Sherry gives

Pago officials a headache

From a Pago Pago correspondent If you speak to expatriate officers of American Samoa about one Sherry O’Sullivan, they’ll tell you they don’t want to know about her but will also admit that she does a good job of goading the government even if she may not always be entirely accurate in the assertions she makes.

Sherry was the editor of the now defunct Underground Press of American Samoa which ceased pub lication about six months ago be cause its proprietor, Sherry O’Sulli van, had been denied a business licence to operate in American Samoa.

Now Sherry, a Canadian citizen, has produced the first edition of the Underground Monthly apparently without bothering about the con vention of acquiring a licence.

She announced that the paper has a staff which has a cast of multiple personalities with Sherry O’Sullivan filling the roles of editor, publisher, art editor, advertising manager, lay out artist, legal adviser, cartoonist, distributor, columnist, reporter, scape goat and other categories ad nau seam.

The Underground Monthly prints a retraction of certain statements made in the Underground Press con cerning allegations about the oper ations of Water Resources Inter national and announces that the same company has scrapped its SUS 1,000,000 libel suit against the Underground Press and its editor.

The Underground Monthly fires trenchant salvos at all and sundry in high positions in American Samoa and frequently adds to the reports carried in the Samoan News.

The latter, in reporting a Fono joint committee investigation into the shooting of an escaped convict, states that the inquiry is expected to resume “amid reports of in committee frictions and the projected arrival of potentially explosive in formation concerning Public Safety Commissioner Tufele Li’a”.

In the Underground Monthly it is alleged that “while practising upside down reading in a certain office 1 saw a San Diego portrait” of a cer tain official. “Unfortunately it was one of those funny portraits with

both a front and side view. He was wearing a number. That number was 2994 ’.

Sherry also comments that the “liquor store has a liquid inventory of almost a quarter of a million dollars! I would love to have the job of reducing that inventory”, or “has anyone ever noticed when the power cuts off during the business day how fast the bars fill up?” or “Passports for anyone? For only $2OO you can buy a passport from some of our less-ethical and more-artistic oriental from Western Samoa is still only a hundred . . . For this kind of visa friends. The going rate for a visa you must go to more local sources.

So they say . . . those who have bought them”.

How long the Underground

Monthly will continue to appear is anyone’s guess. At present it would seem to offer a measure of financial viability for its entrepreneur as it carries substantial advertising blocks placed by a number of the larger l° ca l commercial concerns, It is also significant that a block is carried which says that “for rent, c/- PO Box 1465 Pago Pago (which happens to be the same postal address as the Underground Monthly) is a versatile creative and brilliant mind. Will tackle any task. Cheap daily rates”.