The Samoan Constitution is supposed to be sacred.

A post from Iuni Sapolu caught my attention. It was quite disturbing. The Parliament with the powerful influence of the HRPP and Tuilaepa the PM, have passed an “amendment” to the constitution prohibiting any member of parliament from switching parties mid term. This means once you are registered in a party then if for some reason the party policy doesn’t agree with your agenda or your constituents agenda then you cannot change parties. If you do then that will mean a whole new election will result. I still need to examine this law and determine if this means a national election or just an election for your constituency.

Now I can see there are both pros and cons for such a measure, because as was pointed out by another comment, this same policy was instituted in NZ when rogue MPs were changing affiliation and affecting the stability of the decision making process. However I don’t see that as being the cause in Samoa. In my humble opinion this is another preventative measure by the PM restricting the movement of some of his own party that may be leaning towards jumping ship for whatever reason. It feels like an act of desperation that in my opinion may backfire on him one of these days.

But more importantly I am appalled at the ease with which the PM and his cronies can just amend the Samoan constitution at any time in order to suit their self serving agendas. This document needs to be protected by a requirement that any changes to the constitution must first be approved by a referendum vote of the people in order to make such behavior by a governing party difficult. It should not be as easy as changing underwear. 

We are moving closer and closer to one party rule in Samoa and the man in charge has begun to exert his authority with impunity in order to retain political control over the country. Most of us living outside Samoa, who are actually the majority, need to pay attention to what is going on at home. The state of Samoa’s political health is being attacked by a cancer, a dangerous contaminant that has in the last 20 or so years changed the way government does business in Samoa. The authority of Samoa is becoming more and more concentrated in the parliament to the demise of our traditional model of “malo” which was decentralized and the day to day decisions were left to the Village and district matais.

We are now becoming more and more Westernized, which was a primary motive for the Mau movements of Lauaki and Tamasese who sought to remove the foreign control over our people and preserve our form of government which in their eyes was unique and successful for our people because it embodied all of the cultural values and identity that we had struggled so hard to forge through wars and interaction over thousands of years before these foreigners even set foot into the Pacific. Now our country is being manipulated by our own people or rather the puppets of foreign governments and financial institutions, similar to what happened in Vietnam, Central America, Africa, India and other countries that were prey for these predators who wanted only to deplete the resources of these nations and then leave them demoralized and poor.

The current government of the HRPP have been in power too long. They are drunk with power and influence they have held over our people for so long which they accomplished with misinformation, cronyism, abuse of power and graft. We need transparency, we need honest and good men to run for government, we need courageous leaders who will not replace the current party with their own corrupt form of dictatorship.

Do we know what we want? That is why we keep voting for these predator for so long because we have not identified what kind of government we want and sought out the right men or women to run in the election, and then support them. I know for a fact that there are righteous, honest and capable leaders in Samoa, It is our duty to encourage them to run for office and then support them in what ever manner possible.

“ Samoa e le tatou pale ne’i toe avea!” RISE UP!