{"id":37303,"date":"2021-09-25T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T20:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/25\/it-really-woke-parliament-up-king-of-tonga-criticises-government-handling-of-drugs-crisis"},"modified":"2021-09-25T05:00:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T20:00:24","slug":"it-really-woke-parliament-up-king-of-tonga-criticises-government-handling-of-drugs-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=37303","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It really woke parliament up\u2019: King of Tonga criticises government handling of drugs crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In rare political speech, the king addressed the epidemic that is overwhelming Tonga hospitals and prisons<\/p>\n<p>The king of Tonga has criticised the country\u2019s parliament for what he says is a failure by the government to combat the country\u2019s problems with drug addiction, in a move that has been welcomed by politicians and civil society groups.<\/p>\n<p>King \u2018Aho\u2019eitu Tupou VI addressed Tongan parliament before the parliamentary session closed last week, urging politicians and nobles to commit time and money to dealing with the methamphetamine addiction crisis in the country.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/25\/it-really-woke-parliament-up-king-of-tonga-criticises-government-handling-of-drugs-crisis\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In rare political speech, the king addressed the epidemic that is overwhelming Tonga hospitals and prisonsThe king of Tonga has criticised the country\u2019s parliament for what he says is a failure by the government to combat the country\u2019s problems with dr&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1911,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,280,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-tonga","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37304,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37303\/revisions\/37304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}