Former Samoan prime minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi has accused New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of being behind a political crisis in Samoa, suggesting that she had wanted to install a female prime minister.
“I am starting to get suspicious maybe New Zealand is behind all of this,” Tuilaepa said during an interview with TV1 on Sunday night.
Tuilaepa was prime minister of the Pacific nation for more than 22 years — at the time of the April election, the second-longest serving prime minister in the world — before being ousted in a shock election upset earlier this year.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He was beaten by his former deputy leader, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, who last year defected from the Human Rights Protection party, which had ruled Samoa for 39 years and became Samoa’s first female prime minister at the end of last month.
Tuilaepa refused to accept Fiame’s victory for several months after the election, questioning the courts’ decisions and accusing her and her lawmakers of “treason.”
The interview is the latest example of the former prime minister attempting to cast doubt on the victory of his successor, which has been ruled legal and constitutional by Samoa’s courts and recognized by other world leaders as legitimate.
INTERVENTION?
“The government [of New Zealand] has been heavily involved,” he said. “It looks like the New Zealand prime minister wanted Samoa to have a female prime minister, which has blinded her [Ardern] from seeing if it’s something that is in line with our constitution. But like that English proverb says: ‘The end justifies the means.’”
Samoa endured a protracted electoral crisis following the national election in April, which saw legal challenges, and Fiame and other lawmakers from her party locked out of the parliament building on the day they were due to be sworn in.
At the end of last month, the Samoan Court of Appeal ruled the Faatuatua ile Atua Samoa ua Tasi party was the official winner of the national election in April and that Fiame was the prime minister.
She took office last month and was recognized as Samoa’s leader by other leaders at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting the following week.
Ardern was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Fiame on her election as prime minister after the court ruled that her victory was legitimate.
Tuilaepa said that the prompt congratulation was “proof” that the New Zealand government had “planned this all along.”
“The proof is, as soon as the [court] decision was handed down, the prime minister of New Zealand immediately sent her congratulatory message … The fact that she quickly sent Fiame her well wishes makes me think that they had planned all of this,” he said.
A spokesperson for Ardern rejected the allegations, saying they are unfounded.
New Zealand is Samoa’s closest ally, with many Samoans living in New Zealand.
FEMALE REPRESENTATION
Fiame is only the second woman to lead a Pacific Island country, after Hilda Heine, former president of the Marshall Islands.
The Pacific has the lowest rate of female representation in politics anywhere in the world, with just 6 percent of all lawmakers being women regionally.
Three countries in the world have no women in parliament. All of them — Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia — are in the Pacific.
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