On Friday, 17 September 2021, 18 HRPP Elected Members were allowed into and were sworn in inside the House of the Legislative Assembly. That was in keeping with Samoa’s Constitution 1960 and the House’s Standing Orders. The law is very clear and certain.
The event was hailed as the start of the healing process for Samoa. Yet, the termination of the employment of le Afioga Tiatia Graeme Tuālaulelei as Clerk of the Assembly that very same day meant that, beneath the gloss of a good beginning, the spirit of this Nation will remain at odds with itself for a long time.
WE remember and record the `troubles of the brain.’ Tuesday, 14 September 2021, will always be a national shame (Germanic scham, Old English scamu). Wednesday, 15 September 2021, went too far, far too far.
The complex `O shame, where is thy blush?’ left its civil touch and embraced a masochistic state of mind. The arrogant refusal to make way, smile or even blink made history, but it is one without joy, honor and grace. We find our places in the world and make space for others – that is the proven wisdom of the tried years of the human species.
Countless Samoan tears were shed on those two fateful days, here and abroad, in public and in private homes. Yes, WE cried. To the skies, countless minds and hearts and voices condemned without reserve what happened in the sight and hearing of the Almighty. Those tears will not be in vain. Their injury and pain will always be the real tragedy, forever lodged in the soul of Samoa.
Tragic? Yes! More than just echoes or mere blots of political scribbling, Tuesday and Wednesday went too far and actually destroyed the substance, form and fabric of the moral conscience of the whole Samoan Race. They will forever be an insult to the intelligence and ordered prudence of this Nation and its State of Samoa, the country that WE dearly love, cherish and serve.
Images of the 25 Elected HRPP Members of Parliament locked out of the grounds of Parliament by a steel fence, and then locked out of the House of the Assembly of Samoa by the force of a very large number of Police officers that was acutely disproportionate to the perceived threat of just 25 law-abiding/non-violent/pacifist HRPP Leaders – those images will always be shameful and nauseating.
Confronted and encircled as if they were fierce Enemies of the State, they were then made to sit out in the burning sun for very long hours. Inhumane, disrespectful, condescending? Yes! By an official Government order, they were not even given Government chairs and water bottles. `Let them die out there’ was allegedly the very rude retort.
Putting it bluntly, that was really haughty, heavy/high-handed, offensive, degrading, demeaning, violent and cruel. Whoever the real architect was, and whatever the target audience for the planned/pre-fabricated/staged/online scenario was/is, they should all learn this: what happened was not Samoan at all, never will be. Samoa treats its leaders, whoever and howsoever they might be, with respect and etiquette.
The depravity of the event has thus stirred, excited and fuelled Samoa’s dangerous memory (rooted in Tiafau), memory of the cruelty, violence, exploitation and dehumanization of our colonial past. And stirred, it continues on, sustained by its own logic.
Fact of History! Late 19th century, Theodor A. L Weber (German Consul in Samoa) claimed legal, exclusive ownership of Mulinu’u on behalf of a German private company. Redeem or vacate! That was Weber’s high order to Samoans regarding Samoa’s own sacred place Mulinu’u. The exclusion and alienation from Mulinu’u and Tiafau of Samoans by Samoans on Tuesday and Wednesday was/is even more insulting. The insult will last beyond our graves. Lest WE forget, `my hands are of your color.’
WE detest all postcolonial reinventions of colonial rule. The divide and rule strategy, the enflaming the sickos of society/getting them to kill others before they kill themselves ideology, the scheme of creating straw men and imaginary enemies, and all the while alienating, seizing, controlling, owning – those Social Darwinist evils have no place in Samoa anymore, not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
Lesson of History! Adolf Hitler did not take his rise alone. No! He rose on the heads of like-minded Germans, including certain churches that were promulgating skewed political theologies of special election and (poorly-veiled) superiority complexes with their theologically-colored socio-cultural-racial discrimination.
Those fed into the purity/superiority of the Aryan race ideology, and that was concocted in Germany, not in Heaven. German Jews were shamelessly deprived of their rights and freedoms using the Nuremberg Laws 1935 and many others, spurred on by the moral indifference (or ignorance) of the masses.
On Tuesday, roadblocks and Police officers with shields and riot gear rushing to confront the peaceful march of Members and Supporters of the HRPP in a public display of brutal force – that was revolutionary and hostile, to say the least. Popular appeal may be, but truly, the intended satire was vain and empty. It was ill-conceived.
Question? What was the `real and immediate danger,’ using America’s legal tests of freedom of thought/expression/assembly vis-à-vis some public interest? Danger from whom against whom?
