Legal Pluralism and Politics in Samoa: The Faamatai, Monotaga and the Samoa Electoral Act 1963

Abstract

This chapter seeks to discuss the claim that Samoa has a dual legal system. It explores how an understanding of the interplay between (1) the faamatai (Samoa’s chiefly system), (2) Samoa’s parliamentary system, (3) the faasamoa (Samoa’s customary system), and (4) the faakerisiano (Samoa’s Christian system) can help us better understand this claim. It argues the importance of being able to read cultural nuance into case law, political acts and everyday practices of custom. Samoa’s recent H.R.P.P landslide election victory means that Samoa effectively has a one-party state where law-making will be dominated by H.R.P.P persuasions over the next 5 years. Without the checks and balances offered by an opposition party, Samoa’s voting public must find other ways to hold parliament and the government accountable to its prized rule of law—a rule of law assumed to be capable of giving due regard to the nuances of custom and culture i.e. to Samoa’s faasamoa, aganuu, agaifanua, and tu ma aga, as hoped for by the Constitution. In Samoa, all parliamentarians must by state law hold a matai or chiefly title. This puts the faamatai squarely within the decision-making whirlpool of Samoa’s Westminster parliamentary style democracy. Knowing, among other things, how to navigate the codes of conduct required of a matai as opposed to a parliamentarian requires deliberate examination of what these codes are in theory and in practice. This opens the gates to an analysis of the historical and ideological foundations of both systems or codes—where they meet and where they do not. Much is known about the philosophical bases of the jurisprudential traditions of the common law and Westminster politics. Very little deliberate scholarly examination is, however, available on the indigenous jurisprudence of small island states, like Samoa. Moreover, the significance of the discourse of God—of both God Ieova and God Tagaloa—to Samoa’s contemporary legal and governing discourses, is germane to a study of legal pluralism in Samoa. A lack of scholarly attention to the place of theology in understandings of law, culture and custom in the indigenous Pacific ensures that any examinations of legal pluralism in small island states like Samoa will, more often than not, miss the point. Therefore, knowing how to read cultural nuance in Samoan law and politics, understanding how the ‘blending’ of the faamatai and parliamentary democracy works (or not), and understanding the co-existence of God Ieova and God Tagaloa in state and custom laws, are elements emphasised in this chapter in its exploration of legal pluralism and party politics in Samoa.