Talk:2021 Samoan constitutional crisis

Infobox Incorrect?
The infobox says, "Caused by	Refusal by incumbent O le Ao o le Malo Tuimalealiifano Va'aletoa Sualauvi II to accept victory of Naomi Mataʻafa in April 2021 Samoan general election" and "Goals	Seating of Naomi Mataʻafa as next O le Ao o le Malo. My understanding has been that this is over the office office of Prime Minister, not O le Ao o le Malo. Am I mistaken or has an editor confused Malo Tuimalealiifano Va'aletoa Sualauvi II with Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi? LordApofisu (talk) 01:16, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

clarity
in the second paragraph of 'Response' would '...arrived at parliament to find police surrounding the building...' be clearer? Potholehotline (talk) 03:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Edit it! Be bold! The worst that will happen is that someone will tweak it in turn.--IdiotSavant (talk) 04:41, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, remember that this article is NOT protected, anyone can edit it.--🌀 Locomotive207 - talk  🌀  11:51, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Unconstitutional?
Please do not add commentary, your own point of view, or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to 2021 Samoan constitutional crisis. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. Thank you. ― Tartan357  Talk 05:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC) ... governing party, the Movement Towards Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS–IPSP) sponsored an effort to amend this article... Despite the referendum result, the Supreme Court of Justice – referring to Art. 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights – ruled a little over one year later in December 2017 that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution Thus your claim "despite a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary" doesn't prove my addition to be "Highly WP:POV", unless you quote WP:OTHERSTUFF by explicitly calling the WP:stable version of 2019 Bolivian general election to be "Highly WP:POV" as well (if you do that I'll have no problem with that but your claim will be recorded and quoted in the future diccussion in Talk:2019 Bolivian general election). Calling an elected parliament with less than 10% female legislators "unconstitutional" is word-by-word according to the Constitution Amendment Act 2013, not an original research by any means. In both Bolivian and Samoan cases, the supreme courts were speaking explicitely against their own constitutions, thus should be written in similar styles in Wikipedia. The Bolivian one has a stable version so I assume that represent the existing Wikipdian consensus better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.68.165.114 (talk) 05:40, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * What I added was in accordance to the established Wikipedian neutral writing style in 2019 Bolivian general election:
 * What on Earth are you talking about? I fail to see how the 2019 Bolivian general election has anything to do with this article. I have never read or edited that article, and that is not how consensus works on Wikipedia.
 * As for the substance of the issue, we go by what reliable sources say, and they're reporting that the Supreme Court of Samoa made a ruling upholding the election results. They are the Supreme Court—they get to make that determination. You do not. Wikipedia does not care about your personal interpretation of Samoa's constitution. Also, your addition of the election percentages to the infobox as "public support" is unreferenced WP:POV-pushing. You can't assume that the election results translate to public support for a side in this dispute. I'm sure there are plenty of Samoans who would like to see democracy prevail even if they voted for the losing side. ― Tartan357  Talk 05:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The quotes: Subject to this Article, women Members of the Legislative Assembly shall: Consist of a minimum of 10% of the Members of the Legislative Assembly specified under clause (1) which for the avoidance of doubt is presently five (5);
 * thus the Supreme Court is speaking explicitly against its own constitution, comparable to the case of Bolivian constitutional court speaking against its own constitution. Whether we recognise the supreme court's determination is not judged by my personal interpretation, but refering the routine of Wikipedian writing style, and luckily we have a good example to refer (unless we don't uphold that article's style). --173.68.165.114 (talk) 05:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The public support of the two PM claimant is well-sourced in April 2021 Samoan general election, thus not a POV-pushing. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 05:57, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know that you have made your own interpretation of the constitution. But you are not a Supreme Court justice. Further, the constitution is a primary source. Wikipedia is based on secondary sources, which in this case, are reporting that the Supreme Court ruled the election constitutional . As for the public support, you've completely ignored my point. Votes in an election do not automatically translate to support for a side in this mess. ― Tartan357  Talk 06:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * So, your claim is, the clause "despite what was established in the constitution" in the article 2019 Bolivian general election is okay because it's quoted from a secondary source Guardian (although Guardian has its own stance and cannot be considered an absolute neutral media), while the word "unconstitutional" in this article is POV-pushing because it's based on a primary source?
 * Whether support to election results translate to support of the two PM claimants is, essentially, the same as whether Mata'afa can be considered the PM-elect of the disputed parliament, because the parliament has not yet elect a new PM. Since Wikipedia considers Mata'afa to be the premier-elect, Wikipedia is essentially on the stance of upholding their electoral support. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 06:16, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I have said nothing at all about the Bolivia article. Please, stop bringing that up. Bolivia is a country in South America. It has zero to do with Samoa. That's just an WP:OTHERCONTENT argument, which is entirely invalid. ― Tartan357  Talk 06:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I have said nothing at all about the Bolivia article. Please, stop bringing that up. Bolivia is a country in South America. It has zero to do with Samoa. That's just an WP:OTHERCONTENT argument, which is entirely invalid. ― Tartan357  Talk 06:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC)


