OVER 100 YEARS LATER, THE LIES AND DECEPTIONS CONTINUE - THE DECENDANTS OF THOSE WHO OVERTHREW THE SOVEREIGN HAWAIIAN GOVERNMENT ATTEMPT TO RE-WRITE HISTORY
The Honolulu Advertiser -Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Readers should find Thurston Twigg-Smith's Sunday letter interesting and humorous.
While criticizing [Queen]Lili'uokalani as not "working for the rights of her people," he used her proposed 1893 constitution as evidence that she attempted to increase unprecedented political rights for herself.
If a person were to compare the queen's proposed constitution with that of the 1864 constitution, he would find that the two are almost identical.
The queen was not proposing anything new. She was attempting to restore the constitution of 1864, while ridding the kingdom of the constitution forced upon the previous head-of-state while the Legislature was out of session.
Twigg-Smith claims the queen wanted to take the right to vote for nobles away from the people. What he does not mention is that Lorrin Thurston, through the 1887 Bayonet Constitution, reduced the voting power of all citizens (of all races) of the kingdom, by allowing mere residents of American and European birth the right to vote.
It is boggling as to why the Bayonet Constitution did not extend this right to residents of Chinese or Japanese birth.
Resident aliens are not afforded the right to vote in America today, and they were not afforded the right to vote in the Hawaiian kingdom, at least not until the Bayonet Constitution, which was written by Lorrin Thurston.
Derek H. Kauanoe
Honolulu
