Without the Commonwealth Blue Book that supposedly dictated the arrangement for the media to cover the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2024 here in Samoa, we are thankful to the Commonwealth Secretariat for setting the record straight about the correct arrangement for news coverage of the meeting.

We also thank the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) leader, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, for reminding us that we've dealt with an even bigger meeting before; but he blames the government for the tight restrictions on the media.

He says: During the 2014 Small Islands Development States Conference, Samoa hosted 193 Member States of the United Nations.

The United Nations is more than three times the size of the Commonwealth which only has 56 member countries.

There were difficult negotiations with the UN Secretariat on the hosting arrangements, but our skilful Samoan officials always found creative solutions.

Our Samoan people were granted access to the historic UN meeting that would inspire our children to pursue future leadership on the world stage.

We made sure that our local Samoan media had access to delegations, and even set up their own booths in main meeting venues.

We invited and encouraged our Samoan families to visit the SIDS conference venue at Tuanaimato to see what a global meeting looked like.

We gave access to SIDS to our Samoan people while guaranteeing the security and safety of all Heads of State, Governments and delegations.

Outside of the conference venues, we kept the inconveniences and interruptions to the daily lives of our local families to a minimum including the flow of traffic.

We are sure that the CHOGM media and other restrictions that we are hearing about are not coming from the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi leadership needs to behave like a real host government. They must also stop sending civil servants out to defend FAST policy decisions.

Show some pride, lead, and take responsibility. Tell the truth.

I do not apologise for repeating what the SAMOA OBSERVER has already reported because I think the HRPP leader has voiced questions that need to be answered.

I also know that this is a different organisation meeting but no one can argue with Tuilaepa's assertion that the SIDS conference was more than three times bigger than next month's CHOGM; so why so tight an arrangement for the media?

We all know that the number of reporters and the sizes of the venues must determine those who can attend at each venue; hence the pool system.

At the last CHOGM, for example, the pool numbers for the first nine events were:

Official Welcome, 4; Official Opening - 15 + 30; Family photo - 5; HRH Prince of Wales Lunch - 7; Reception - 8; Spouses luncheon on cervical cancer elimination -5; Executive Session 1 - 25; Executive Session 2 - 25; President's visit - 7.

No doubt the numbers here would be similar.

But the question for us is: Are the skilful Samoan negotiating officials that Tuilaepa says were so adept at solving tricky questions of the SIDS conference still in government service? If not, why not? The SIDS conference was ten (10) years ago and some may have retired. But surely not all of them have gone!

Anyway, may the first CHOGM ever held on a small Pacific Island be successful? May our leaders work together with our hardworking village people to make CHOGM SAMOA 2024 a great success.