There were no guns and bullets being recklessly fired anywhere, no swords and bush knives and daggers, stones, or verbal assaults as was the case in Salelologa and Sasiga! So who posed `a real and immediate danger’ to others, including Police officers who, according to Honorable Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, o fanau a le Atunu’u, o a matou fanau, e aofia ai ma fanau a le HRPP? Who?
Or should Samoa continue down this emotional slippery slope of fabricating images of riots and disorderly protests, and then widely publicizing a priori attributions of someone else’s criminal intentionality and childish political schemes onto others? Or, have we become theatrical fools, retarded fools even? By God, Samoa is not, will never be a Nation of Fools.
When the Elderly of Samoa and so many others were made to walk from the Tanoa Hotel to Mulinu’u in the burning sun, we had to ask, Ua fai fa’apea o le a le Au Matutua o le Atunu’u? E fa’apea ona fai Matua ma Tupu o Samoa?
Acting through coercion, the fist of the State must be used wisely, humbly, with care and caution. Every state is inherently totalitarian. It takes only one mad/psychopathic man, who thinks he is a Hitler, to change a state’s legitimate coercion into a reign of terror. Freedom occupies that space in between the state and its citizens. When there is no such space, freedom falls. Is this what WE want? NO!
Intellectual and moral honesty therefore demands us to face the real issue here: Government Legitimacy. The right to believe or disbelieve something, accept or reject its legitimacy belongs to man’s freedom of conscience. That is basic to all other rights in this world. Take it away, and the West’s rights discourse collapses to the ground.
Accordingly, Government Legitimacy is sought not through threats, intimidation and violence or even deceit and fabricated delusions. It is, rather, sought and concretely sourced in the informed mental assent and moral acquiescence of the citizens of the State. Failing that, legitimacy will continue to be a problem. Respect must be earned and deserving of the recipient. Respect is not bought or coerced. We need to prove ourselves in the court of public opinion.
Notwithstanding the admission of HRPP Members into the House last Friday, a privatized Parliament of Samoa is definitely not the answer. The exclusion of 25 Elected HRPP Members from the sittings of Parliament was a gross violation of the right and duty of representation of 25 Constituencies representing more than 60% of the voters in the April 2021 general election.
Responsible government and representative democracy are essential tenets of the theory of Samoa’s Constitution 1960 and Parliament’s Standing Orders. We ignore or arbitrarily change them at our own peril. Most certainly, we need to re-examine the normative theory of democracy we are now advocating, especially regarding matters of confidence and supply.
As well, public service suspensions, terminations, and instant appointments have inevitably destroyed the legitimacy of Government. Allegations of constructive, unjustified and unlawful dismissals are legitimate concerns for the PSA and, I need add, for a society of morally responsible and fair-minded citizens. Good governance is about getting the institutions of the State right. The polar opposite is self-explanatory, and is self-evident even to my good neighbor with only half a brain.
When the rule of law is no longer seen and trusted as a public good, privatized justice is the resultant perception. The sub judice rule riding on the contempt of court action now before the Court cannot drown out the upward swelling of public doubt, the loss of good faith and confidence in State institutions. Social trust is now agonizingly low, almost to the point of non-existence.
And this must be said for the record. Professional ethics? Yes! Everywhere in law-governed democracies, lawyers are not supposed to use the law and the judicial process to achieve extra-legal ends. Judicial independence must not be compromised just to prove some academic prowess, however questionable or low the level of intelligence might be.
Most assuredly, lawyers must not turn the law into an ass. From memory, law schools do not teach a law-of-asses course. Nor do they incite or support the use of academic violence to create laws. In the normal scheme of things, the law must be for the peace, order and good government of the whole body politic. That is the substantive interface between law and democracy. Lawyers must protect the integrity of the law with their very lives, as a matter of intellectual honesty and moral integrity.
All in all, privatizing the state is the ultimate danger. The passage is usually from legitimate coercion to power monopolization to private ownership when public offices, the powers invested in those offices, and the rights grounding the exercise of those powers are held and executed through violence. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the flawed/perverted misconception that party politics is all about capturing and owning the state.
Lesson of History: We the People of Samoa created this State through our Fathers who, in the 1960 Constitutional Convention at Tiafau, acted as our Surrogate will and voice. We the People of Samoa, as `constituent power’, will always own this State, allocate/delegate its `constituted powers’ or withhold them at will. He who thinks otherwise must be either naïve or he is being fatally misled.
Throughout this momentous, historical perplexity though, WE have prayed and will continue to pray for God’s peace upon our beloved Samoa, now dangerously divided and polarized.
NOTE: This is part of an academic treatise being prepared for international hearing and publication through regional and international academic outlets.