hotter water?

Gov. Haydon in hotter water?

From a Pago correspondent Despite opposition from the legis lature of American Samoa and a few influential members of the US Congress, the Interior Department has gone ahead with its transfer of Associate Justice Goss from American Samoa to Washington, DC. With his family he left in September, stating publicly that he will be fighting the whole issue and, like Macarthur, in tends to return.

Critics of controversial Governor John M. Haydon say Haydon got rid of Goss because he stood in the way of the Governor’s efforts to deport a thorn in his side in the form of Jake King, who runs the highly critical Samoa News (PIM, Sept., p. 36).

While Goss’ transfer might have given Governor Haydon some satis faction, he has presumably got none from the decision of the new associate judge reversing the deporta tion order against King (see p. 43).

And meanwhile he seems to be in hot water himself with the Washing ton Administration. He called Goss “a lousy judge”, a comment which was reported in the Washington Post, and which apparently earned Haydon a reprimand. The governor’s attempts to deport King have been given wide publicity in America, and this hasn’t done Haydon’s image any good.

In September the governor was ah tending a governor’s conference in Puerto Rico, after which he was sup posed to have some home leave be fore returning to Samoa on October 20. He will have been away two months, something of a record, and people are asking whether the gover nor will return.

Despite his idiosyncracies, the majority of Samoans have come to like Haydon. He has given the territory the biggest budget in its history, some SUS 22 million for 1972, and he has also done a lot in replacing contract employees with qualified Samoans, and in beautifying the island. These and other achieve ments are in his favour and most of the legislature would back him.

His methods might be clumsy, but Samoans are not revolutionaries.

They will tolerate even a bad gover nor, on the assumption that in time their difficulties will be solved.

And an important point is that they fear too much interference from Washington, and don’t want to give Washington an excuse to interfere.