In response to Glen Palacios

I understand your loyalty to your brother, Jesse. In fact, I anticipated your anger and your move to defend your brother. But regardless of what genuine affection I may have in my heart for you, Glen, it is simply wrong of you, Jesse, or anyone on your Azmar team to continue your quest to enrich yourselves at the expense of our people! As you know, I have been speaking up and speaking out to defend the rights of our people since I came back in 1998. Why should my running for public office stop me now? As long as there is a need, I will continue to speak out against unfairness and injustices against our people regardless of whether I do so as an elected public official or in my personal capacity as an ordinary citizen who genuinely loves and cares deeply for our people and our beautiful islands.

Let’s not kid ourselves, Glen. We both know that personal greed, not concern for the people of the Marianas, motivated Ken Moore to go after Pagan’s pozzolan under the pretense of plans to use the profits to operate the WWII Museum in Arizona.

Well, we at PaganWatch believe that the Pagan pozzolan resources should be used in a much better way. Instead of a WWII museum in Arizona, how about a state-of-the art hospital in the CNMI built with funds from the Pagan pozzolan? How about having potential billions at the CNMI’s disposal ready to be used to hire top-notch doctors and healthcare professionals? Our people are said to have the third highest rate of diabetes in the world. Imagine how much better our treatment would be if we had all the proper modern facilities and staffing to take care of our people? Imagine using our Pagan pozzolan resources to fund a state-of-the art hospital—perhaps THE best hospital in the Pacific and ending the tragic lack of medical referral funding that is costing us lives!

How about utilizing money from pozzolan for college scholarships? Ken Moore once expressed to me that he wanted to set up a high school honorarium with criteria to be established by him and MPLA. A high school honorarium? That’s laughable! The man wants to help himself to our pozzolan resources to the tune of potential billions of dollars and the most generous he can be for our kids is a high school honorarium? Come on, Glen.

We have so many problems that desperately need funding. Water, power, you name it! Don’t you get it? We need the money here! It may be our only chance to become truly self-reliant and end our embarrassing dependence on the federal government for handouts.

Whether you choose to consider me a friend or foe is up to you, Glen, but I could not, in good conscience, look the other way and allow Azmar to rob our people blind, especially at a time when we most need our resources. My conscience is what led me to speak out against Azmar in the first place. As you know, Ken Moore wanted me to tame MPLA, the Northern Islands Mayor’s Office, and the Northern Islands people to get Azmar the deal. We parted company when I saw that the lopsided deal would have grossly exploited our people.

I am very disappointed in both you and Jesse for your role in helping Ken Moore promote his grossly lopsided deal. Why didn’t you come clean and tell the people about the illegal employment contract that would have required you and Jesse to keep your mouths shut while historic artifacts belonging to the CNMI people were smuggled out of the CNMI? How could you have gone along with Moore’s plans to bring M16-style automatic rifles up to Pagan if he got the mining permit? Why didn’t the two of you stand up for your people and oppose the lopsided deal?

I thank God everyday that there are people like Pete Perez and the other PaganWatch members—indigenous and non-indigenous—who see what people are really up to and who chose to do something about it regardless of the consequences. Contrary to what you and our critics may say, none of us is being paid to do what we do, which is to inform the public and put pressure on our public officials to do right by the people.

Instead of denying yours and Jesse’s involvement and trying to defend the indefensible, why not direct your energies to activities that will help this community get back on its feet? There are other investors interested in Pagan who are waiting and watching. I’ve spoken with some of them. They do not want to see that a key Azmar employee is now at MPLA. They are not going to invest if JG Sablan’s permit is extended. These kinds of things discourage investors because they know they cannot trust the government. What you can do to help is to counsel your brother to step down.

We also need a legitimate task force to be established that will bring credibility and authenticity to its proceedings. PaganWatch wants the multi-disciplinary task force to not only start with a feasibility impact study, but to develop a standard set of criteria (with advice from experts in the mining field as well as environmental experts) from which all potential investors would be judged fairly, accurately, and in a transparent fashion. Just as important, we want to help investors to know the risks and to assure them that the government and community are behind them and opening doors for them so that we can all succeed.

Cinta M. Kaipat
PaganWatch