Samoa’s political crisis yesterday intensified as the leader of the opposition party held a ceremony to form a government outside a locked parliament after the incumbent prime minister refused to cede power.
A series of twists and turns since an election last month gave the FAST opposition party a one-seat parliamentary majority has culminated in a power struggle between the courts and the head of state in the Pacific nation, a supporter of China in the past few years.
FAST leader Fiame Naomi Mataafa was set to become Samoa’s first female prime minister after the country’s top court upheld the election result against a challenge supported by Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi.
Photo: AP
However, Samoan Head of State Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II made the rare move over the weekend of suspending the parliamentary hearing scheduled to swear in the elected members yesterday. The government supported that suspension, declining to abide by a subsequent ruling from the Supreme Court that the swearing in ceremony should go ahead.
“Democracy is inseparable from human rights, which are inalienable by our laws as well as by international covenants that we have sworn to uphold,” FAST deputy leader Laaulialemalietoa Polataivao Schmidt wrote on Facebook.
“Democracy must prevail, always,” he added.
Tuilaepa told reporters in the capital, Apia, that only the head of state could convene parliament in the nation of 200,000.
“We remain in this role and operate business as usual,” he said.
Samoa has been a close ally of China during Tuilaepa’s more than two decades of rule.
Fiame is expected to reframe Samoa’s relations with China after saying last week that she would shelve a US$100 million Beijing-backed port development, calling the project excessive for a small country already heavily indebted to China.
Fiame, a former deputy prime minister who split with the government last year after opposing changes to Samoa’s constitution and judicial system, said she wanted to retain good relations with both Beijing and Washington.
Her supporters gathered outside parliament early yesterday, singing songs from Samoa’s independence movement more than 50 years ago, local media reported.
FAST members then gathered in a tent outside the locked parliament to confirm the new government members in a ceremony that Tuilaepa described as “treason,” local media reported.
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