Saturday, October 3 2009

The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting begins in

Port-of-Spain on November 27 and continues for three days.

Fifty-one heads or their representatives will assemble at

The Hyatt for the talks.

Two countries have been suspended - the Fiji Islands which was suspended from membership on September 21, 2009 and Nauru, which is in arrears.

We continue today a daily feature on the Commonwealth and will feature the Heads of these States who are expected in Port-of-Spain in November.



The Honourable Dr Feleti V Sevele was born on July 7, 1944 in Ma’ufanga, Nuku’alofa, Tonga.

He is married to ‘Ainise (nee Manu) and they have three children; Maliana, Frederick Stephen Jnr and Pisila Sevele.

In 1964 he entered the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economic Geography. He then went on to complete his Master of Arts degree with Honours in 1969 at the same University. Between 1970 and 1973, under a Commonwealth Scholarship, Sevele completed the requirements for his doctorate and graduated with a PhD in Economic Development (Geography) from the University of Canterbury.

Upon returning to the Kingdom, he joined the Tonga Commodities Board as Board Secretary from August 1973 to October 1974.

The Commodities Board was a quasi-government body with three main functions: the processing of agricultural commodities for export, the export marketing of all Tonga’s agricultural commodities and a construction division which undertook all types of construction on a commercial basis.

In November 1974, he was appointed Chief Executive and Director of the Commodities Board a post he held until 1978. At that time, the Commodities Board was the second largest employer in the country with close to 1,500 employees with a turnover of around T$15 million per annum.

In 1978, he was appointed as Chief Economist for the South Pacific Commission (SPC), a post he held for six years. During this period, he was a consultant to various governments in the South Pacific Region; authored many SPC publications; conducted numerous training courses throughout the region on Project Planning and Analysis.

He also undertook work for ADB, UNCTAD, and University of the South Pacific. Between 1978 and 1982 Hon Feleti V Sevele was a member of the Council of the University of the South Pacific.

Between 1984 and 1990 Dr Sevele was appointed by the Bishop Finau, the Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tonga, as Director of Catholic Education. He was the architect of the submissions to government on state financial aid to non-governmental secondary schools. Government approved the submission and the system of State aid began in 1987. During this period he was also a freelance consultant and a businessman.

Between 1990 and 1992 he was an ADB funded Consultant to the Central Planning Department of the government of Tonga and in 1993 to 1994 he was an advisor to the ANZ Bank and was instrumental in getting the ANZ Bank to set up in Tonga.

From 1990 to 1996 he was the Secretary General of the Tonga Amateur Sports Association and National Olympic Committee. He also served as a member and Chairman of the Tonga Rugby Union in the mid seventies.

Dr Sevele is one of Tonga’s leading businessmen. From the mid 1980’s, Dr Sevele established a number of business ventures, including commercial farming, agricultural exports, retail and wholesale, financial and consultancy services, and real estate. These businesses are now being run by his wife and daughter, after he was appointed to Cabinet.

Political Background

He was elected as a People’s Representative to the Parliament of Tonga in 1999 and re-elected in 2002 and again in 2005.

On the March 21, 2005, Feleti V Sevele was appointed by His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV as Minister of Labour, Commerce and Industries and thus became one of the Kingdom’s first two Ministers to have been appointed from the elected People’s Representatives to Parliament.

He was again appointed Acting Prime minister on the February 11, 2006 upon the resignation of HRH Prince ‘Ulukalala Lavaka Ata in February 2006.

Sevele was appointed by His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV as the 14th Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Tonga on March 30, 2006. He is the very first Tongan commoner to be appointed as Prime Minister of Tonga.

The Kingdom of Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprises 169 islands, 36 of them inhabited, and stretches over a distance of about 800 kilometres (500 miles) in a north-south line. The islands lie south of Samoa, about one-third of the way from New Zealand to Hawaii.

Tonga, the only sovereign monarchy among the island nations of the Pacific Ocean, has the distinction of being the only island nation in the region to have avoided formal colonisation.

The world also knows the islands of Tonga as the Friendly Islands because of the friendly reception accorded to Captain Cook on his first visit in 1773. He happened to arrive at the time of the inasi festival, the yearly donation of the first fruits to the Tui Tonga, the islands’ paramount chief, and received an invitation to the festivities. According to the writer William Mariner, in reality the chiefs had wanted to kill Cook during the gathering, but were unable to agree on a plan.

In many Polynesian languages the word “Tonga” means “South”. The name of Tonga derives from the word Tongahahake, which translates to “Southeast”, originally meaning “the wind that blows from the Southeast”.