24 Mar 2003

American Samoa governor plans to call constitution convention

4:25 pm on 24 March 2003

The American Samoan governor, Tauese Sunia, says he plans to call a Constitutional Convention for the territory before the end of this year.

Tauese says the government has violated the constitution by not calling a convention every five years, and it's been 15 years since the last one was held.

In the last three years, the territorial legislature has been making sporadic assertions that a constitutional convention was long overdue.

Two years ago, it passed a resolution requesting the governor to call a meeting to review the constitution because recent high court decisions have raised questions on what practices are in line with the constitution.