Decision a stain on country’s legacy

Views from around the world. These opinions are not necessarily shared by newspapers.

Over the last decades, Samoa has carefully polished its image as a democratic nation. We created independent offices of review, arm’s length tender processes, and all the other institutional hallmarks of democracy. But on Tuesday evening we saw the facade of Tuilaepa Dr Sailele Malielegaoi the democrat crumble in a little more than 10 minutes. By agitating and creating the conditions for the overriding of a democratic verdict, the caretaker prime minister stained his own legacy and our country’s.

In refusing to accept the potential of defeat and seeking a second try at winning office, Tuilaepa has perpetrated incalculable damage to this nation’s reputation and its institution.

The caretaker prime minister, of course, pressed for the decision reached by the head of state, His Highness Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvii II, on Monday evening. Fiame Naomi Mataafa, the leader of the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party, opposed it.

Telling was the timing of this decision, based, as it was, on the apparent inability for either party to form a government. Why did it come the day before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear a case that could potentially have handed Fiame a wafer-thin governing majority, but a majority nonetheless?

‘‘I have been assured that as the head of state I am able to call fresh elections where, after a general election, there is no clear majority to form a government; and where it is in the public interest to do so,’’ His Highness said. We can find no such authority in our nation’s founding document.