Up Front

with the Editor

The Kingdom of Tonga’s Sabbath Observance laws are a quaint leftover from another era. Today they are not really enforceable, but we can expect a number of new confrontations before the govern ment admits this to itself.

The recent swoop by Nukualofa police on people who were cooling off on three of Tongatapu’s beaches on a Sunday has again made the issue a lively one. Since it was a hot and humid day, it is not sur prising that the swimmers resented being moved on—especially those people who were picnicking on the beaches and who were ordered home just in case they attempted to go into the water when the police had gone. That sounds like an excess of authority to me. The police that day also stopped three busloads of par ents and children who were heading for the beach, and turned them back.

“We cleared the water of the swim mers and sent them off packing,” said a constable.

Tonga’s constitution says the sab bath shall be “sacred forever”. But the law which enables the police to enforce sabbath observance is the Order in Public Places Act, which says among other things: “Whoever shall do any work on the Sabbath day such as engaging in any trade or the purchase or sale of any goods or chattels, house building, boat building, gardening, fishing or con veying any thing on boat or wagon except in cases of emergency, and whoever shall discharge a firearm in the town or country or engage in any game such as cricket, football, lawn tennis, golf, bowls or similar games and dancing, lakalakas, fa’ahiula and such like pastimes, shall be liable to a fine not exceed ing five pounds or be imprisoned with hard labour for not more than three months in default of payment.”

Cabinet can suspend this section in case of an emergency. The sab bath day is defined in the act as the period from 12 midnight on any Saturday until 12 midnight on the following Sunday.

All sorts of arguments can and

have been advanced both for and against Sunday observance for Tonga.

One of its critics, Father Culling, pointed out in a letter to the Tonga Chronicle of January 29, that the founders of the law appeared to be under the impression that physical rest was the essence of Christian worship. But the essence of Christian worship, he submitted, was not rest but activity, and rest was involved insofar as it gave the Christian the freedom to perform the public com munal act of worship. “Different churches with different backgrounds have formulated their own laws to ensure this freedom for their people, and the whole matter of Sunday ob servance would be better left for them than be written into a con stitution,” said Father Culling.

Good, But I don’t believe Tonga is going to resolve the problem through debate as to whether the public should or should not be forced to rest on Sunday.

The essence is probably to be found more in the complaint of a Mr. Lancaster in the same newspaper, that somebody had stolen, killed and eaten his dog, and that although con victed the man had neither paid his fine nor gone to gaol (see “Islands Press”, p. 129), although the police were very good at hounding people off beaches.

It is inconsistency which will be the downfall of the Tongan observ ance laws.

As Tongans have been pointing out, Tonga generates electricity on Sunday, and the hospitals, telegraph and broadcasting services are in op eration. Government vessels depart on Sundays, the cooks, waiters and barmen of Nukualofa’s big govern ment hotel work on Sundays, and the King gets driven around on Sun days.

The outspoken Bishop John Rod

gers of Tonga admitted that he him self was guilty of “conveying my self by wagon to my cathedral every Sunday morning” and that this sounded like a violation of the act to him. Thus he would be relieved, he said, if the Hon. Minister con cerned would be kind enough to resolve for him his “crisis of con science”.

There will always be these incon sistencies, and they will grow in number, and become more irritating as Tonga gets more visitors, and be comes more involved with the world.

Tonga currently is a backwater, but she won’t always be.

The Sunday observance law will become harder and harder to police, and a law that cannot be policed is a bad law, for it falls into disrepute and, with it, respect for authority declines.

The sooner Tonga stops policing this law and lets the act of Sunday observance find its own level, the better. I can’t exactly see the fabric of Tongan society falling apart as a result. ☆ Who knows where Papua-New Guinea is headed?

I don’t. And I would be interested to know who does. But that doesn’t mean that planning should cease forthwith; that there should be no more outside development capital put into the territory for fear it might be lost.

Somebody with a problem asked me the other day, “If you had a million to invest in an operation in New Guinea, and it would have to stay there for 10 to 15 years if you were to do what you were trying to do with it, would you invest it?”

My answer was, yes I would— with one proviso apart from the regular business ones, and that is that I would offer a decent local equity in the business.

I believe that large developments in the territory in future must have local equity. This won’t protect them from accusations of “exploitation”, but it will help.

I don’t go along with those people who won’t invest because they fear a blood-bath, with their investment confiscated. I don’t see it happening.

But what we don’t know is what commercial links a self-governing New Guinea might seek—what trade restrictions it might want to apply, and to whom. In 10 to 15 years this situation might be clearer, but I wouldn’t worry overmuch in the meantime.

Stuart Inder