Va'ai Papu Vailupe is a Samoan politician and Member of Parliament. He is the leader of the Tautua Samoa Party.[1]
Va'ai was first elected to the Samoan Legislative Assembly at the 1991 election.[2] After being re-elected in 1996, he served as Parliamentary Undersecretary for Works, EPC, and the Water Authority, before being appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Justice[2] Between 1998 and 2001, he served as Minister of Agriculture.[2] Since 2006 he has been a backbench MP.
In December 2008 he became a founding member of the Tautua Samoa Party.[3] As a result, in May 2009 he was one of nine Tautua MPs declared to have resigned their seats under an anti-party hopping law.[4] He was subsequently reinstated after the Supreme Court of Samoa overturned the law and declared the formation of new parties legal.[5]
In January 2010 new anti-party-hopping laws came into force, barring MPs from declaring their support for political parties or organizations with political aims other than the party they were elected for.[6] In March 2010, he joined Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi and Palusalue Fa’apo II in formally declaring his membership of the party and so was deemed to have resigned his seat.[7] However, the HRPP was unable to find a candidate for the resulting by-election, and on 2 May 2010 he was declared elected unopposed,[8] becoming the first non-HRPP MP to win a by-election.[9]
Vailupe won his seat in the 2011 election, but the result was overturned by an electoral petition, which found him guilty of bribery and treating.[10]
Vailupe is the son of former Prime Minister Va'ai Kolone and the brother of Samoan Democratic United Party leader Asiata Sale'imoa Va'ai.[11]