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Samoa’s former deputy PM to challenge her former leader

Fiame Naomi Mata’afa
Source: The Guardian

Apia, SAMOA — The most stable democracy in the Pacific is undergoing a seismic political shift as the country approaches elections next year.

Samoa’s former deputy prime minister will run against her former party of 35 years, and the prime minister she served under, when she contests next year’s election as an independent candidate.

The most prominent and powerful female politician in Samoa’s independent history, and the daughter of the country’s first prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa quit as deputy prime minister and as a member of the government last month. It also meant she left the Human Rights Protection party (HRPP) of which she had been a member of since 1985.

Her extraordinary departure is part of a broader rebuke to the rule of prime minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, the third-longest serving prime minister in the world, but who faces a burgeoning challenge to his 22-year rule, over new laws his critics say undermine the constitution and entrench a growing authoritarianism in the country.

Fiame appears certain to be returned to parliament. With nominations now closed, she is unopposed in her seat of Lotofaga, and has not ruled out joining – even leading – a new coalition of three opposition parties challenging the ruling HRPP.

Asked if she would accept a leadership role in the nascent Fa’atuatua i Le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party after the election in April, she told the Guardian: “I would take it, yes of course.”

The elder statesman of Pacific politics, Tuilaepa has been prime minister and foreign minister of Samoa since 1998.

But his decision this year to introduce three bills - the constitution amendment bill, judicature bill, and the lands and titles bill - have coalesced previously disparate political forces against him.

Legal experts say the new laws would undermine Samoa’s constitution, judicial independence, and the rule of law, with significant implications for human rights. The amendments would reshape Samoa’s courts by elevating the lands and titles court (LTC) into a stand-alone judiciary equal in standing to the Supreme Court.

Proponents of the laws say they are designed to elevate Samoan custom in the country’s justice system, which they argue is dominated by palagi – foreign – legalistic perspective. But the Samoa Law Society argues creating a second judicial branch is undemocratic.

Speaking to the Guardian from her home in Matautu, Fiame, whose father helped frame Samoa’s constitution, said: “Once I understood the impact of these laws, it was very clear in my mind that I could not support it and I could not remain in the party. It was not a difficult decision for me to make”.

Read more at The Guardian