of the Pacific Islands

The uncontested politician of the Pacific Islands

By David North

This November, for the second elec tion in a row, Robert Underwood, the Democratic Congressman from Guam, will be re-elected to his job in

Washington without opposition.

It’s a job worth fighting for - and there have been spirited battles in the past - but Underwood is apparently so good at what he does that no one bothers to run against him. The pay is attractive - SUS 133,600 per year - and there is important work for Guam to be done in Washington, but Underwood is again without an opponent.

The voters in the American Island Territories - Guam, CNMI, and American Samoa - do not have anything to say about the choice of president, but there are other vigorous elections in Guam and American Samoa this year. (CNMI will elect a governor and legislature next year.) With the congressional seat decided, Guam’s voters can concentrate on the ter ritorial senate, a 21-member body; all seats are up this year, as they are every two years.

If Underwood is the most successful politician in the insular Pacific, the Guam senate is the region’s most cosmopolitan legislative body. The group of 21 always includes members from both parties (Democrats and Republicans), both sexes, and while Chamorros are in the majority, there are always Haoles (Mainlanders), and people of mixed Haole and Chamorro descent (Underwood is in that category) and of mixed Chamorro and Philippine ancestry.

There are currently six women in the senate, and it is presided over by another woman. Lieutenant Governor Madeleine Bordallo, the Haole widow of the oft elected late governor, Ricky Bordallo, both Democrats.

In American Samoa - in contrast - all the major offices are briskly contested and, with one interesting exception, women play minor roles.

Samoa’s voters in November will fill every elective position in the territory, the

governor, the Lt governor, the congress man and all members of both houses of

the legislature.

Most attention is being paid to the cur rently tight contest for the governorship, with the incumbent, A P Lutali, seeking another term.

Things have not gone well for the gov ernor in his second four-year term; he was felled by a stroke and has to use a wheelchair. He has had trouble controlling his own cabinet, and fired many of his own appointees. At one point, a cloud came over his son, the veteran police offi cer Julius Lutali, and he was forced out as

commissioner of public safety.

Further, Lutali, like all Samoan gover nors, has faced an almost continuous financial crisis, with too little tax money, too many people on the payroll and too many demands for services. Further, the once generous Mainland government has become a little less generous.

Faced with this misery, some politi cians in their 70s would simply retire at the end of their term, but Lutali has sought a third term. According to the Samoa News polls, he will be lucky if he gets 10 per cent of the vote, and comes in third.

Leading the polls by a small margin is Lutali’s former ally, the sitting Lt gover nor, Tauese Sunia. Breathing down Tauese’s neck is Leala Peter Reid Jr, a member of the senate, and a close relative of Peter Tali Coleman, the oft-elected for mer governor and lifetime rival of Lutali.

There are also two minor candidates: Tufele Li’a, once Lt governor to Coleman, and now district governor of the outlying Manu’a Islands (a powerless office) and Tuika Tuika, a perennial candidate. Each of the five has a running mate for Lt gov ernor; in American Samoa one votes for the two offices simultaneously, just as Mainlanders vote for both president and vice-president at the same time.

The other territory-wide election is for the seat in the House of Representatives in Washington. The delegates from

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American Samoa and Guam (and from the three other jurisdictions) cannot vote on the Floor of the House but do so in cau cuses and committee meetings; their prin cipal role is to serve as advocates of their

jurisdictions.

Running are: Eni F H Faleomavaega, the incumbent Democrat, and his second time opponent, Amata Coleman

Radewagen.

Faleomavaega, a Mainland-trained lawyer, has been re-elected with growing margins since he arrived in the House in 1988. In that year, Faleomavaega suc ceeded the disgraced Fofo Sunia, who had run afoul of Mainland prosecutors follow ing a payroll scandal; that Sunia, now the Fono’s ranking staffer, is brother to guber natorial candidate Tauese, as well as to two other siblings who served for awhile in Lutali’s cabinet.

Faleomavaega sometimes appears to have better relations with Mainland lead ership types (for example, other congress man and government administrators) than he does with some of the older, tradition al leaders in the Islands. (The head of his own clan once threatened to take away

Faleomavaega’s name.)

The congressman, who has brought subsidised food (via food stamps) to the

Politics

elderly and the disabled on the Islands, is also known for his fierce opposition to nuclear testing - and was, in effect, briefly detained by French gendarmes for his protests (PIM Oct 1995).

His opponent, Amata Radewagen, is not only former Governor Coleman’s daughter (and approximately a cousin of Leala Peter Reid Jr), she is a political power in her own right, as Republican National Committeewoman from American Samoa, member of the execu

tive committee of the Republican National Committee, and Washington lob

byist for the largely independent territori

al public utilities department.

During the George Bush administra tion she worked with the newly free Central Asian nations, the “stans” in what was the Soviet Union; further, in the Islands, has led a campaign against breast cancer.

The incumbent leads Radewagen by a substantial margin in the Samoa News

polls.

Trailing in third place is Gus Hannemann, a former member of the Fono, and brother to Muffi Hannemann, a Samoan who once came close to repre senting Hawaii in the US House.

All the seats in the Fono are up this year. This body is, unlike the Guam sen

ate, non-cosmopolitan.

While a woman gets elected to the lower house once in a while, everyone is Samoan; the Upper House is elected by the chiefs ( matai , mostly males) and no woman, and no non-Samoan has even attempted to become a member. If some lawyer were to bring the House-of-Lords type voting rules into a Mainland court, saying they were unconstitutional, the lawyer would win hands-down, but no one has made the effort. ■

American Samoa’s Faleomavaega...better relations with Mainland leadership types than with traditional leaders