FAST Party wins Samoa’s crisis election

John Braddock

Official results from Samoa’s early general election held on August 29, indicate the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST or “Samoa United in Faith”) Party has secured a decisive victory. FAST has a four-seat majority in the 56-seat parliament and will form government.

FAST won 30 seats, the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP)—which held office continuously for over 40 years until 2021—got 14 seats, the Samoa United Party (SUP) three and there are four Independents.

The HRPP has already announced plans to legally challenge the results, accusing FAST of vote-buying, electoral irregularities, and procedural flaws.

The South Pacific country, with a population of just 217,000, operates an undemocratic electoral system in which only holders of the elite Matai title (a traditional family or clan leader) are able to stand for office. The legal voting age is 21 years. Before polling day, 81 percent of eligible voters, 102,000 people, had registered to vote.

The election followed six months of political turmoil. FAST, which won office as a new party in 2021, returns to power without its co-founder and outgoing prime minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, who was dumped as leader in January in an inner-party revolt.

Fiamē, who was due to remain in office until April 2026, contested the latest election under her newly formed SUP. Except for Fiamē and ex-cabinet minister Leatinu’u Wayne Sooialo, her former cabinet members have lost their seats.

The last parliament was dissolved on June 3 after Fiamē’s minority government failed to have its 2025 Budget approved. Fiamē had survived two no-confidence motions in February and March but was forced to call the snap election when MPs from the opposition HRPP and the FAST majority joined forces to vote down the budget.

FAST Party leader La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polata’ivao Schmidt [Photo: US Embassy New Zealand]

FAST split after Fiamē removed party chairman La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polata’ivao Schmidt, who was Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, from Cabinet. Leuatea then ejected her from party membership.

The crisis erupted after Leuatea publicly confirmed he was facing criminal charges, including conspiracy and an attempt to defeat or pervert the course of justice, and three counts of false statements causing harm to a person’s reputation. Leuatea refused to resign as minister, whereupon Fiamē relieved him of his portfolio and removed three ministers and 13 associate ministers who supported him.

Leuatea is contesting the charges in court. He will become prime minister, notwithstanding the criminal charges hanging over him and a reputation as a populist Trump-style figure.

The Sunday after the poll FAST held a religious “thanksgiving service” with hundreds of supporters to celebrate its victory. Leuatea offered an “apology to Samoa” for the “uncertainty” caused by the political turmoil. He declared that “FAST has prevailed because we are blessed by God… This is God’s timing for FAST, the era of God-centered leadership has begun.”

In 2021 Fiamē had been installed as the country’s first female prime minister, presented as a “moderniser” and backed by Australia and New Zealand, Samoa’s former colonial ruler. Legal challenges and constitutional manoeuvring following the election left Samoa without a functioning government for 45 days. The standoff was only finally resolved after the Supreme Court ordered the swearing-in of all the MPs.

FAST’s 2021 victory was a major shift in Samoan politics which was ruled as a virtual one-party state since formal independence in 1962. The result reflected growing political instability and social crises across the Pacific under the combined impact of the coronavirus pandemic, popular opposition and rising geo-political tensions.

Fiamē ruled over a deteriorating economy, increasing social tensions and a deepening cost-of-living crisis. According to the Samoa Bureau of Statistics consumer prices are up almost 30 percent from 2022.

In a May Budget preview, the Samoa Observer declared the cost of living was “not making life any easier for most people.” While minimum wage earners were struggling, pay rises for civil servants and nurses were urgently needed, plus an increase in social benefit payments. Meanwhile the agriculture sector’s contribution to GDP had slumped by almost 11 percent and fisheries by more than 50 percent, forcing an increased reliance on imports.

In late March, Fiamē declared a 30-day state of emergency amid continuous power outages and electricity rationing. Many people lost work and incomes. The economic impact of the crisis—brought about by faulty and storm-damaged infrastructure—was estimated to have cost up to 16 percent of Samoa’s gross domestic product.

According to the 2023 Samoa Poverty and Hardship Report, 21.9 percent of the population lives below the basic-needs poverty line, 3 percentage points higher than in 2013‒14. Poverty is highest among private sector workers and those in subsistence agriculture. Unemployment is officially 9.4 percent.

Conditions in the health system are dire. The national hospital is falling apart and understaffed. A potentially deadly whooping cough outbreak was declared in November followed last month by a dengue fever outbreak which forced school closures. A deadly but preventable measles epidemic in 2019 killed 83 people, mostly young children.

