Social Media has an important role to play in keeping the public informed on current events.
Information is power, and an informed person makes him different from others.
At a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that I attended several years ago in London, concerns were expressed by the Leaders on the use of Social Media for propaganda purposes by their diaspora to create hate and instability in their countries, using Facebook and fake names.
The rapid changes in technology caught up with both the big and small states alike, including the famous Spy Networks of the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.
At the time, the US Legislators were trying to find out how the Russians successfully influenced the US Presidential Elections using advanced communication technology.
Unfortunately, it took the mass terrorist shootings at two Christchurch Mosques in March 2019 to finally move the New Zealand and Australian Governments to reform their security laws.
Unfortunately also, Samoa is not immune from these violent developments.
Much hatred is now prevalent in our society since Social Media was used to spread baseless allegations, lies and pie in the sky schemes floated for the first time in our history of General Elections, in an outright drive to win.
Now our people are being threatened with police actions for the crime of asking persistently when the promises made in the last general elections will be honoured.
Samoa is not the same today as it was yesterday.
Even opposition members of Parliament have been threatened with various illegal actions to remove them forcefully from Parliament not once, but several times despite Court Orders.
But the Human Rights Protection Party shall never be deterred from asking the Court for their rulings.
Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi
Leader of HRPP