Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa showed the country last week that she is the true leader of the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) Party.

On Tuesday, she crushed the no-confidence motion moved by the Leader of the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) Tuila’epa Sa’ilele by garnering 100 per cent of her party’s votes, including those of members she deposed from Cabinet last month and sent to the backbenches. No one in the FAST Party could have commanded that amount of vote given the fractious nature it is in at present and the hatred MP La’auli Leuatea and his followers have for her and her ministers.

Their reason for voting against the motion is irrelevant when future historians write about our political journey and Fiamē’s reign as our country and the South Pacific nations’ first female Prime Minister. She is not quite Margaret Thatcher, (British Prime Minister, 1979-1990 whom the world dubbed the ‘Iron Lady’ because of her tough, uncompromising decision-making), but tough enough to be able to get every member of FAST to say they have full confidence in her and her so-called minority government.

On Wednesday, she again garnered 100 per cent of her party’s votes plus one HRPP member to gain the two-thirds majority needed to pass the Constitutional Amendment to revert the Judiciary to what it was before the HRPP Government split it into two parallel courts. There are more Bills to come, which will now be passed by Parliament without any opposition from MP La’auli’s faction of her Party.

Let’s not forget that before last week there were calls from senior members of her party that they had expelled Fiamē and some of her ministers from FAST, and her prime ministership was no longer legal. MP La’auli Schmidt: “We’ve decided[d] to remove her… We have already informed the Speaker [of Parliament] about our new appointments.” (Samoa Observer, 21 January). MP Ale Vena: “[T]he Prime Minister should tender her resignation as she knows she no longer has the confidence of her political party.” (Samoa Observer, 21 January). MP Mulipola Analosa Ale-Molio’o: “[We are] concerned about the legitimacy of Fiamē’s current government and how a minority [faction] of FAST continues to hold power when they are no longer members of the party….. The majority of the party had expressed their lack of confidence in the Prime Minister’s leadership.

I find it very difficult to reconcile this hostility towards the Prime Minister by FAST’s spokespeople and the party displaying total submission in the House last week by declaring full confidence in her leadership. It is not only a great victory for Prime Minister Fiamē, but it may also be the beginning of the end of La’auli’s as a political force.

How did she do it? She used a very simple strategy nevertheless a very effective one at that. On January 22, she subtly threatened that if Parliament failed to pass any of the proposed legislations on her agenda, she would “advise the Head of State on the proclamation [in the Constitution] to dissolve Parliament and the country will head to the polls.”  (Samoa Observer 28 January).

On January 28, she again waved this threat like a magic wand by telling the media that she was ready to head that way [snap election] should there be issues in passing bills and laws. She even thumped her nose at her critics within her party by not responding to their comments while carrying on with her duties as head of the Government’s Executive Branch. And when the vote of no confidence was called, her critics and foes in her party showed their true colour.

At last, we know the truth. Fiamē has FAST members by the…..well, proverbial because they are all too scared of a snap election. MP La’auli says they do not want one because “we cannot burden the taxpayers and the people of Samoa with the financial and resource costs of an early election.” Hogwash. Whether we have the elections now or next year, the cost will not be that much different. The real reason FAST MPs do not want an early election is because most of them know, they will lose. People are struggling not only with our extremely high cost of living, failed health services, and the failure of public amenities like power, some of our infrastructures like roads are in almost irreparable condition, in addition to our increasing crime rate, and corruption behaviour of some MPs.

The other issue that arose last week involved a member of the Opposition HRPP, Maulolo Tavita Amosa voting with Fiamē government for the proposed Constitutional Amendment to annul changes to the Judiciary made in 2020 by the HRPP government. His vote enabled Fiamē’s government to achieve the two-thirds majority she needed. That must have caused a huge upset to Tuila’epa and the HRPP who probably believed the Government did not have the number to pass the Amendment. I’m sure they held a serious if not heated discussion in caucus soon after the House adjourned although Tuila’epa said he understood the difficulty faced by Maulolo. Maulolo however, should be congratulated for standing by his conviction and for putting his electoral district and village ahead of his party knowing that going against the party's wish may attract disciplinary actions.

Whilst political parties are necessary in a democracy because they offer competing views of the public good and what is best for the country in the long term, their restraint on individual freedom, on what they can and cannot say or do may frustrate some members causing them to rebel or leave. As French philosopher Albert Camus says: “To be a member of a political party is to exist in an unfree world and the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free in your thoughts and decisions that your very membership of and existence in the party is an act of rebellion.”