Secret Agent Faleomavaega?

Although we did not make much of it at the time, we did find it strange that after years of severely criticizing Indonesia for its policies towards its West Papua province, Faleomavaega pronounced himself satisfied with the approach Jakarta was now taking towards West Papuan self-determination as he departed the capital on a visit in July, 2007, even though he was refused permission to visit the province.

Others apparently have not dismissed this trip so lightly because the blogosphere has come alive with speculation that this trip was more consequential than might seem at first blush. First, the facts. Both Faleomavaega and Barack Obama spent a good portion of their time growing up in Hawaii. At a time when vitually all of the elected Democrats and party leaders in American Samoa were supporting the presidential bid of Sen. Hillary Clinton, Faleomavaega was backing Obama. Indeed, among House members, he was one of Obama's earliest supporters. Faleomavaega did make a trip to Indonesia in July, 2007 and even though he was refused access to West Papua, he did say he was satisfied with the progress the national government was making with the province. Those are the dots.

Now, a number of theorists have connected those dots and are asking if Faleomavaega's trip as the Asia subcommittee chairman was a cover for a secret mission he was making on behalf of Obama. The purpose of the trip? To get Indonesian authorities to seal the education records from Obama's early years living there. The payoff? The records get sealed and Faleomavaega backs off the criticism of the government's record in West Papua. Is there any truth to these allegations. This blog has no idea. There are a lot more questions being asked and this blog has more details on this matter: http://james4america.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/did-obama-send-congressional-representative-to-indonesia-on-his-behalf/. Bloggers are demanding Faleomavaega release his records of the trip but there is no evidence he is paying any attention to them. If there are new developments, we will post them.

Has Faleomavaega Lost His Mind?

Or am I missing something here?

The huge international financial crisis has preoccupied virtually everyone in Washington for the past 10 days. Last weekend the Bush administration crafted a plan to bail out Wall Street and handed it over to Congress for consideration. Virtually everyone in Congress has been on hand to protect their interests while trying to reach consensus on a solution. By Wednesday, even Sen. McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to work on the issue. Barack Obama also joined him in Washington.

I was astounded to see that while Congress was beginning to burn the midnight oils in Washington last weekend, Faleomavaega was coming down the stairs from the Sunday night Hawaiian Airlines flight. Clearly, I thought, he was home for Fuimaono's funeral. Fui gave him start in politics and as a paramount chief presided over a huge clan with lots of votes. Faleomavaega no doubt would be delivering a major eulogy.

So, I was surprised to learn he actually left Wednesday to "return to Washington" (according to KHJ News), a day before the funeral. Then I saw a statement by Senator Salanoa on www.manuatele.net criticizing Eni for not remaining in Washington to protect our interests and concluded he must have bowed to pressure for him to return to his duty station.

Then I read this morning's paper. My astonishment is now complete. According to Samoa News, Faleomavaega is NOT in Washington (where the crisis continues) but in Missouri for the retirement ceremony of Command Sgt. Maj. Falaniko.

Has he lost his political mind? His place is in Washington but a political case could be made, I suppose, for attending the Fuimaono funeral. He tried to attend the funeral of High Chief Fai'ivae last year while Congress was in session until the Speaker demanded he stay in Washington. I have trouble understanding his rationale for being neither in Washington nor at Fuimaono's funeral any more than I could understand his decision to miss the coronation of the King of Tonga and Secretary Rice's summit with Pacific foreign ministers in Apia in order to hand deliver a birthday card to a Chinese billionaire in Hong Kong. Something doesn't compute.

Faleomavaega has another fake hearing

Well, our boy is at it again. Last week while world financial markets were crashing all around everyone, Faleomavaega orchestrated another toy hearing--this time on Capitol Hill. Perhaps he was stung too much by his laughable "field hearing" on minimum wage earlier this year, so he retreated to the safety of Capitol Hill to hold a hearing on the establishment of a federal court in American Samoa. If you weren't in the hearing room, you could watch it on the internet. Once again he was in shirt sleeves with not even the hint of his trademark bolo tie anymore--thus completely flouting the business dress code of Washington and embarrassing the territory in the process.

But I digress. No one really understood the purpose of this hearing. There is no legislation being considered and even if there were there is only about a week before Congress adjourns. There is hardly time to consider any new initiatives, even if he were to try to move it through the process as a secret amendment, as he did with his tunaboat bill. Moreover, like minimum wage, this issue is not the province of the insular subcommittee. It would need to go to the judiciary committee for consideration. Perhaps Eni saw this as something he needed politically back home and asked subcommittee chairman Donna Christiansen to do it as a favor but there has been no subsequent publicity other than a press release from Eni that says he now favors the AS Chief Justice's approach: a federal prosecutor rather than a federal court.

The whole hearing took less than 90 minutes and Eni announced at the outset they would have to hurry it up because the witnesses from American Samoa had a plane to catch. Huh? This hearing was scheduled for months. Surely the Senate President and House Speaker could have scheduled a Friday plane out, since there would still have been plenty of time to catch the Sunday plane home from Honolulu. If they really did have to leave, it could only have meant they had other things to do on the west coast or elsewhere on the Mainland (raise campaign funds?) since you have to take a morning flight out of Washington in order to get all the way to Honolulu in one day. Maybe they were all going to Vegas. Who knows?

