For the past couple of years I've been blogging about the sick state of Samoa's democracy, and the escalating attempts by the dominant Human Rights Protection Party to evict its opposition from Parliament. Those attempts were successful in March, when a new anti-party-hopping law came into force, forcing three independent opposition MPs (who had dared to try and form a new party) to resign from Parliament. By-elections were called, and the HRPP (which had won every by-election in living memory) claimed that it would crush the opposition.
It didn't. Instead, the HRPP couldn't find a candidate for one of the by-elections, resulting in Va'ai Papu Vailupe being elected unopposed. There are still two by-elections to go on May 14, but the HRPP's monopoly on by-election victories and its aura of invincibility is broken.
