Up In arms oven God

By Chris Peteru

Ageing Samoan Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana is known for his strong Christian beliefs. In parliament he likes to justify what the curiously named Human rights Protection Party does by intimating he is following the will of the Lord, while in the same breath managing to chastise another creation of god, Opposition leader Tuatara Toupua Tamasese for the most basic heresy not attending morning prayer meetings.

That spiritual belief surged to potentially prophetic status when he told the opening of the seventh Evangelical Fellowship of the South Pacific Prayer Assembly that in a hos pital bed and close to death in 1981 he had a vision: “I saw something that was heaven.

“I see (sic) mountains, green mountains. And a blue sea.

And the children singing ‘Hallelujah to the Almighty God’.

“I didn’t pray for life; I asked God to terminate my life.”

Given the cost of living today there would be no shortage of Samoans willing to share that prayer with him. Choking back what looked to be tears of ecstasy he called out to the creator,

“Please God, take me, take me there.”

Sadly, it turned out that God declined the prime minister’s application to the pearly gates for undisclosed reasons.

However, the lead ership of the Congregational church want to take Alesana, an elder deacon of the church, to another set of gates - marked exit only.

The one-time church president is being shoved off the pews for lifting his hands in prayer at that same assembly. His praise the lord gesture, say the conservative

Congregationalists, was not becoming of a deacon of their flock. So much for Christian love and understanding.

“Now the elders have been persuaded by the deacons to disqualify me. If I am disqualified because of spreading the word of God and my testimony of Jesus, let it be. Your only concern is your relationship with God,” he told national televi sion recently. He said he had been accused of worshipping Satan, plus rumours that he had once stolen a government refrigerator and had used $250,000 of appropriated funds to build a hotel for his children in Samoa.

“I was chosen by God.” While Alesana may see his Christian life as an extension of his political career, there are fellow citizens who liken him to something out of X-Files, rather than being at the front of the queue when the Messiah handed out the top-drawer job roster. “I do not pray to Satan... and am worried about the bad name that Samoa gets overseas when people hear about things like this. I love my country.

God bless our country and the devil be defeated.” B