Miulang
September 10th, 2006, 06:37 PM
King Tupou IV (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/10/tonga.king.ap/) of Tonga, died yesterday in New Zealand at the age of 88. He had been in failing health for several months. His successor, Crown Prince Tupouto'a, was sworn in later in the day.
His death came at the end of a long but unspecified illness in a hospital where the king had spent most of the past several months, and plunged the remote country into a mourning period expected to last for months.
...
The end of Tupou IV's reign is likely to fuel a push for more democracy in the near-feudal kingdom, where the royal family has ruled with absolute power since tribal groups on more than 170 Polynesian islands united into a single kingdom in 1845.
This is the second period of mourning for the nation, as one of the Princes and his wife had been killed in a traffic accident in California earlier this summer.
Miulang
His death came at the end of a long but unspecified illness in a hospital where the king had spent most of the past several months, and plunged the remote country into a mourning period expected to last for months.
...
The end of Tupou IV's reign is likely to fuel a push for more democracy in the near-feudal kingdom, where the royal family has ruled with absolute power since tribal groups on more than 170 Polynesian islands united into a single kingdom in 1845.
This is the second period of mourning for the nation, as one of the Princes and his wife had been killed in a traffic accident in California earlier this summer.
Miulang