Dear Editor,

Our rural communities have truly stepped up their preparations for the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting.

Village beautification projects are well underway, and you can see our national pride on full display from the airport to the capital city.

However, Apia needs to match the efforts of our villages and communities.

A major facelift is needed, including the repainting of most Government and commercial buildings.

Dilapidated structures like the ugly Public Service Association building at Fugalei need to be demolished, urgent maintenance and repair works at the Moto’otua Hospital are needed to complement the yet-to-be-completed fence, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment needs to trim the tall bushes along Mulinu’u road to the Tama Aiga burial grounds.

In addition, the media is complaining about the tight media restrictions imposed by the authorities during CHOGM, which the Government claims is a policy from the Commonwealth’s Blue Book.

During the 2014 Small Islands Developing States Conference, Samoa hosted the 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 all 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.

Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi

Leader of HRPP