Dear Editor,

Re: “You rub my back and I’ll rub your back”

Excellent editorial Savea! I believe you hit the nail on the head straight on!

Tuilaepa and his people are tone deaf. They’ve been in office way too long and have become numb to any meaningful advise and criticism. 

They’ve mastered the “quid pro quo” system and learned to shield any impact from anyone who opposes them and their policies. They have deemed themselves as permanent rulers of Samoa, by way of the “quid pro quo” system they’ve worked all these years to perfect and institute making them invincible from attack no matter who or the direction it comes from.

God is used as convenience and tool, if you will. 

Tuilaepa is a manipulator and a master at it. He knows when to invoke God because it’s what the people want to hear, God is in everything he does. After all we’re God fearing people, just saying His name is enough to make believers, when Tuilaepa says it. It’s shallow but sadly it is true.

And we can go on about how insensitive or malicious Tuilaepa and his administration and their policies are, but they forge on because they 1) don’t care, 2) they’re immune, “you can’t touch me,” 3) they’re entrenched in their positions, 4) the money is good, 5) relentless power and 6) because “they can!”

We can criticize and advise until we are blue in the face… and some of us have. The bottom line as you aptly pointed out is, ““.......very little impact on a population that vote largely on considerations of families, customs, traditions, bribery and treating.”

If it’s the “people’s” government, then we are just as much to blame as the current government. The government is the way it is because the people allow it to be that way. 

This is the root of the problem and the solution to the problem, the “people.” No matter how principled a person is, that principle goes out the window in favor of, “family, custom, tradition, bribery and treating.” 

If the administration is corrupt, the people aren’t far behind.

You kill corruption with change, and change can only happen if people want it. It’s obvious they do not! Nothing more to say.

Stella M