All I know is a lot of taxpayer dollars were wasted on three faipules going all the way to Washington for 90 minutes of everyone reading prepared statements and a few questions. Thank goodness the governor and chief justice weren't fooled. They sent in written statements and didn't waste their time with a trip to D.C. at the height of the political campaign.

Nonetheless, if Eni's release means he is backing down on the court and will give it a rest until the people want it and ask for it through their local leaders, it is all to the good. Hopefully, Eni will be defeated in November and this whole nightmare will come to an end once and for all.

Faleomavaega's Summer Travels

July and August can be dreadful months in Washington, weather-wise, so it is no wonder people are eager to leave the Nation's Capital, even those who are in Congress and Congress is in session. Of course, Congress was in recess over the Independence Day holiday, so finding Faleomavaega back home was not especially unusual, since it is an election year, after all. He returned to Washington but soon was home again because, even though Congress again was in session, it was no surprise to find Eni on hand for the opening of the Pacific Arts Festival, given his long involvement in regional affairs.

Moreover, his penchant for travel even while Congress is in session and his position as Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment virtually dictated he would be near all the action at a time all the region would be represented in American Samoa at a major Pacific event during which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice would be holding a summit with Pacific foreign ministers in nearby Apia and the King of Tonga would be crowned in nearby Nuku’alofa.

It was shocking, then, when there were no press releases out of Eni about his involvement in either the summit or the coronation. Instead he surfaced back in Washington to take part in a meeting of Asian and Pacific American leaders with Sen. Barack Obama. It did not seem logical that he would pass up the summit and the coronation for such a routine political meeting so it could be surmised that he might have been summoned back to Washington for some critical vote in either the Natural Resources or Foreign Affairs Committees on which he sits.

This happened once before when the Speaker did not approve his request to travel back to American Samoa for an important chief’s funeral while the House was in session because his vote was needed in committee on a key energy bill. He issued a face-saving press release explaining his absence from Fai’ivae’s funeral because of the Speaker's "request," but nothing this time; nor did there appear to be any critical votes last week in either committee.

It all became clear when reliable sources revealed that Eni and his chief enforcer, Lisa Williams, demanded a speaking role for him at the summit and, when the State Department refused to let him speak, he chose to boycott the meeting. The good news is that, unlike 1990, when he was not invited at all to participate in President Bush 41’s historic summit with island heads of government in Honolulu, this time he did not try to wreak the gathering by urging island foreign ministers to boycott it.

Perhaps Eni would have been able to speak if Lisa Williams had not played hardball, once again overplaying her hand (the woman ranks right up there with Saddam Hussein when it comes to miscalculations), but the State Department also is well aware of Eni’s well-deserved reputation (among Republicans and Democrats) as a “loose cannon” and likely was not prepared in any event to give him a platform to make unscripted remarks that might embarrass either Secretary Rice personally or the U.S. in general.

After all, they have a file drawer full of statements he has made over the years attacking his own government, even when standing on foreign soil. Those outbursts may have played well in the media but not in Foggy Bottom. And there still are a lot of people around who remember how Eni held 10 heads of Pacific governments and 400 or so other people virtually hostage last year in the National Geographic Auditorium to listen to him and a variety of Washington politicians he corraled give long winded speeches prior to the annual Pacific Night reception. Yes, likely it was payback time.

Yet, why did he go back to Washington when the King’s coronation was but a few days later? Surely he had not been left off the guest list. And surely Nancy Pelosi would have designated him the “official” representative of the U.S. House of Representatives for the event, as she has done to give him political cover on other occasions. And there are a number of voters of Tongan descent in American Samoa. But it all was soon to come clear.

The gavel adjourning the House had yet to bang before Eni was in the air back to Asia once again, this time to Hong Kong, where he personally delivered birthday greetings from 20 members of Congress to Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-Shing. Just last year at Mr. Li’s invitation, Eni spoke at the privately funded Shantou University in Guangdong Province. It is difficult to imagine Mr. Li’s 80^th birthday taking priority over a once-in-a-generation coronation in the Pacific’s only monarchy of a man the delegate has known for decades but perhaps some of Mr. Li’s wealth has found its way into Eni’s campaign treasury via the numerous Asian contributors listed in federal reports as having given generously to the Samoan legislator.

Now it’s off to where? The summit is over, the coronation concluded yesterday and the last of the Arts Festival participants leave Pago Pago this weekend. Will he come back to file his petitions for re-election? He is expected to be in Denver for the Democratic National Convention August 25-28 so it’s possible he will come down on the Sunday, August 30 flight to file his petitions personally on the Tuesday, September 2 deadline. But it’s equally possible he will drop in here on his way back from Asia to Denver or, given his past history, make an insane journey from Hong Kong here then back to Asia before going to Denver. Wouldn't you love to have his frequent flier miles?!

