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International Election Special: Samoa 2025
22 Plays11 days ago
On 29th August 2025, Samoa votes in its first general election since 2021. In this episode of The Observations Podcast Matt Davis our Special Internation Election Editor interviews Dr. Iati Iati of the University of Victoria in Wellington (New Zealand). The election will see contest between traditional parties and newer parties that have emerged over the past few years.
This is the second in our series of elections overseas, drawing upon the expertise of global academics to make deep dives into elections that don’t make the headlines around the world.
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Transcript
Introduction to Samoa
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Observations podcast. I'm Matt Davis, the special international elections correspondent. Today, we'll be talking about a country that has some upcoming elections in the South Pacific Ocean.
00:00:23
Speaker
Today, we'll be discussing Samoa. Samoa is an island nation in Polynesia, a part of Oceania. It has a population of roughly 220,000 people.
00:00:35
Speaker
For our UK listeners, that puts it at a similar population size to Portsmouth. Whilst there has been some British involvement in Samoa, perhaps playing a part in its love for rugby, it was never a part of the British Empire.
00:00:49
Speaker
In 1899, it became a German protectorate and remained so until the First World War. after which it was administered by New Zealand until gaining independence in 1962 with the signing of the Treaty of Friendship.
Cultural and Sports Ties
00:01:06
Speaker
So who might you know who's related to Samoa? Well, the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, among many others, moved to Samoa in 1890 after touring the Pacific Islands, writing some of his last works there, such as The Ebb Tide.
00:01:25
Speaker
In terms of pop culture and sport, there are a few famous people that come from Samoan descent. These include the New Zealand Samoan boxer, David Tuoh, and Dwayne Rock Johnson. Dwayne Johnson's links to Samoa mean that part of the film Fast and Furious, Hobbs and Shaw was set in Samoa, although these scenes were typically filmed in Hawaii.
Samoan Parliamentary System
00:01:49
Speaker
You may even know that rugby union is considered the Samoan national sport, And as a result of this, they played in every Rugby World Cup since 1991. So
00:02:03
Speaker
so what's interesting about Samoa? Well, in 2011, Samoa decided to move the international date line, meaning that they skipped from the 29th of December, 2011, to the 31st of December.
00:02:18
Speaker
This was largely to ease trade with countries such as New Zealand and Australia, as then they were no longer ah whole day apart.
00:02:27
Speaker
So Samoa has an election coming up on Friday the 29th of August. And to talk through some of the background ah to this election and Samoa democracy more broadly, I'm delighted to have a key expert in the field in the podcast with me today.
00:02:41
Speaker
Joining me from the other side of the world, New Zealand, is Dr Yati Yati, a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written on topics including the last Samoan election in 2021, and the extent to which Samoa's institutions can be considered democratic.
00:02:59
Speaker
So to talk through some of the background of this election and Samoan democracy more broadly, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Yati Yati, a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington.
00:03:11
Speaker
Thank you for joining me today.
Role of Chiefly Titles
00:03:12
Speaker
Thanks for having me. To start us off, how does the electoral system work? I understand that it's a parliamentary system,
00:03:22
Speaker
but with it's it's not necessarily that similar to how the UK system or New Zealand system even works. Well, it in some ways it is similar to the Westminster style of democracy in that we have a legislative assembly.
00:03:36
Speaker
From the legislative assembly, ah you get cabinet, et cetera. and also But instead of the Westminster system, we're here in New Zealand, you would have the governor general who has to sign off on the bills before they become law.
00:03:51
Speaker
In Samoa we have a head of state. So detached from the governor general system that we would have here in New Zealand, Cook Islands, New Way, etc. So kind of similar to the Westminster system, but with some differences.
00:04:04
Speaker
The other major difference is that all the members of parliament had to hold traditional chiefly titles. So if you don't hold a title, you're not ah eligible to run as a candidate for parliament.