 * 1) The phrase "unconstitutional" doesn't seem to be comparable to "despite...", which I didn't quite realize before. I'll add it in a neutral manner. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 06:43, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * 2) I think I might have had some misunderstanding: the Chinese Wikipedia has called her a PM-elect in the Main Page per our Taiwanese administrator (and probably the article as well which I earlier changed to "presumably elected PM"), but this never happened in English Wikipedia. Since the English Wikipedia community called her an "Self-declared PM", the community is on the stance of parliament election results not translating to PM-election result (or public support of PM), so the "public support" section is problematic. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 06:43, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Correction: It was me who first applied a overall "translation of support" stance without careful reading the material and used the word "PM-pending-sworn-in" in a blurb proposal in Chinese Wikipedia, causing a bad blurb on Main Page, and later used the word "persumed PM-pending-sworn-in" and "persumed pending-sworn-in person" in the article ("pending-sworn-in" is often used as "-elect" in Chinese). It was not until our administrator changed that to "elected person" I found something was wrong as she was't yet elected, and not until you questioned me I realized what exactly was wrong. Thank you a lot for correcting me that. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 07:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)


 * All set. Now nothing looks abrupt. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 06:51, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No, we are not "all set". You are still insisting on elevating the importance of the gender quota based on your own analysis of the situation. We go by what's in reliable, secondary sources. Period. And they are predominantly accepting the Supreme Court ruling and stating that the dispute is being caused by Malielegaoi's refusal to accept the results. Provide reliable, secondary sources to back up your text in the "caused by" field, or it will be removed. ― Tartan357  Talk 06:57, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Ahh... I get it. You have no problem with the statement "Upholding of an parliament with less than 10% of female legislators by the Supreme Court despite what was established in the 2013 amendment" itself, but have problem with listing it as a cause. I think a good number of media do that as well, such as this one called the constitutional crisis a "backlash against gender quota rules". --173.68.165.114 (talk) 07:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear, would you please give the reason of your "Removing the 10% quota as a cause due to pending discussions on the talk page" (as Mr. Tartan357 doesn't seem to have a problem with that)? Also would you please write the reason you think the above sentence is not neutral? --173.68.165.114 (talk) 21:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I do have a problem with the 10% quota being stated as the primary cause. I said so right above. Stop trying to WP:GASLIGHT me. I said what I said. ― Tartan357  Talk 21:11, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Sorry I didn't quite understand it. Did you mean I should provide more sources (the Reuters one is not enough), or something else? Since one secondary sources was provided to back up my text in the "caused by" field, I wonder if you have problem with the quality or the quantity of that. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 21:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It's the quantity. The vast majority of RS I've seen have attributed the dispute to Malielegaoi's refusal to accept the Supreme Court ruling and step down. ― Tartan357  Talk 21:26, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the clarification! --173.68.165.114 (talk) 21:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Frankly I don't consider it to be the primary cause as well, I believe it should be stated as a primary cause along with the other one as both are established by reputable secondary sources, perhaps the second one is even more primary and direct cause. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 21:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The gender quota thing really seems WP:UNDUE to me. Most sources are solely pinning the blame on Malielegaoi's refusal to concede. Here are a few that support the interpretation that Mata’afa is PM-elect:, , , , , . ― Tartan357  Talk 21:31, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia relies much on English-written media, which are primarily Western-based, so the trend may reflect some Anglo-American bias (and the Chinese media is lazier, directly calling her a PM-elect or incoming PM). It's somewhat important to see what the domestic Samoan media say. I'll look for more English media concerning the quota next week as well as media in non-English speaking countries. Hopefully during the week there will be some Samoan presenting some domestic source. Anything has a direct cause, an indirect cause and a root cause. For this specific case they're the refusal of recognization, the ruling dispite the amendment, and the Chinese-backed Vaiusu wharf project (as a non-Samoan I actually feel sorry for that). From my understanding any persisting conflict cannot be attributed to a single-side fault, yet there's no sign Samoan domestic conflict will end soon. I don't consider judging Samoan domestic conflict by the number of foreign reports supporting them WP:DUE (consider the mistake we made when writing Bolivian political crisis by judging it with Western-based media which later turned out to be POV and those media themselves said their past claim was unfounded) and thus support at least list reasons from both sides that is presented by foreign media, better to be sourced with domestic media later. