Her Royal Highness Princess Mele Siu’ilikutapu of the Kingdom of Tonga has died aged 75.<\/p>\n
Princess Siu’ilikutapu was a cousin of King Tupou VI, and the eldest daughter of the late Prince Fatafehi Tu’ipelehake and Princess Melen’aite.<\/p>\n
She passed away at Auckland Hospital on 28 May, surrounded by her family and loved ones.<\/p>\n
A statement released by the Palace Office in Nuku’ alofa said the Princess will be repatriated to Tonga, where she will be buried at the Royal Tombs, Mala’ekula, in Nuku’alofa, Kolofo’ou.<\/p>\n
Princess Siu’ilikutapu was a significant figure for Tongans being the first-ever female to be elected as a Member of Parliament in Tonga.<\/p>\n
“She was the first woman to be elected to the Legislative Assembly in Tonga and was a People’s Representative from 1975 until 1978,” Matangi Tonga Online reported.<\/p>\n
Funeral details are yet to be released.<\/p>\n
SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Her Royal Highness Princess Mele Siu’ilikutapu of the Kingdom of Tonga has died aged 75. Princess Siu’ilikutapu was a cousin of King Tupou VI, and the eldest daughter of the late Prince Fatafehi Tu’ipelehake and Princess Melen’aite. She passed away at Auckland Hospital on 28 May, surrounded by her family and loved ones. A statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5019,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions\/5019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}