By Mataeliga Pio Sioa
Our upside-down Wok House at ‘Mulinu’uwood’ turned out a major blockbuster during the week with the resignation of Gagaifomauga MP La’auli while under a relentless verbal whipping by members.
Cannot remember when any MP staged a dramatic walkout in the middle of a debate. Of course there is always a first time for anything.
For MP La’auli, what once was his House of Power for more than a decade turned upside down for him on Tuesday. Hopefully the House architectural design had nothing to do with it.
One is reminded of the laws of the wild at the way the MP exited. Never allow the pack to turn on you.
La’auli was one of the pack leaders for many years before his fall from grace. He was shunned down the pecking order to the point where he was unwanted and eventually forced to limp away to lick his wounds.
But he had unfinished issues with the pack and decided to make loud noises about it from the outside.
For a short while his raging protests at being unfairly treated and targeted grabbed the attention and in some cases sympathy of the kingdom. Keeping close watch at the same time too was the growling rage of the pack.
Unfortunately for the MP he slipped up and the angry pack bounced. He was made to walk the House gauntlet where he was pummeled into submission.
“Enough” was his last word before he apologised and walked out of the House into a new added chapter of rare moments now chronicled in the history books of Samoa’s politics.
But folks do not switch off. There are many more unwritten chapters left of this MP who went renegade on the political pack and paid dearly for it.
There is still a by-election looming. The MP is yet to write his official resignation and hand it in to the Speaker of the House for the voting machinery to grind into action for the Constituency.
Breaking news is that he is instructed not to resign.
The question now looms! What now ? What if the Constituency returns him in the by-election or if not the general elections?
Will there be fireworks with his return? Hell yeah! Wait and see.
La’auli was forced to make two very highly publicized resignations within the space of one term. The first one was on the cards long before he turned his back on the HRPP pack.
The second was last Tuesday when he was howled out of the House by a hungry, angry pack, with venom dripping from sharp fangs that chomped mercilessly into the errs of his ways.
He tried to win forgiveness with a mea culpa for misleading the House but there was no stopping the savagery of the pack tearing his political integrity into pieces.
The pain pushed the victim beyond the limits of normal tolerance, he cried enough and scurried out of reach.
Must thank the MP, however, for generating peak excitement that made everyone sit up and either cheered or jeered for him.
The general elections is only a short few months away and the La’auli resignation has certainly set the tone early for more to come as we edge closer to polling day.
Is it now possible to split the political divide for an opposition party to balance our overwhelmingly one sided democracy?
Anything is possible but the bitter ending to the La’auli saga in Parliament is not dramatic enough to shake the foundations of the HRPP strangle hold on power.
Choice of candidates for the general elections and who emerges when the polling dust settles is where it starts to really shake and rattle.
By the time the voters marched to the polls in the 2016 general elections, the signs were already there that the HRPP was in for a big win. Indeed they did by a huge landslide victory at the expense of a near wipe out of the Tautua Samoa opposition party.
Are the voters still happy with their political choices from 5 years ago? Therein lies the big drama warming up from one end of the island to the other.
Time will tell if the loud uproar we heard all week from the La’auli fall out is from the vocal minority and not the silent majority or vice versa.
Frankly the La’auli issue has added a swirl to the pre-election cauldron as the countdown to polling day starts to bubble.
But honestly, if polling were held tomorrow the HRPP will do a John Travolta hip roll into the Wok House to the Bee Gees blasting away with ‘Stayin’ Alive’.
The only question is by what majority.
The Prime Minister is fond of accusing the media, especially the print medium, of inciting public opinion with sensational reporting to sell more newspapers.
Ironically, it was the late Polataivao Fosi Schmidt, who said it better with his famous words of reprimand to the media: “Only peace and loving words.”
In our defense Mr. PM if the La’auli episode is sensational in itself, is it the media who should be blamed for inciting public opinion?
The role of the media is reporting to the best of their abilities the facts of the event as they unfolded, however and whatever they are.
What ‘peace and loving words’ are we to report if there were NONE?
If we did sell more newspapers during the whole run of the La’auli uproar, Mr. PM, we thank you from the bottom of our ‘COVID-19’ drained bank accounts. Thank you also La’auli.
To end on a bright note, we the media wish to leave you Mr. PM and your HRPP pack with these immortalized parting words fitting for Sunday :
‘ONLY PEACE AND LOVING WORDS.’