Samoa’s first female leader, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, has failed to win a majority in the Pacific nation’s elections this week, capping months of political infighting.
Official results published by the electoral commission on Friday showed the opposition Fast party won 30 out of the 50 contested seats in parliament.
That means Fast’s leader, La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt, is most likely to be sworn in as prime minister.
He will replace Fiamē – known as the “Iron Lady of the Pacific” – whose Sup party won only three seats.
Fiame expelled La’aulialemalietoa from cabinet in 2023 after he was charged with offences including harassment and attempting to pervert the course of justice, which he denies.
When he refused to resign, she dismissed him – only to be ousted herself from Fast, which installed him as leader. She responded by founding Sup and launching legal action accusing him of spreading conspiracy theories during the campaign.
Fiame was elected as the country’s first female leader in 2021. Her term got off to a rocky start after a knife-edge election result led to legal challenges and constitutional manoeuvring that left the country without a functioning government for 45 days.
The country’s first female prime minister was sworn in under a marquee outside parliament after being locked out of the chamber.
Her leadership also came under pressure in April when widespread blackouts prompted a state of emergency and intensified scrutiny of Fiame’s leadership. The outages hit an economy already strained by inflation.
She was forced to dissolve parliament in May after it overwhelmingly rejected her proposed government budget.
She had served in the role of acting prime minister since the fall of the government.
Rising prices had been cited as a key issue for voters in the country of about 220,000 people.
“Nobody wants the repetition of what happened in 2021,” broadcaster Tui Eddie Taualapini said prior to the election. “People just want a government to be established quickly and bring in the budget.”
With Agence France-Presse