00:04:19
Speaker
Initially that wasn't the case. There were two seats that were made available for those that did not hold traditional chiefly titles, but that's since been erased and now every member of parliament has to have chiefly title to run for parliament.
2021 Election and FAST Party
00:04:35
Speaker
Okay, so what role do these, um well, you have this traditional system of governance in Samoa, the fa'a matai, with these matai, these um chiefs that manage family affairs and land, what sort of role do they play in the system?
00:04:52
Speaker
So at independence, Samoa wanted to combine their traditional political system, which allowed for a more grassroots democracy. ah They wanted to comine combine that with a national political system that would allow them to operate as a nation state.
00:05:12
Speaker
So their system takes the best of the tradition where democracy is rooted locally within what you would refer to as a polity. Some may refer to it as a village.
00:05:24
Speaker
And taking that and integrating it ah to to the national level institutions. So in some respects, it's it' sort of like a direct democracy mixed with representative democracy.
00:05:38
Speaker
So for the Samoans, it was a way to make sure that the people... um The constituents had a very close relationship with their representatives. That's quite an interesting yeah system to do and I'd say to have that link to somebody Yeah, if I can expand little bit on it. um So what it allows is if there's a ah member of parliament who is not representing his or her constituencies as they would like, they could always take their chiefly title away.
00:06:10
Speaker
And if that's the only chiefly title that member has, it then makes them ineligible for Parliament.
Political Turmoil and Early Elections
00:06:16
Speaker
So there you can see the very close connection between the constituents and their representatives.
00:06:22
Speaker
And of course, these chiefly titles, they don't have a set tenure ah with their bestowments. you could bestow today and take it away, say, in the next few months. So to always make sure that there's a close connection between the representative and the constituents, which is why I was saying there's this is very close direct democracy mixed with sort of the representative democracy.
00:06:45
Speaker
Now, to get an idea of the context of this election, I think it's important to note that the previous election was really quite historic. The Human Rights Protection Party had been largely dominant since winning in 1982, right up until its defeat in 2021, when the FAST Party, with FAST being an acronym for Samoans United in Faith, in Samoan, won the election.
00:07:11
Speaker
Could you provide some background as to how the FAST Party won this election? whilst only being formed a year before? ah Since 1982, they've effectively been in power until the last election.
00:07:25
Speaker
I say effectively because there was a brief period during 1986 when a coalition government came into power for a few years. But so most of that coalition government was from the HRPP anyway, so people tend to take it as the HRPP has been in power since 1982.
00:07:43
Speaker
from nineteen eighty two until the last el election when they lost. um At the last election, we saw the, well, just before it, we saw the rise of this new party.
00:07:54
Speaker
New in the sense that it was ah a new political party, but old in the sense that its leaders, um many of them were actually former HRPP anyway. So they had a lot of political history,
00:08:07
Speaker
and political ties that worked in their favour to come into power. And so it was a landmark um election, obviously, since the HRPP has been in power for so long.
00:08:18
Speaker
But in saying that, there were obviously some ties back to the HRPP base. The result in 2021 was pretty much split evenly in terms of the seats with the largest two parties.
00:08:34
Speaker
What impacts did this have? So because they were, I think it was like one seat difference. And then there was a call by the electoral commissioner, uh, based on a constitutional provision that, uh, required 10% of a minimum of 10% of seats to be held by women based on that has called made it even between both sides, which led to a very drawn out, um, guess the election process that involved the courts,
00:09:07
Speaker
And eventually, fast was the Fast Party, which won the election, eventually they did come into power months later. isn ah We'll now stop for a quick break.
00:09:21
Speaker
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00:09:35
Speaker
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00:09:55
Speaker
Strap in. Hold on. It's the Observations Podcast Series on elections that shook the world.
00:10:12
Speaker
And welcome back. So moving on to this upcoming election, it seems like it's been a pretty tumultuous year and ah pretty tumultuous time in power in general.
