Tongan general election, 2014
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General elections were held in Tonga on 27 November 2014. All twenty-six elected seats in the single-chamber Legislative Assembly were up for election, although the monarch, acting on the advice of his Prime Minister, retains the possibility to appoint members to
Cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filing ...
from outside Parliament, thus granting them a non-elected ''ex officio'' seat in Parliament. They were the second elections carried out under the May 2010 electoral law, which provided that a majority of Assembly members should be elected by the people, rather than the people and the nobility having equal representation."Tonga: Fale Alea (Legislative Assembly)"
Interparliamentary Union
The November 2010 general election was the first held under this new democratic principle; it was also the first to produce a Parliament empowered to give binding advice to the King as to the appointment of a Prime Minister.


Background

In the 2010 general elections, the
Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands The Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands ( to, Paati Temokalati ʻa e ʻOtu Motu ʻAngaʻofa) is a political party in Tonga. The party's leader at its foundation was 'Akilisi Pohiva. The party was launched in September 2010, and included s ...
(DPFI), led by veteran pro-democracy activist ʻAkilisi Pohiva, had won twelve of the people's seventeen seats, with the rest going to independent candidates. (The representatives of the nobility, for their part, never belong to any political party.) Pohiva, the MP for
Tongatapu 1 Tongatapu 1 is an electoral constituency for the Legislative Assembly in the Kingdom of Tonga. It was established for the November 2010 general election, when the multi-seat regional constituencies for People's Representatives were replaced by ...
, had sought to become Prime Minister, but the nobles and independent people's representatives entrusted
Lord Tuʻivakanō Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...
with the task of forming a government, relegating the DPFI to the status of a ''de facto'' parliamentary opposition. Considering that the reforms introduced in 2010 were merely to be viewed as a first step in the process of democratisation, the DPFI introduced a bill in October 2013 (via
ʻAisake Eke ʻAisake Valu Eke is a Tongan politician and former Cabinet Minister. Eke studied at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, where he was awarded a PhD for his thesis "An exploratory study on the quality of service in the public sect ...
, MP for
Tongatapu 5 Tongatapu 5 is an electoral constituency for the Legislative Assembly in the Kingdom of Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesia, Polynesian country and archipelago. The c ...
) which would have empowered the people to elect the Prime Minister directly from among the twenty-six elected members of Parliament, instead of the King appointing a Prime Minister from among those members on the advice of Parliament. The bill was rejected by fifteen votes to six, failing even to secure the support of all DPFI members. Nonetheless, Pohiva immediately announced that, in early 2014, his party would submit a bill for electoral reform, so that all twenty-six members of the Assembly be elected by the people. The nobility would still retain their existing nine seats, but those nobles would be elected by the people. Pohiva suggested this would make "the whole Parliament ..accountable to the people and not as we have it now". Dr Malakai Koloamatangi of
Massey University Massey University ( mi, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa) is a university based in Palmerston North, New Zealand, with significant campuses in Albany and Wellington. Massey University has approximately 30,883 students, 13,796 of whom are extramural or ...
commented that it was probably too late for any such reform to apply to the 2014 election.


Electoral system

Under the electoral reforms introduced prior to the 2010 election, Tonga is divided into seventeen single-member constituencies for the election of the people's representatives. These overlap with the four constituencies for the election of the nobles' representatives: a four-member constituency covering Tongatapu and
ʻEua Eua is an island in the kingdom of Tonga. It is close to Tongatapu, but forms a separate administrative division. It has an area of , and a population in 2021 of 4,903 people. Geography Eua is a hilly island, the highest peaks are the ''Teemo ...
, a two-member constituency covering
Vavaʻu Vavau is an island group, consisting of one large island ( ʻUtu Vavaʻu) and 40 smaller ones, in Tonga. It is part of Vavaʻu District, which includes several other individual islands. According to tradition, the Maui god created both Tongata ...
, a two-member constituency covering
Haʻapai Haʻapai is a group of islands, islets, reefs, and shoals in the central part of Tonga. It has a combined land area of . The Tongatapu island group lies to its south, and the Vavaʻu group lies to its north. Seventeen of the Haʻapai islands are ...
, and a single-member constituency covering the islands of Niuafoʻou and Niuatoputapu. In both types of constituency, the first-past-the-post electoral system is applied. All Tongan citizens aged at least 21, other than noble title holders and members of the Royal Family who hold noble titles, are entitled to elect the people's representative for their constituency. "Persons under summons for debt" and those diagnosed as insane are excluded from the right to vote. As for the nobles' constituencies, the right to vote is granted to
hereditary peer The hereditary peers form part of the peerage in the United Kingdom. As of September 2022, there are 807 hereditary peers: 29 dukes (including five royal dukes), 34 marquesses, 190 earls, 111 viscounts, and 443 barons (disregarding subsid ...
s and
life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
s, although only hereditary peers are entitled to be elected. There are thirty-three titles of hereditary nobility, which can be inherited only by men, and which entitle the bearer to the title of "Lord". Some of these titles are periodically vacant, and some are held by members of the Royal Family. As of 2013, eight commoners (all of them men) had been elevated by the monarchy to a life peerage, which likewise entitled them to the title of "Lord"."Nobles"
, Tongan Ministry of Information


Results


By constituency


Nobles


References

{{Tongan elections Tonga Elections in Tonga 2014 in Tonga November 2014 events in Oceania