that was underwater at high tide.
“Somebody had sub-divided this reef and sold it for a huge amount of money,” Moala told the forum.
The publisher, who was once jailed alongside current Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, for his activities, said that in the second decade of the paper’s existence the staff thought they would be able to move on to new topics, but corruption stories just kept coming.
However, after three decades the situation appeared to be worse.
“We thought that all we had to do was to change leaders and the system and then there would be no more corruption,” he said.
After the Democratic movement won government in 2014 Moala was asked to become Prime Minister Pohiva’s communications adviser, but left after a year.
“I left because it was a waste of time,” he told the forum.
“In that period corruption continued to spread and nobody did anything.”
“We have the most democratic government we’ve ever had and we have a population that is broken-hearted because the hoped-for changes haven’t happened,” he said.
He said the Tongan government had become involved with the Global Organisation of Parliamentarians Against Corruption.
He said it was amusing that Tonga had a Parliamentary anti-corruption committee when Parliament was where corruption was taught.
He said corruption affected Tonga at all levels and questions needed to be asked about corruption across the Pacific.
He said the theft of trillions of dollars in aid and development money around the world was criminal. It had been estimated that only $US481 billion was needed to meet all of the United Nation’s global development goals, but countries like Tonga continued to suffer because the money that could solve their problems had been stolen.
The forum was part of the a conference on journalism education in the Pacific at AUT organised by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia, the Pacific Media Centre and Media Educators Pacific.
Other speakers at the Transparency International forum included the head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, Dr Shailendra Singh and the editor of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Alex Rheeney.
The main points
- Corruption in Tonga was even worse than ever, pioneering publisher Kalafi Moala said yesterday.
- Speaking at forum on corruption in New Zealand and the Pacific organised by Transparency International, Moala said his news organisation, which began with the newspaper Taimi ʻO Tonga, had been exposing corruption for 30 years.
- “We thought that all we had to do was to change leaders and the system and then there would be no more corruption.”
- “We have the most democratic government we’ve ever had and we have a population that is broken-hearted because the hoped-for changes haven’t happened,” he said.
For more information
Transparency International (New Zealand)