00:10:25
Speaker
ah What are some of the key things that have led to this election being called earlier than expected?
00:10:34
Speaker
Primarily, it was because of factions that emerged from within the ruling party. And um it's a very messy background as to why these factions emerged.
00:10:48
Speaker
It involves court cases, which recently um kind of concluded the final judgment hasn't come out yet. But um with that background aside, these factions then basically led to the prime minister having her supporters and the leader of the party, who was not the prime minister,
00:11:11
Speaker
having the majority of supporters from what was the FAST party. So what we then had and in government was sort of three factions. You had the old party, the HRPP, you had the Prime Minister's faction, which was the smallest of them, and then you had the leader of the FAST with his own faction, which was the largest.
00:11:33
Speaker
And so... Over the last few months, they've been politicking um to see whether the leader or the prime minister should step down. That was the position of the fast party, that she should step down and relinquish power to them.
00:11:50
Speaker
Obviously, this was not in line with the electoral laws, so she held on to her ah position.
HRPP's Comeback and New Political Landscape
00:11:58
Speaker
um She defeated two votes of no confidence. She won both of them.
00:12:03
Speaker
But then more recently, when they went to pass the budget, she did not succeed on that one. And so think it was around June the 3rd that she advised the head of state to dissolve parliament.
00:12:16
Speaker
Okay. So do you think the Human Rights Protection Party have a chance at regaining power in this election? They certainly have a, they're certainly in a strong position. And I say they're in a strong position because We've seen a very sort of messy time in office from the fast party.
00:12:36
Speaker
Obviously, a lot of bills that they probably wanted to get passed and not get passed. um There was the internal politicking, which spilled out into the broader legislative assembly.
00:12:48
Speaker
So people would have seen that brief period. as being in contrast to what was generally perceived to be a long period of stability in Samoan politics. So in that respect, ah you'd have to say the HRPP is standing on some pretty solid ground going into the next election.
00:13:10
Speaker
Does this sort of politicking within parties, given some parties have you know remained in power for quite long periods of time, is this commonplace in Samoan politics?
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, not when HRPP was in power, obviously, that there was a lot of party discipline, which allowed them to stay together up until the last election.
00:13:34
Speaker
But yeah there are always competing you know, politicians within within different parties and even within the HRPP. So obviously they weren't those issues were not major enough to cause any splinters or any major factions until the issues that emerged for the last election.
00:13:55
Speaker
But since then, obviously, there' have been ah different factions have risen up and you've had different um candidates who now see more opportunity for them to take the reins of power, obviously, with all that's happened over the last few years. So we we might expect to see more of that sort of politicking within Parliament than we had previously.
00:14:22
Speaker
Okay. And do you think I'll take the form of new parties formed? I know that the um former Prime Minister is entittake the former leader is entering this election with a new party, or is it more likely to be within parties?
00:14:38
Speaker
I think there will be more political parties who will try and get, at least test the waters to see that if they have enough support to run at the next election. Obviously, with the win by the fast party, it's signaled to others that um the door is now open for them to make a run for for for parliament.
00:15:00
Speaker
So in that respect, people are seeing more opportunities than they previously did because prior to the last election, the election before that, the HRPP won by a huge landslide.
00:15:12
Speaker
So the message I guess other people would have got was we really don't have a chance.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:15:17
Speaker
But now with Fast Party having won the last election and with all these emerging political parties, i i think different groups are seeing more opportunities than they previously did have.
00:15:28
Speaker
Right, yeah, it definitely seems like there's just, in general, a lot more movement within Samoan politics at the moment. Well, thank you very much for joining me today. I really appreciate you coming on. I feel like um it's been very informative and i think, well, I hope our listeners will have learned a lot about how the Samoan system works and a little bit of context about this upcoming election.
00:15:52
Speaker
I'm glad to help and thanks for having me on.
00:16:06
Speaker
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00:16:19
Speaker
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