The FAST Party’s victory will ensure neither stability nor resolve the desperate situation facing the working class and rural poor. The basic issue facing all factions of the ruling elite now is how to further impose the burden of the economic crisis on the population.

The election campaign saw all the establishment parties making unrealisable and uncosted promises—in fact lies—to address the cost-of-living crisis. FAST pushed a range of populist initiatives—including free hospital services, monthly allowances for pregnant women, and cash for low-income families. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) attempted to ask Leuatea how he would fund these promises, but he cancelled the planned interview.

Fiamē fended off criticism over her handling of the power-outage crisis and inflation, saying her government’s actions were “measured” compared to the lavish promises of her opponents. Her policies included free education and healthcare, the return of traditional land to villages, and pension increases. Fiamē also promised to remove tariffs and duties from basic food items.

HRPP leader Tuilaʻepa Sailele Malielegaoi, a former prime minister, also weighed in with unfunded pledges, including annual 500 tala ($US182) payments for every citizen and building a 32-kilometre (20-mile) bridge between the two main islands, airily declaring it could be paid for and constructed with Chinese backing.

The real state of the economy is dire. The International Monetary Fund reported in April that Samoa’s growth had fallen from 9.4 percent in 2024 to an estimated 5.4 percent in 2025, and 2.6 percent in 2026. President Trump’s 10 percent tariff will have a devastating impact. More than 22 percent of Samoa’s exports go to the US and American Samoa, a US colony. Washington’s suspension of the USAID program and withdrawal from the World Health Organisation creates a deep funding gap across the entire Pacific.

Samoa’s foreign policy did not feature in the campaign, despite the intensifying confrontation and US-led drive to war against China across the region. While FAST’s manifesto said nothing about major foreign policy issues, the new government is likely to keep to the country’s One China policy along with its emphatic support for Israel.

Indonesian protests—a sign of social crisis and deep-seated opposition

Peter Symonds

In the wake of a huge police crackdown and thousands of arrests, the protest movement that erupted in Indonesia late last month has largely subsided, but none of the basic issues that fueled the widespread demonstrations have been resolved.

The immediate trigger for the protests was the decision to pay a huge monthly accommodation allowance of 50 million rupiah ($US3,045) to the 580 parliamentarians of the House of Representatives (DPR)—10 to 20 times the minimum wage paid to millions of workers struggling to survive.

The lavish allowance was emblematic of far deeper concerns and opposition stemming from the immense social gulf between the country’s wealthy few and their political representatives and the vast majority of working people. Moreover, the social crisis facing broad layers of the population, particularly young people, is only worsening as economic growth slows and unemployment rises. The jobless rate for youth has hit 16 percent, forcing many into poorly paid, casual work.

Protesters clash with the police during a protest against lavish allowances given to parliament members, in Jakarta, August 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana]

The protests dramatically escalated after the callous killing of a young ride-share motorbike rider Affan Kurniawan on August 28. He was run over by an armoured police vehicle amid a mass mobilisation of police, including the notorious, heavily-armed BRIMOB. In the following days, angry protesters clashed with police, attacked government buildings and stormed the homes of prominent political figures including Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, the architect of the budget cuts that set off protests earlier in the year.

Facing a deepening political crisis, President Prabowo Subianto delayed a planned trip to China. He appeared at a press conference on August 31, flanked by leaders of the main political parties, to appeal for calm, declaring he understood “the genuine aspirations of the public.” At the same time, however, he ordered “the police and military to take the strongest possible action” against purported looting and destruction.

The protests involving thousands were not limited to the capital Jakarta but had spread to major cities throughout the country, including Surabaya, Surakarta, Bandung, Semarang and Yogakarta in Java; Banda Aceh, Padang and Medan in Sumatra; as well as Makassar and Kendari in Sulawesi, Palangka Raya in Kalimantan, and Manokwari in West Papua.

At least 11 people died in the clashes with the police and military, hundreds were injured, and another 20 protesters are missing, according to the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence. More than 3,000 people have been arrested.

Confronting a police crackdown, the protests subsided last week but the anger has not. Smaller protests continued. Last Wednesday, hundreds of women from the Indonesian Women’s Alliance (IWA) marched to the parliament building in Jakarta wielding brooms to “sweep away the dirt of the state, militarism and police repression.”

Last Thursday, a student demonstration led by the All-Indonesian Students’ Union (BEM SI) took place outside the parliament, where its central coordinator Muzammil Ihsan read out a list of demands, including the reduction of parliamentary allowances, complete reform of the national police and parliament, the release of all those arrested and the creation of 19 million jobs.

