Tongans are heading to the polls for just the sixth time. Is their young democracy on the line?

On Thursday, the people of the Kingdom of Tonga will head to the ballot box for only the fifth general election in its history.

As the only remaining sovereign monarchy in the Pacific, the Kingdom, as it is known colloquially, is still young democratically, with most of the country's parliament being elected by the people for the first time in 2010.

Yet, in spite of these recent — and long heralded — milestones of political evolution, there's concern among some that Tonga is, already, slipping back into an autocracy.

"What we are witnessing is a reversal of democratic changes that happened in 2010," said Lopeti Senituli, a political commentator and former advisor to two prime ministers.

"What we agreed to in 2010 was a power sharing arrangement between the king and a democratically-ele