KEY POINTS:
Captain Cook's name for Tonga - the Friendly Islands - has always been a bit of a misnomer. Cook didn't realise that the chiefs who invited him to a friendly feast intended to kill him but were unable to agree on a plan.
These days, despite the shock
of drunken rioters trashing central Nuku'alofa, the country's political leaders are still at odds over a plan - sought for more than 20 years - for political reform and democratic rule.
Instead, the country's leaders are embroiled in the blame game for the riots and in dissent over the way ahead.
At the formal closing of Parliament on Thursday, King Siaosi Tupou V pledged to move ahead with democratic change. He said he believed differences about reform proposals could be resolved, which may indicate that the agreement announced a week ago by Prime Minister Fred Sevele as the first step in the process has far from settled the matter.
Lopeti Senituli, the Government's spokesman, says any agreement will need to be ratified by Parliament and decisions made "under coercion" in a situation that "was not normal" will have to be submitted to standard processes. "It is up to Parliament to decide."
Sevele has been handed the blame for the spark which ignited the riots, although some close to the Government say he has been caught between trying to run the country and at the same time accommodating the push for democracy and managing conservative royal masters. And his cabinet ministers feel they have been wrongly portrayed as being repressive when the road to political change can usually be expected to be rough going.
But Dr Sitiveni Halapua, chairman of the parliamentary-endorsed National Committee on Political Reform, has no doubt that Sevele is at fault.
He says Sevele hijacked the reform process by springing his own model on the country before the committee's report and recommendations were debated in Parliament. "It showed disrespect and now he has lost his integrity. He wanted to shut down the debate until next year. He wanted control. It created confusion and frustration."
Sevele's proposal would have allowed the King to handpick one third of the cabinet from within Parliament or outside. But democracy reformers believe the King should be limited to selecting the Prime Minister alone. The monarch selects all 16 cabinet members. Sevele was forced to drop his proposal after his office was attacked by a shouting mob on Thursday afternoon last week.
"He realised he had lost control," Halapua says, and must be held responsible for the carnage that followed.
"When a boat goes on to a reef in rough seas and high winds ... you have to ask 'Who's the captain?' "
Halapua says Sevele failed on all counts and then "calls in the foreign forces to prop him up". Young educated Tongans will worry about what sort of future the crippled country will have for their children. They will leave Tonga to "look for opportunities elsewhere, where they can have confidence in their future. It's a loss that cannot easily be replaced."
The democracy camp adamantly denies it provoked the rioting but during the parliamentary proceedings the crowd which rallied were waving banners such as: "When injustice becomes law resistance becomes a duty".
Senituli says the people were told that if the Government was not going to reconvene they should go to the Prime Minister's office. "It was designed to incite. I don't think they knew what they were playing with."
Lemona Tukuitoga, spokeswoman for the Waikato-Tongan Youth Group, says impatient pro-democracy leaders along with "misinformed youth brought in from the outer villages" had instead forced Tonga to accept their demands.
She wants them kicked out and charged with criminal offence. "They are burning our future and now we will have to start from scratch."
The bill for the riots has been put at NZ$300 million. Dr Geoff Bertram, a Victoria University senior lecturer in economics, downplays the economic impact although 80 per cent of the central business district was destroyed.
He says many businesses were insured, the buildings were relatively low tech, and aid would help with restoration. "Some businesses may go under, but the CBD is not the lifeblood of Tonga - remittances are." Bertram says nearly half Tonga's imported goods and services are paid for by remittances, the money Tongans living overseas send regularly to their relatives, and foreign aid accounted for 24 per cent. Exports provide 15 per cent and tourism 13 per cent.
Aid was likely to increase and the arrival of overseas forces would stimulate spending for a time.
Bertram says tourists went mainly to the islands beyond Tongatapu and that in Fiji, for example, tourism bounced back after the coup.
Auckland academic Dr Okusi Mahina believes the uprising was inevitable because of a failure of leadership where people blamed each other rather than talked to each other. "The parties must now give up their differences ... rise above these to deal with the common problem of social conflict and make peace in order to bring Tonga stability."
Mahina says that can't be achieved by declaring Tonga a military state and seeking assistance from foreign powers to suppress all elements of dissidence.
"Will that quieten things or escalate tensions ... Tonga will be a totally different Tonga after this event."
Already hundreds of Chinese are leaving Tonga, some abandoning the village stores they ran 24 hours a day.
Some Tongans tried to protect the shops. At Fua'amotu village near the airport people put down a mat and maintained an all night kava-drinking vigil.
But in another village, a gutted Chinese foodstore now wears the tag: "The nu face of youth rebellion."
Keleiola Lotefia, a Tongan woman employed as a secretary by Fung Shing, a large Chinese business whose hotel, restaurant and supermarket were destroyed by fire, said some Chinese were staying in Tonga to rebuild their businesses despite what had happened.
They were bewildered as to why they were targeted.
"They keep on asking Tongan people why because they don't understand, they never expected it."
For now, overseas troops are maintaining the peace.
Senituli wants New Zealand and Australian troops to stay in Tonga, which is expected to be under martial law until mid-December, "as short as possible and as long as necessary".
MP Clive Edwards despairs at such a prospect, saying: "I don't know why New Zealand and Australia support this despotic regime."
Edwards, a one-time staunch cabinet member and a more recent convert to the democracy movement, now blames his former colleagues for ignoring the people's call for change.
"The Government's proposal was to effectively entrench the present situation," Edwards says.
Victoria University's Bertram shares that view.
He says New Zealand needs to be wary of being seen as propping up a corrupt monarchy.
"It must stay right out of the political fray and refrain from either withdrawing or rushing in with aid because dollars speak very loud."