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 22:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * As we can see non-Western media you quoted already shows a swing in position: that al-Jazeera article (the only non-Anglo-American media listed above) originally titled "Samoa crisis deepens as head of state suspends parliament", indicating the crisis already started before, now becomes "Samoa plunges into crisis as head of state suspends parliament", indicating the crisis just started. Even among the al-Jazeera editors themselves they didn't quite reach a consensus whether this crisis has a single cause (current position) or causes from both sides (earlier position). --173.68.165.114 (talk) 22:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The sentence is not neutral because the Supreme Court decision obviously goes against that conclusion. I hope you read the decision made by the Supreme Court and how they came up with the reasoning that the 6th seat was invalid. I would propose instead of a statement that goes 'Upholding of a parliament with less than 10% of female legislators by the Supreme Court' and removing everything the last part says. This, I personally believe, would be more neutral. The 'less than 10% of female legislators' is indeed true, so it stays, but the statement that 'despite what the amendment says' is biased because the Supreme Court came up in the conclusion that the clause under Article 44 (1A (b)) 'which for the avoidance of doubt is presently 5' invalidates the preceding part of the clause that requires a minimum of 10% female legislators.
 * Now, as to whether that should remain on the reasoning is something I cannot say. I've been paying attention to this specific election ever since day 1 and as far as I'm aware, most of Samoa's media considers this to be the fault of caretaker prime minister Tuilaepa not conceding to prime minister-designate Fiame Naomi Mata'afa. One should note that the Head of State, immediately after the Supreme Court ruled that seat unconstitutional, abided and issued a proclamation to call parliament since he viewed the whole 6th seat as resolved. But then, he revoked it the next day. See an article here by Samoa Observer and how they note that the sitting by FAST was necessitated by the fact that the Head of State revoked the proclamation to open parliament at the eve of the penultimate day until parliament can be convened constitutionally (only to be overruled by the SC the following day), thus causing a crisis. I see the gender quota issue as non-causative to the whole thing. If it was, most of the media would have reported a crisis had occurred since the day the Supreme Court ruled the seat unconstitutional. But that is my view and if most editors don't agree, I'm quite alright with that.
 * And I do not consider the Chinese-backed Vaiusu wharf project as a reasoning behind this crisis; in fact, I think it should be viewed as an election issue than a causative reasoning to this crisis. Most Samoa media (Samoan Observer, Radio Samoa, Samoa Global News) don't really report this as a reason for this crisis. It's not even a direct, indirect or a root cause to this in my view. Of course, I do see people speculate in social media how the caretaker prime minister is not stepping down because of his conflict of interest with China but for us to judge that is neither here nor there.
 * As much as possible, I'd prefer if we source things from the aforementioned Samoan media and RNZ, which provides also an accurate representation of the Pacific politics most of the time. Kirill.alx (talk) 05:04, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * To finally weigh in on this, I support Kirill.alx and Tartan357 's position about causes. English-language sources (to which we can add,  and the Samoa Observer) have been clear that this is caused by the refusal of the HRPP to accept the election outcome. The quota is just the HRPP's pretext for that, but not actually a cause. If it is mentioned, it should be secondary, and the phrasing should follow the ruling of the courts.
 * In terms of terminology, the current situation - referring to Mata'afa as "incoming" with a footnote noting media use of "PM-elect" - seems OK. I'd followed the main Samoan media sources - Samoa Observer, Samoa Global News and Talamua - in using "PM-elect". RNZ also uses that language, but also uses "incoming". Stuff straight up calls her "prime minister". None of these sources use "self-declared", which seems to violate NPOV. Everyone calls Tuilaepa "caretaker", so that should be absolutely uncontroversial. --IdiotSavant (talk) 01:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry I didn't get time to deal with this. There are further issues about it. I'll write back later. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 04:47, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry I didn't get time to deal with this. There are further issues about it. I'll write back later. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 04:47, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Translation of support
As Tartan357 pointed out, "Votes in an election do not automatically translate to support for a side in this mess." I kind of agree with his idea, as one cannot judging the support of each individual legislator to their support to the PM-candidate of each party. However, later IdiotSavant edited the article to a style that referring the candidate of FAST as "PM-elect" per mass media judging her to be the "supported" or "elected" PM, without giving source for such election, and I could only follow his style up and do everything in the same way. I personally prefer the original style that present just raw information without which side (o le Ao or Supreme Court) is more correct (and even which PM is elected, which hasn't happened yet), and thus remove the public support as well. Any idea concerning that? --173.68.165.114 (talk) 15:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 29 May 2021
In the infobox, please change the  parameter:  Thank you, Tol &#124; Talk &#124; Contribs 20:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅- gadfium 21:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Tol &#124; Talk &#124; Contribs 23:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe the current revision is a lot unstable, as the previous stable version by Tartan357 uses the word "Self-declared PM" in the infobox, but either way. --173.68.165.114 (talk) 21:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