On the same day, members of the Labor Movement with the People (GEBRAK) held a protest in a major road in Jakarta also demanding the complete reform of the police and parliament.

On Thursday evening, a delegation of student leaders was invited to meet ministers at the Presidential Palace but reportedly walked out of the talks after being told they had to consider “the nation’s development” in making any demands.

Last week, a grouping of activist organisations drew up a list of 17 short-term “people’s demands” to be implemented by Prabowo and the government by last Friday along with eight longer-term ones. The deadline, however, passed with few of the demands being met or partially met.

In a bid to quell widespread anger, the parliament did announce the axing of the housing allowance that initially sparked the protests. The announcement was left to the parliamentary speaker Puan Maharani. She is the daughter of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)—the only parliamentary party that is not part of the Prabowo government.

On the same day, Co-ordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto suggested that the government would carry out various stimulus measures to boost jobs and incomes—including wage subsidies for those earning less than 10 million rupiah a month, a program of public works, tax exemptions and steps to prevent mass lay-offs. But under conditions of a slowing economy that will be further hit by Trump’s tariffs, these proposals have the character of empty promises.

No steps have been taken to rein in the police and military. The only action taken against the police has been against low-level officers involved in the widely publicised killing of ride-share worker Affan Kurniawan. The officer in charge of the vehicle that struck Kurniawan has been dishonourably dismissed, and another received a seven-year demotion.

These measures are unlikely to assuage popular anger and resentment. Imran, a food delivery driver, told Al Jazeera that “inequality” was the root cause of the mass protests, “including economic inequality, educational inequality, health inequality and unequal public services.”

Referring to the government and parliament, he said: “They are not concerned about our fate. They should be present to resolve the problems facing the community, not fan the flames. These protests arose from the community’s poor economic conditions.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Rahmawati, a housewife, said that public anger had “finally exploded …because we feel like no one cares about us… What we want is for them [politicians] to care about us and our needs. Every year, the price of basic foodstuffs rises and never goes back down again. Groceries are becoming more and more difficult to afford.”

Significantly, the protests in Indonesia reverberated more broadly throughout South East Asia as workers and young people confront very similar economic and social problems, exacerbated by slowing economies. Protests took place last week in support of those in Indonesia, including in Malaysia and Thailand.

Thai students hung a banner on an overpass near Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok declaring “Thailand stands with the people of Indonesia” and called for justice for those protesters killed during police crackdowns.

In Thailand, a social media poster called Yammi shared instructions on how to order meals for Jakarta-based ride-share and food delivery motorbike riders. Revealing sympathy not just with the protesters but the difficult and dangerous conditions facing poorly paid riders, the post went viral in the region and internationally. Donations came in from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei, as well as Japan, Sweden and the United States.

The protests have provided a glimpse of the explosive social tensions that have built up in Indonesia as well as the broader region and will only intensify amid growing global economic turmoil.

German government coalition partners agree on massive social cutbacks

Peter Schwarz

Ten days after Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that Germany could no longer afford the welfare state, the leaderships of the ruling Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) have agreed to a massive reduction in social benefits.

President Macron and Chancellor Merz at the Franco-German Ministerial Council in Toulon [Photo by Bundesregierung/Steffen Kugler]

Following a meeting of the coalition committee on Wednesday, Merz said, “We have really reached a good understanding here, also on the objective of reforming the welfare state.” The coalition would agree on the key points for such a reform later this year. Citizen’s Income (welfare payments) would be replaced by a new basic benefit that would “promote” responsibility and “challenge” potential abuse.

Even earlier, Merz had announced in several interviews that he intended to cut 10 percent of the costs of Citizen’s Income, equivalent to around €5 billion a year. This, he said, had to be “the minimum amount.” Labour Minister Bärbel Bas (SPD), who had only shortly before dismissed Merz’s attack on the welfare state as “bullshit,” now signaled her agreement. She said she shared the chancellor’s opinion that the welfare state needed reform.

Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, who co-leads the SPD with Bas, praised the notorious “Agenda 2010” measures of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), which had initiated a gigantic social redistribution in favour of the rich 22 years ago. “Schröder undertook bold reforms,” Klingbeil told Die Zeit. “Today too, we need comprehensive reforms so that our welfare state remains strong, but also affordable, and functions better.”

