Samoa Elections: A personal account.

Well, if there's one thing that can unite the entire country besides the rugby, it's the prospect of power being up for grabs. Last Friday 31st March, 2006 was General Election Day for the Independent State of Samoa. I knew it would be a busy day, but having never really let go of my cynicism for long enough to pay any real attention to Politicians, nothing prepared for me the hectic chaos that was last Friday’s election. Here’s my personal account, a slight warning: You’ll notice about half way down the post that I know very little about actual politics. You have been warned.

Election campaigns.
Some think that politicians that have the gift of the gab are the ones that win. Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy – will forever be remembered as leaders that inspired the masses. From the perspective of an observer of the system, a pair of eyes inside looking out, if you will, I say this. The truth in Samoa about politics is that come election day, nobody really cares what you say. In Samoa, very few people besides other politicians and the media care about the contents of your manifesto or what your stance on immigration is. And politicians and the media only care because it's their job to care and the rest are just typical Samoans looking for some scandal to talk about, myself included. O ai le ga kama? O fagau a ai? Sa faigaluega I fea?

Euthanasia? WTO? Pensions? The Dole? Nobody except those in office really care. When considering the Faipule or Member of Parliament, voters concerns are much closer to the heart, or rather closer to the breast pocket that holds their wallet. "Can you pay my children's school fees?" "There has been a death in the family and I need money?" These are the questions that need answering for the majority of voters on the Samoan Electoral roll. Of course this implies that votes can be bought. I wish I could say that it’s not that simple but quite frankly I think it is.

So we've established that the right candidate, requires a deep pocket, but what sets one man with a deep pocket off against another man with a deep pocket? This is the idealist in me saying this but the answer lies in the creed of the matai (high chief) O le ala i le pule o le tautua. The way to power is through service. The winning candidate is one that serves his people (or has the most relatives and alliances in the villages). The majority of the candidates that win and survive are the ones that live in the village and continuously serve the people of the village. He is established in the village and rallies to improve the roads and schools and way of life of the people in his constituency. But enough of my idealistic babble, there's got to be more to it than dollar signs right? Only just.

The old that adage that blood runs thicker than water was almost certainly quoted from a Samoan or perhaps not, but it easily could have been. An entire family, and I'm not just talking about a man wife and their two adult children here, an entire extended family will vote as it's matai instruct it to. The smart politician knows that it pays him no favours to create any bad blood with the matai with ten brothers and sisters each with ten sons and ten daughters and their wives and husbands respectively so close to the election.

In a nutshell voting has everything to do with loyalty and cash and almost nothing to do with education policies and medical systems.

Do it for your country!

Election Day.
I imagine Election day in Samoa is different from Election day anywhere else in the world. The whole country is focused on the polls, businesses close shop for the day and there is a lot of chicken curry prepared. The madness starts well before dawn with Candidate committees up early to cook breakfast for voters. You see, in Samoa – voters are picked up from home by candidate committee members, given a feed before and after they are transported to vote and then possibly fed again before being driven home by committee vehicles. Candidate campaign committees do everything short of ticking the box for you. Needless to say, there was a lot of chicken curry and chop suey. There are laws in place to limit the value spent on food and to forbid any exchange of cash, but we all know that bribes are part of the election territory and besides, politicians by definition are above the law.

I was called in to help out one of my Uncles who was a candidate running in the Vaisigano Nu. 1 constituency. Four of my Uncles ran from different constituencies on the day, I was a driver for one of them, helped cook for the other one, lent my cellphone to the other one’s committee for the election day and voted for the other one. Several large tents were erected along both sides in my Uncle’s timber yard in town skirting the industrial area. The tents were Head Quarters for two of my Uncles, both candidates running from different constituencies in Savaii.

My job was as a driver to transport voters from their homes to HQ, to the ballots and back to HQ and then back to their homes. We had a car pool of about 10 or so vehicles to pick up voters, each car with a driver and committee member to pick up groups of voters and to bring them to HQ. Drivers had been on the road since 6am and by the time I arrived at HQ at about 7am, there were already small crowds of voters eating breakfast waiting to be taken to the ballots. The plan was to round up the voters so that when the voting booths opened at 9am voters would be outside and ready to tick. No time was wasted as there was only a 9am – 3pm window to cast votes. Other committee members had worked tirelessly into the night to prepare food for the masses. Lord only knows how many kilometres I clocked that morning. At 9am, the vans and buses started to take people to the ballots while others, myself included transported food from another location to HQ. We scooped, packed, stacked and delivered about 400 plates of food to HQ by about 10.30am. It was still only morning but I could feel the exhaustion clawing at me.