"Purported" is not correct here
This article uses the word "purported" four separate times but it is used incorrectly each time. The word should be "intended" in the first and third instances and "announced intentions" in the second and fourth instances. Unfortunately I am unable to make the necessary changes. --Nicholas0 (talk) 09:20, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * 'Purported: appearing or stated to be true, though not necessarily so; alleged. "the purported marriage was void"'. (Google dictionary).
 * This use is common in legal rulings where an official orders something without the actual power to do so, as in these cases. I've included a quote in the ref for the latest use, and I'll add a ref to the one marked as needing clarification.--IdiotSavant (talk) 10:27, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Protected edit request (30 May 2021)
Requesting for a change in the Background section:

From   to    just after the Background sub-heading.

The article mentioned has recently moved to the latter title. JaventheAldericky (talk) 12:27, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposed edit (daily update for 31 May)
Suggested edits to the Response section for today's events:

Third paragraph, after "Later that day, the Attorney General's office's rescinded the request and apologized to the judiciary [refs]":


 * The motion was subsequently advanced by Ali'imalemanu Alofa Tuuau, and dismissed as an attempt to undermine the integrity of the judiciary.

Append at bottom:


 * On 31 May HRPP supporters held a peaceful march to parliament in support of a sixth female MP. This was followed by a meeting of chiefs and clergy outside parliament. Fiame Naomi Mata'afa and the FAST Party did not attend. That afternoon, the Court of Appeal heard arguments on the appeal on the women's quota. The court reserved its decision, but said it would be delivered "as soon as possible".

Look OK? --IdiotSavant (talk) 07:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds pretty good to me. Kirill.alx (talk) 11:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Protection level
This article is rapidly becoming out of date. I would like to implement the edit suggestions in the three sections above this, but I have been an editor of this article so I'm involved. I suggest you lower the protection level to autoconfirmed or extended confirmed and we'll see if the edit war breaks out again. Pending changes might also work.- gadfium 08:47, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No problem. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 10:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)