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The Ins and Outs of Samoan-Style Government
Samoans have no doubts about the nature of their distinctiveness; ahead and superior to all others. One distinction is that in 1962 Samoa became the first South Pacific state to fully regain its independence.
Since then, with high and lows of success, Samoans, have ruled themselves with a constitution drawn heavily from the democratic heritage of New Zealand, its last colonial ruler, but laced with very Samoan distinctions. One is the fact the country isn't fully democratic. But then what country is?
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Except for a few seats reserved for non-Samoans only people holding a matai (chiefly) title are eligible to be elected to parliament. All adults can vote but that has been the case only since 1990.
Parliamentary membership is not so restricted as the matai requirement may suggest. For a matai is elected by a large family as its head and in a country of only 170,000 inhabitants, there are at least 20,000 matai. Furthermore, an MP deemed by a family to have failed to perform risks having his matai title removed, thus ending his parliamentary career.
Interlaced with constitutional government is the fa'matai, a traditional form of governance of an influence felt primarily at village level.
This can have drastic impacts such as the village execution in 1993 of a man who was condemned by the village elders for refusing to accept certain village rules and protocols, resisting a village council decision and playing cricket for, and transporting players of, another village.
Last year members of a minority Christian denomination turned to the Supreme Court for security after being threatened and banned from their village by the majority of supporters of the long prevailing Congregational church. Samoa's democracy and fa'matai are moving towards an accommodation.
The ins and outs of Samoan-style government is described in a collection of articles in Governance in Samoa, published by the Asia Pacific Press at the Australian National University and the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific.
Other new publications are:
- Distance Education in the South Pacific - Nets & Voyages. Published by the
USP's Institute of Pacific Studies and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation's
Pacific Island Nations Fund.
-Songs of Tuvalu. Published by the Institute of Pacific Studies, this is
the translated (from German by Guy Slatter) work of Gerg Koch.
- Mana - Cook Islands Special. Volume 12, Issue 2 of this South Pacific
journal of art, culture, language and literatures.