As a voter.
I excused myself to go and cast my vote and headed down to Vaimoso Primary School where the special booths for voting for constituencies in Savaii were located. There were bustling crowds, lines bursting out of every door and little tables set up by committee members to round up their voters. I found the Vaisigano #1 line and was exhausted just looking at it. There was at least 200 people in line. I took my place at the back of the line and was relieved to see a few relatives close to me in line. The wait would be a while. In the 3 hours that it took to get to the front of the line, there was a lot of pushing, shoving, one woman even passed out. I heard murmurs from people complaining that she’d faked it to get to the front of line. Heh. At long last I cast my vote and returned to HQ and was utterly relieved that I only have to go through that kind of madness once every five years. Not counting all the nights spent in the crowds at Bad Billys.

We continued to transport well up until 7pm that night when my cousin, a fellow driver decided we had done our bit for the campaign and it was time to nullify the exhaustion with some rest or some hard liquor. The sheer extravagance of the whole affair made me feel sorry for the elections losers who would have endured a huge amount of sunk cost. Foolish sods.

Post Mortem. Mandatory section about the actual politics.
Now that it’s all been and done, what do I think of the results? There's a Bloody good website of the results too I reckon.

HRPP stays in power.
Personally, I’m not in the least bit surprised. That’s not to say that I think he’s the best person for the job, but I think he’s the person most people in the country have confidence can do the job. He’s an educated man that knows how to rule the country and most of all he’s a smart politician that has his cocktail recipe of diplomacy and corruption mixed and shaken and priced just right for majority of the voting public to buy it.

The opposition. SDUP.
There is much to be said about this party that people love to hate. They are about as radical as you can be in the Samoan parliament. They blatantly oppose the government, raise even the slightest issue and generally create a right royal rark up whenever they can. At the advent of all this radical action it appeared to me that they were out to slander the government rather than give any plausible reasons for me to agree with them. But as it continued I began to realize that corruption is so deeply set in the processes, in the people, in the system (everyone knows that whether or not they admit it) that radical action seemed like the only way to get people to notice. And if not by SDUP then by who? If the government are not constantly thrown into the public spotlight for opposition and international or public scrutiny, we run the risk of government ministers sitting too comfortably in their first class airplane seats and swivel chairs in their air con offices. So power to the opposition I say.

Christian Party, Samoa Party, Progressive Party.
No candidates. To be honest, I laughed… hard. How embarrassing is that, fofola faasoloado foliga I luga o le Lau TV ae airena hitch. Ha ha fucking ha. The truth is, while their intentions are noble (then again, since when was a Politician ever noble?) I put their failure to earn a single seat (Mwuahahaha) down to the fact that they campaigned WAY too late and most to the fact that they simply don’t have the credibility of someone like say, Tuilaepa to rule the country. So it’s early days yet. Aside from the good laugh, the only joy I got from seeing these parties in this years elections was that it was a clear demonstration of political freedom in this country. We are not afraid to challenge authority that we see as not fair and just, we don’t take that kind of shit lying down. It will be interesting to see which parties persevere.

A closing note.
I was thinking about how the “Palota” or Ballot was introduced by the white man to tame this uncivilized society, What do these people know of politics and government? Scoffs the white man. I think back to the introduction of the Universal Sufferage so that all individuals above the age of 21 could exercise their constitutional right to freedom. With their cotton coats and leather boots they introduced our barefoot forefathers to the educated ways of the free world.

Yet, as I sit here, looking in hindsight to my first election experience, I think to myself about the crazy transactions of votes in the currency of chicken curry and school fees, that went on between the people in this county in the brawl for power. The extravagance and lies, I imagine that Wall Street brokers pale in comparison to the negotiating skills of our people. If the white man’s world is anything like his ‘palota’, it is anything but free.