The Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) has taken to social media with a glossy video reel showcasing 40 years of “achievements” — a long list of roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, terminals and technological advances. One might be misled to believe these were gifts bestowed by the party itself.

But the truth is simpler and far less flattering. These developments were funded by public money, the taxes and remittances of hardworking Samoans, and built by the hands of ordinary people. Some were even funded by grants and aid provided to the Samoan people, not to the HRPP, and certainly not as a personal donation to any political party. They are not monuments to a political movement but to the resilience of the Samoan people that paid for and deserved every bit of its progress.

For 40 years, HRPP was entrusted with the privilege of administering the nation’s resources. Any government given such time and control is expected to produce some measure of development. That is not a favour. It is the job.

Still, because HRPP has gone to the trouble of listing and claiming every block laid and every road tarsealed, let us also take a moment to remember the darker legacies that accompanied these developments. A stagnant minimum wage that spanned generations. The introduction of VAGST, which increased the burden on ordinary families. The political move to change the appointment process of the Chief Auditor, weakening independent oversight. A national airline that went bankrupt not once but twice. The creation of a parallel judiciary that fractured public trust in the rule of law. The illegal sale of Samoan passports in Hong Kong. The failure to act decisively during the deadly measles outbreak. The constitutional crisis that plunged the country into uncertainty. A culture of one party ideology that amassed too much power, eventually fracturing into today’s fragmented political landscape. And the darkest chapter of all, Samoa’s first political assassination, a crime that involved HRPP cabinet ministers whose hunger for power went too far. And so the list goes on and on.

These too are part of the record.

And as HRPP attempts to claim full ownership of Samoa’s development, it is worth reminding them that the new political parties now standing in opposition — FAST, SUP, Labour Party and independents — were all born from the belly of HRPP. If the party wants to credit its own success, their former members must be credited too. In fact, HRPP should claim the very existence of these parties as an extension of itself, carrying the DNA it nurtured and developed over decades.

History is not a highlights reel. It is the full picture, and the public has every right to remember all of it.