Tonga watches with interest as Royal Commission wraps up hearings
This is a piece I’ve done for Radio Australia’s “Correspondent’s Notebook” on the Royal Commission of Inquiry in Tonga into last year’s ferry disaster. If you want to go to the audio, click here.
This week the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the sinking of the MV Princess Ashika, began taking testimony from its final witnesses.
In August last year the Princess Ashika sank, taking over 70 lives, most of them women and children. It is the biggest maritime tragedy in Tonga’s history. The ferry went down less than six weeks after it had been bought from Fiji, and the Royal Commission was given the task of finding out what happened and why, also why so many lives were lost, who bears responsibility, and what can be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s not the first Royal Commission in Tonga, but it’s first in memory held in public, and as part of that, the proceedings from each day’s hearings have appeared online.
Since late October when those hearings started, just about every day for me has begun by reading up to 190 pages of transcript from the day before. The evidence in those transcripts points to MV Princess Ashika being a disaster waiting to happen. In them you can read the words of maintenance crews who spent hours welding steel plate over the rusted and worn hull of the Princess Ashika after the five successful trips it did make, and descriptions of how on those trips the cargo hold would be submerged in up to a third of a metre of water.
Laid out is the evidence of maritime industry experts who warned against the purchase, and the words of the former Managing Director of the ferry’s operator, the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia, John Jonesse, who inspected it and decided to buy it, despite admitting he had no expertise in this area. He’s since been arrested and charged.
You can read the words from other executives, and board members of the Shipping Corporation, and bureaucrats and minister’s, including the Prime Minister, of the corporation’s owner, the Government of Tonga, trying to explain why the ferry was bought, how it was certified safe, while at the same time explaining why they personally are not responsible.
Most harrowing though is the testimony of those who survived, both crew and passengers, as they describe the scene onboard as the Princess Ashika went down. It is fair to say this Royal Commission has been very “un-Tongan” in its conduct. An aspect of Pacific culture is an acceptance and at times unquestioning obedience of authority.
An example of this is part of the testimony of the captain of the Princess Ashika, Viliami Tuputupu. Captain Tuputupu told the Royal Commission he knew from the first day he went on board the ferry it was unseaworthy. Why then, he was asked, when the law made it clear that such knowledge meant he should have refused to take it to sea, did he continue to do so? His response, he was ordered to. “If they say ’stop’, I stop, and if they say ’sail’, I must sail.” Like John Jonesse, Captain Tuputupu has also been charged over his actions.
Leading the inquiry as Counsel Assisting has been Australian Barrister Manuel Varitimos. More than once during the Royal Commission’s hearings high profile Tongan witnesses made it clear they didn’t want to answer the questions being put to them. But that disdain has not deterred Counsel Assisting Varitimos, who has not deferred to rank or position to the obvious annoyances of the minister, executive, or Law Lord trying to block his attempts.
At one stage during his testimony Tongan Prime Minister Doctor Fred Sevele refused to answer questions. Just how unhappy he was became clear at the end of his time before the commission, when Dr Sevele made a statement in his own defence. He ended with this message for Mr Varitimos. “You may be an excellent counsel in Australia, but when you are in the Kingdom of Tonga, please try to understand our constitution and show some respect for our monarch, for our government, our people and our culture.” A statement which led to the Prime Minister’s censure by the Commission’s Chairman Justice Warwick Andrew.
Two people have already been arrested and charged, in relation to the disaster. And it’s likely over the next few weeks, more arrests will be made. But at the end of March the Royal Commission will table its report, and recommendations, and the government of Tonga will have to decide which recommendations it will adopt. It will do so with the knowledge that Tongans have been following the commission’s proceedings and that not everyone on the government’s payroll or in ministerial office has come out looking good.
This is one report that will be hard to put on the shelf and be ignored.