Why back to Asia? Well, he already has announced he wants to have “consultations” in Korea with the new owners of StarKist over the August recess. Perhaps we also intends to do a little negotiating with the new owners to buy into the Taiwan purse seiner building scheme he is promoting, even though the bill he needs to make the plan very profitable seems stalled in the Senate right now.

He also has said he will be traveling to Thursday Island in the Torres Strait because on a previous trip there he committed to “helping the people.” Precisely what kind of help he intends to give is unknown and how he intends to deliver it is a mystery since Thursday Island is part of Australia, a country not currently being serviced by USAID.

But his travels over the three weeks between Hong Kong and Denver should be easy to track, thanks to the availability of the internet and Eni’s inability to keep his mouth shut. Don't bother to Google. We'll let you know.

Faleomavaega Running Scared

Want some evidence Faleomavaega is running scared in his bid for re-election this fall? This week was Flag Day, the most important secular holiday on American Samoa's calender. Despite the fact that Congress was in session--with many bills of great importance to the territory pending--he spent the full week at home campaigning. Not only did he miss Congress in session, he skipped the Pope's visit to Washington and the White House visit of the first Samoan Division 1A football head coach. His involvement with the Pope may have been marginal, but he surely would have been at the White House for the historic visit of Navy's head coach. Moreover, as chairman of the Asia-Pacific subcommittee of the House Foreign Affair Committee, he has jurisdiction over U.S.-Korea relations but he also skipped the visit to Washington of South Korea's president. That omission is particularly significant since he has scheduled hearings on U.S.-South Korea relations for this week coming up.

Why skip all these seemingly important events? Because he knows the voters don't care about any of it and he has two challengers hoping to unseat him this November.

Faleomavaega Looks Silly Chairing Hearing

You know the old question: "What if they gave a party and no one came?" Well, that pretty much sums up the time wasted on an Asia-Pacific subcommittee hearing on Central Asia last week. Rather than summarize the proceedings, I will let the words of Joshua Kucera speak for themselves. Writing for the respected on-line journal Eurasianet.org, the Washington, DC,-based freelance writer--who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East--had this to say:

Poor attendance at the hearing suggested that Central Asia is a waning priority among members of Congress. Only two members showed up to the hearing: Eni Faleomavaega, the chair of the subcommittee and a Democrat from American Samoa, and Ruben Hinojosa, a Democrat from Texas. Both showed shaky knowledge of the region, mispronouncing the names of many of the countries in the region and frequently digressing on issues that [Assistant Secretary of State Richard] Boucher said were outside of his portfolio, including missile defense in Europe, the possibility of a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing, and excessive profits of oil companies.

You won't read about this hearing in local media.

Media Downplays Faleomavaega Hype

Last week Faleomavaega sent out a press release hyping the historic occasion of him presiding over a session of the Committee of the Whole on the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. It reminds me of a joke about an airline company's public relations department in the early 1960s headlining a story "XYZ Airline Becomes First U.S. Carrier with All Jet Fleet." It is only when you read deeper into the story that you learn that the historic event occurred when the airlines last two prop planes collided in mid-air, killing 134 people.

There may be hope for the local media at long last. Samoa News recognized that Faleomavaega's chairmanship of the Committee of the Whole was not the big deal he made it to be and carried a truncated version of his press release in its "Community Briefs" section of the paper.

Yes, Faleomavaega no doubt was the first Samoan to preside over the Committee of the Whole. Of course, he neglects to point out that only two Samoans ever have served in the House and his predecessor, the disgraced Fofo Sunia (D) was not given that "honor" by the Democrats in charge during his seven years in the House before being forced to resign as part of a plea bargain that included 11 months in prison for his part in a ghost payroll scheme. Rather he focuses attention on the fact that Republicans did not give the gavel to any of the delegates during their 12 years in power. Of course, he fails to mention that whichever party is in power presides over all House sessions and all the delegates were Democrats during that period.

He notes that he could have chaired the committee during the 1993-94 session but "time ran out" before he had the opportunity. More likely, his travel schedule was so heavy he wasn't in town long enough to accept an invitation. That is probably why, despite his seniority, he only now, well into this session, was able to mount the dais.

The fact is, presiding over the House is a chore that majority members mostly try to avoid. The Speaker, who is supposed to preside, rarely does so. Presiding chores usually are rotated among junior members. So, on the few occasions he was in Washington during 1993-94, Faleomavaega probably ducked for cover. Why now, this year? Probably to build his credentials back home, where he now has two announced opponents and faces yet another tough race. The dissatisfaction and restlessness of the electorate is growing.

With good reason.

A final comment. Samoa News also carried a photo on its website with a caption about Faleomavaega presiding over the House. There is no way to tell if the photo was taken the day he presided because the backdrop was the seats in the House not the dais. We hope it was a stock photo rather than one from that day because he was attired in open collar with his trademark bolo tie. While such neck wear is permitted on the Floor, it is not encouraged, especially for someone not of Native American heritage. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who is of Native American heritage, always dresses in standard Western business attire, for example.