Schröder, who only rarely appears in public these days, reacted immediately. “I think that’s courageous of Lars Klingbeil,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He hoped the SPD had realised that bold reforms paid off, even if they initially seemed unpopular.

The cuts to Citizen’s Income mark the beginning of a frontal attack on social gains fought for over decades. Pensions and healthcare are next, involving much higher sums. In the coalition pact to form the federal government, the CDU/CSU and SPD had already agreed to set up expert commissions for this purpose. These are now to draw up proposals without delay.

Business associations and pro-business media are pushing for radical social cutbacks. On September 1, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung complained that “beginning with the mismanagement of Citizen’s Income, through the constantly promoted sense of entitlement, and up to the high social contributions, the welfare state is strangling economic growth.” Now, it said, the time had come “to withdraw in many areas and give up cherished things so that the economy can pick up speed again.”

The president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher, proposed the introduction of a “year of social service” for pensioners. Under this, shift workers, shop assistants and others who have worked hard for over four decades should then spend a year emptying bedpans and performing other unpaid labour before enjoying their well-earned retirement.

Fratzscher’s proposal, though bizarre given that he, as DIW head and a professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, likely earns several hundred thousand euros a year, is being broadcast through every channel. The aim is to stir up hostility against all those who do not generate economic profit but nevertheless claim the right to a decent life.

Social cutbacks and rearmament

Behind this frontal assault on the welfare state lies more than the usual clamour of business representatives and neoliberal economists. Capitalist society is at an impasse, from which the imperialist powers see no way out other than social cutbacks, dictatorship and war.

In the 1930s, a spiral of recession, trade war, financial crisis, fascism and rearmament led to the Second World War. Today, a similar catastrophe is again unfolding.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has definitively destroyed the illusion that there could be such a thing as peaceful global capitalism. In 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Fourth International recalled Lenin’s statement that imperialist wars were inevitable as long as capitalism remained. It declared:

The second imperialist war is no accident; it does not arise from the free will of this or that dictator. It was long foreseen. It followed inexorably from the contradictions of international capitalist interests.

This warning is once again being confirmed today. Trump is not the cause but a symptom. He is responding to the decline of American capitalism by declaring war on the rest of the world, imposing punitive tariffs on rivals and allies, raising US military spending to the staggering level of $1 trillion, and erecting a dictatorship in the United States. This is the essential content of his “Make America Great Again” policy.

The European powers are pursuing the same course. Under the supposedly democratic Obama and Biden administrations, they enthusiastically joined the NATO offensive against Russia in the hope of rich spoils. Now they have been caught wrong-footed by Trump. He imposes tariffs on European nations, threatens to reach an agreement with Russia at their expense, and forces them to shoulder the full burden of the costly war in Ukraine. Washington now supplies weapons to Kiev only if Europe foots the bill.

But the European powers are unwilling to subordinate their own imperialist ambitions to those of the Americans. Hence, they are rearming at full speed. In 2024, the 27 EU members increased their military spending by 19 percent to €343 billion. This year it is to rise to €381 billion, with €130 billion flowing into investment in new weapons. That is by no means the end. To reach NATO’s targets, “even greater efforts and spending of over €630 billion per year in total” are needed, according to André Denk, secretary general of the European Defence Agency (EDA).

Germany is playing the leading role in this rearmament drive. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius had already set the goal in 2024 of becoming “fit for war” by 2029 in order to wage war against Russia. Even before the election of the new government, the Bundestag (federal parliament) lifted the debt brake to provide €1 trillion for rearmament and war-related infrastructure.

Merz recently justified this suspension of the debt brake with the need to save NATO in view of the US withdrawal. “If we had not changed the constitution, this NATO would probably have collapsed that very day,” he told broadcaster ZDF in a summer interview.

In his first government statement in the Bundestag, Merz proclaimed the goal of militarily dominating Europe. He promised he would “make available to the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] all the financial means it needs to become conventionally the strongest army in Europe.” This, he said, was “more than appropriate for the most populous and economically strongest country in Europe.”

Manfred Weber (CSU), chairman of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament, also made clear that the rearmament drive is not about defence, but about imperialist interests—markets, raw materials and profits.

When asked why the EU had given way in the customs agreement with the US, Weber replied that due to its military inferiority, Europe had had no choice: “Because Europe felt the dependencies in defence vis-à-vis Trump, we could not take a strong enough stand in the trade agreements and say: We are an equally strong economic player in the world compared to the USA.”

