{"id":50429,"date":"2024-04-04T16:28:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T06:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abnews.com.au\/?p=50429"},"modified":"2024-04-04T16:28:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T06:28:48","slug":"top-tonga-ministers-resign-as-king-wields-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/?p=50429","title":{"rendered":"Top Tonga ministers resign as King wields power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Tonga&#8217;s defence and foreign ministers resigned their portfolios Thursday, the climax of a months-long constitutional crisis that has seen the Pacific nation&#8217;s powerful King bring his elected government to heel.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni announced in parliament that he would relinquish his armed forces portfolio and top ally Fekitamoeloa &#8216;Utoikamanu would resign her foreign affairs and tourism portfolios &#8212; bowing to royal demands.<\/p>\n<p>Tonga has been a constitutional democracy since the late 19th century. The royals&#8217; role in politics has receded since 2010, when democratic reforms saw the monarchy relinquish some of their powers.<\/p>\n<p>But that trend was challenged this year, when King Tupou VI abruptly withdrew &#8220;confidence and consent&#8221; for appointments to three key ministries.<\/p>\n<p>No reason has been publicly given, but speculation has swirled about a power play between hereditary royals and the political class.<\/p>\n<p>Malakai Koloamatangi, a political scientist at the University of Fiji, said the crisis should be seen as part of long-running unreconciled tensions &#8220;between the position of the monarch and parliament-executive&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s unclear what the motivations are on the part of His Majesty&#8221; Koloamatangi said, &#8220;it could be that he thinks that the defence&#8230; portfolio ought to be in the hands of a noble in accordance with past precedent.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonga&#8217;s defence and foreign ministers resigned their portfolios Thursday, the climax of a months-long constitutional crisis that has seen the Pacific nation&#8217;s powerful King bring his elected government to heel. Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni announced in parliament that he would relinquish his armed forces portfolio and top ally Fekitamoeloa &#8216;Utoikamanu would resign her foreign affairs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1032],"class_list":["post-50429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","tag-top-tonga-ministers-resign-as-king-wields-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}