Tonga recedes into 100 days of mourning

By Michael Field

TjHE death of a member of the Tongan royal family has proven to be a heavy economic blow for the kingdom already suffering from a deep recession.

Seventy seven year old Prince Fatefehi Tu’ipelehake, younger brother of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, died in Auckland on April 10, following a long illness.

In a strange breach of usually strict Tongan protocol his body was left in Auckland for six days and only returned for burial on April 17.

His death was not formally announced for a day.

The king declared the kingdom would go into 100 days of mourning from the day of bur ial and while its rules are particularly strict he was not following them. A couple of days later he flew to Auckland for a university graduation ceremony and a rest.

For his kingdom the long mourning period will be economically difficult for retailers and anybody involved in the entertainment and tourism industries.

Under the rules of the mourning process there can be no night clubs, no festivities or sports and the radio station must play hymns and Gospel music. In public every person must wear a formal funeral ta’ovala of waist mat.

The process affected Tonga’s bid to get into rugby’s World Cup with a game against South Korea moved forward a day so that it did not fall within the mourning period.

Tu’ipelehake had been severely ill since retiring in 1991 and lived at ‘Atalanga, the royal residency in Epsom, Auckland.

He was bom to Queen Salote on January 7, 1922, and named Sione Ngu Manumataongo.

He was educated at Gallon Agricultural College, Queensland, and at Newington College in Sydney.

On the death of Salote in 1965 his older brother, who had been prime minister, became king and appointed Tu’ipelehake to the life time tenure of prime minister.

After he had a stroke in 1991 he retired and Baron Vaea took over the position.

Tu’ipelehake was a strong advocate of the royal dominated political system.

“There are not many of us who have a clear understanding of what is going on beyond Tonga,” he said in a rare interview.

“Our local politicians are only good enough within Tonga, when we move out to the inter national arena I think this is the best approach for government to call in only our capable peo ple. We realise that most of our people have left for overseas. There may be somebody who is very very clever but he does not want to come back.”

Like a number of Pacific leaders Tu’ipelehake was a dedicated Christian and in later life become a fundamentalist, speaking in tongues and practising faith healing.

His wife, Melenaite, died in 1993. They had six children.

His relative obscurity was shown up by New Zealand’s response to it. When Samoan Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana died in March Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, Foreign Minister Don McKinnon, Opposition Leader Helen Clark and a host of other minor party leaders loaded aboard an air force special flight for Apia.

For the Tongan funeral there was no special flight and the country was represented by Maori Affairs Minister Tau Henare who is not even a member of the ruling party.

The death coincided with a Pacific publish ing milestone, the release of the authoritative “Queen Salote of Tonga” by Elizabeth Wood- Ellem (Auckland University Press).

An member of the Press editorial board said the expensive book was selling extremely well and had already gone into a reprint, despite its at times controversial view of the reign of Salote from 1918 to 1965.

“The mythology of a beloved monarch that surrounds Queen Salote’s name has concealed her human qualities and obscured her very real political achievements,” Wood-Ellem writes.

She delivers some punches too.

“Since the death of Queen Salote in 1965, Tonga has been struggling with the forces of modem economics; so much so that change seems to be spinning out of control, and. Tonga survives only because about 40 per cent of its people live overseas,” she writes in the final paragraph.

Just about every aspect of Salote’s life is covered (right down to the physical suffering behind the birth of the current king).

The book does recount that media highlight of her life when, at the coronation of Elizabeth 11, she rode in a carriage in pouring rain with the roof down so people could see her - win ning the hearts of Londoners in the process.

“I told the policeman to leave the hood of our carriage down,” the Queen is quoted as say ing. “I did not think to ask the chief (the Sultan of Kelantan), and he maintained silence with good grace.” She does not repeat the famous line attributed to Noel Coward who, when asked who it was that was riding with the Tongan Queen, replied “her lunch”.

But something unprecedented can be found in the index of the book: “Coward, Noel, not mentioned”. ■