Tongo vs Fiji- Which Country Will Become Democratic First?

An interesting article from The Economist on Tonga and Fiji;

"THE Pacific archipelagos of Fiji and Tonga have for centuries been connected by trade and kinship: Tongan princes sailed westwards in outrigger canoes to seek fortune in Fiji, while Fijians provided spouses for the Tongan nobility. These days, the two island states are in the throes of domestic crises, but they are tackling them in strikingly different ways.

In Fiji, the new prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the military commander who seized power in a coup in December, is resisting international pressure to return to democracy speedily. He says he needs time to clean up the corruption left by the previous, elected, government. By contrast in neighbouring Tonga, last November's riots in the capital, Nuku'alofa, have not been allowed to derail plans for democratisation.

Commodore Bainimarama has sacked all the previous parliamentarians and has purged top civil servants. Dismissals and suspensions have often taken place on the flimsiest of evidence. Soldiers, installed in a new complaints centre, listen to public grievances and send out vigilante missions to tackle everything from village quarrels to landlord-tenant difficulties and domestic disputes.

Scores of alleged bootleggers, drug pushers and prostitutes have been rounded up, while opponents of the new order have been beaten up at the army's Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Suva. Yet the emphasis on rounding up the small fry looks increasingly like a deliberate distraction from the army's failure to prove its coup-justifying claim of widespread corruption in the ousted government.

Tonga is moving in the opposite direction. After a century of royal rule, in which the monarchy defended its power with claims that government by the masses would prove “corrupt”, political leaders are coming around to the view that more democracy is the best way to check mismanagement and improve Tongans' living standards.

Until recently, the cabinet was composed entirely of the king's nominees, and only nine popularly elected representatives sat in the 30-member legislative assembly, alongside nine noble representatives and 12 members appointed by the king. The royal government squandered money on misguided aviation and shipping ventures, and the bulk of the $56m it secured from selling passports was frittered away in poor investments by a visiting American rogue rather quaintly appointed by the king as his “court jester”. That the royal family also benefited from big private-sector investments—including ownership of the mobile-phone industry, cable television, a brewery and the electricity utility—increased public disquiet.

The monarchy responded with a pragmatic reform programme that began before the accession of King George Tupou V to the throne in September 2006. Elected members of parliament were allowed to enter the cabinet, and for the first time in a century a “commoner”, Fred Sevele, became prime minister.

Still, reformists are impatient and have taken to the streets. A rally outside parliament in November exploded into riots that devastated Nuku'alofa. Some 80% of the capital's business district was destroyed and six rioters died. Yet the king promised to press ahead with reforms.

Although both Fiji and Tonga have experienced severe instability in recent months, the latter seems to have a better idea of how to weather it. In the view of Peter Larmour, a specialist on the Pacific islands at the Australian National University in Canberra, corruption is better tackled by reducing institutional opportunities for it, rather than by dictatorial moral crusades from a strong-arm regime that sets itself up as detective, judge and juror."

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