Samoa Observer (29/04/2024) article titled, “La’auli challenges Samoa Observer Editorial Board” raise a few issues for those who value the freedom of speech and expression enshrined in section 13(1)(a) of our Constitution.

To begin with, the Minister of Agriculture and Leader of the ruling FAST Party is reported as saying, “[Tuila’epa] needs to be reminded that he is no longer the Prime Minister…He needs to be reminded that we are now leading the government….He needs to know his place.” This is apparently in response to a letter to the editor by Tuila’epa as Leader of the Opposition Party proposing a solution to the Afega-Leauva’a land dispute.

Why the Leader of FAST is so upset, or why Tuila’epa should be prevented from expressing an opinion because he’s no longer in power, as the newspaper reported, is hard to understand. As Leader of the Opposition Tuila’epa’s role is to question the government of the day on any issue pertaining to the proper running of the country, raise matters regarding the constitutionality of certain decisions or actions by government ministers and criticize instances of dysfunction by the Executive or the Judiciary in a constructive way by making counter proposals that will help improve the delivery and implementation of government policies in the general interest of the public.

Every democratic government has an Opposition. Only governments led by demagogues or wannabe demagogues don’t.

If a politician doesn’t like being criticized, then she/he should stay out of politics because once you become a politician, you become public property. Your every word, act and behaviour are gulped up and commented upon by the media and the public, especially if they do not measure up to the standard expected of a good leader. And there have been several incidents of ministers in the FAST government gaming the system to benefit themselves that the public have rightly condemned.

Threatening people with defamation because you don’t like what they say is not going to make people respect you as a leader because respect is something you can’t demand from people; you must earn it regardless of your social, economic, or political status. The best way to counter what the government considers negative publicity is for ministers concerned to write Op-Eds to inform the public of the reason behind a particular decision, a lá the Minister of Justice’s recent response to the former Prime Minister and Leader of HRPP’s letter referred to above.

On the other hand, I totally agree with the Leader of FAST’s comment about people who hide behind pseudonyms when expressing personal opinions in the media. Worst are the ‘keyboard warrior’ supporters of both FAST and HRPP on social media. They are exactly what the Leader of FAST called as lacking courage.

However, newspapers are a different matter as their editorial is the collective opinion of editors and managers and it is usually unsigned, a trend set by the New York Times, and The Washington Post and is now followed by newspapers worldwide. It reflects the majority vote of the Editorial Board, which is a more democratic process than having one individual write the editorial. And the purpose of an editorial is to influence public opinion, make readers think critically about a particular issue and if necessary, act. It is not supposed to be friendly to the Government or the Opposition. The HRPP government had similar complaints over the past many years to those of the Leader of FAST which says a lot about how well the Samoa Observer is doing its job.

What concerns me most about the Leader of FAST’s complaint is the not-so-subtle threat to non-Samoan employees of the Samoa Observer (“foreigners”) and the notion that only true Samoans can write about Samoa. Politicians should be very careful not to toss around such careless statements because when we get down to define what a “True Samoan” is, it may well exclude them.