Samoa | Fiame Naomi Mata’afa walked toward Samoa’s beehive-shaped Parliament House on Monday morning intending to be sworn in as the first female prime minister in the Pacific Island nation’s 56-year history.

What she and her fellow party members found instead were locked doors. The Speaker of Parliament issued orders to keep them out. And so deepened a constitutional crisis that has convulsed this long-stable nation and thrown into doubt whether Mata’afa, whose party won the April 9 election, would actually take office.