After two lost world wars, German militarism is again grasping for world power and is prepared to take any risk. Its military expansion plans are once more directed eastwards, consciously accepting the danger of a Russian counterattack. Yet just a fraction of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, comprising 4,000 to 6,000 warheads, would suffice to completely destroy all urban centres, military sites and industrial infrastructure in Germany.

Frontal attack on the working class

The vast programme of rearmament and war launched by the Merz government can only be implemented through the destruction of the social gains and democratic rights of the working class. The fact that a large part of military spending is being covered by new debt changes nothing.

Finance Minister Klingbeil’s budget planning speaks volumes. Defence spending will rise from €86.5 billion this year to €168 billion in 2029, fully covered by the regular budget.

Although Klingbeil is planning additional borrowing of €847 billion by 2029, there will still be a funding gap of €172 billion for the years 2027 through 2029 alone, almost €60 billion a year. Since spending on domestic security and debt service is also rising, and the government categorically rules out tax increases for the rich, the shortfall can only be met by cutting social spending, which currently accounts for around 40 percent of the total budget.

“We will have to explain to the population why, despite the high investments in defence and infrastructure, we still need considerable consolidation in public finances,” Merz commented after the coalition summit.

The budget crisis is being exacerbated by further factors. Since the coronavirus crisis of 2020, the German economy has stagnated, with tax revenues consistently falling short of expectations. And the 15 percent import tariffs the US has imposed on all EU goods since August 7, while US imports into the EU remain duty-free, have further deepened the economic downturn.

When EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed the customs deal with Trump on a Scottish golf course, outrage flared in German business circles. There was talk of “submission” and “appeasement.” Former VW boss Herbert Diess described the deal as a “disgrace” for “a clique of naïve, nostalgically transfigured transatlanticists.”

Von der Leyen defended the agreement by claiming that despite considerable disadvantages, it provided planning security and reliability. But even that proved an illusion. Steel and aluminium used in European cars and machinery are now being charged extra and subject to the higher tariff rate of 50 percent. This has significantly undermined the competitiveness of German mechanical engineering, one of the country’s most important export industries. The latest twist from Washington showed, fumed business weekly Wirtschaftswoche, “that agreements with Trump are not worth the paper they are written on.”

Germany’s car and supplier industries are in free fall anyway. Within a year, 51,500 jobs have been cut, and the cull continues unabated. All the major car and supplier companies have announced thousands more job cuts, while smaller firms are going bankrupt en masse. According to a study by consultancy EY, the number of industrial jobs in Germany has fallen by a quarter of a million since 2019. For the first time in many years, registered unemployment has again exceeded the 3 million mark. This further increases the deficit of the contributory social funds used to finance unemployment and health.

Political crisis in France

In other European countries, the crisis is even more explosive, particularly in France, which, with public debt at 114 percent, has virtually no room for further borrowing without risking a financial crisis.

After President Emmanuel Macron brought forward the increase of the military budget to €64 billion from 2030 to 2027, Prime Minister François Bayrou is planning budget cuts of €44 billion for next year, primarily at the expense of social spending. This is provoking massive resistance. Nationwide blockades and strikes are planned in the coming days.

Since Bayrou has no majority in parliament, he has tied the adoption of the austerity budget to a vote of confidence—which he is almost certain to lose. France would then be left without a government in the midst of fierce social conflict.

Berlin and Paris are working closely together to enforce the war policy and the associated attacks on the working class. For the last Franco-German ministerial council, held in Toulon in August, the two governments commissioned leading economists to draw up reform proposals. They produced a catalogue of social atrocities.

Even though neither the parties of the New Popular Front (NFP) nor the far-right National Rally (RN) currently see themselves in a position to provide a majority for Bayrou’s hated austerity budget, all of them, including the trade unions, are working to sabotage or divert the opposition movement. If the Bayrou government cannot be saved, then at least the survival of capitalist rule must be secured. This also applies to La France insoumise (France Unbowed) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which lends verbal support to the protests but rejects a socialist perspective to overthrow capitalism.

RN leader Jordan Bardella has written to the heads of major companies offering himself as the next prime minister and promising budget cuts of €100 billion.

In Germany, too, leading CDU figures such as Jens Spahn and Julia Klöckner are already reaching out to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to work with it should the Merz-Klingbeil government collapse under the pressure of growing resistance. As in the United States, where Trump is building a dictatorship, rearmament, war, the enrichment of the super-rich and the associated attacks on the working class can only be enforced by fascist methods.