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Incoming Palau officials inaugurated
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Posted on Jan 23 2001
HONOLULU, Hawaii (PIR) — President Tommy E. Remengesau, Jr. and Vice President Sandra S. Pierantossi were inaugurated as the new leaders of Palau Friday during ceremonies at Asahi Baseball Field in the capital.
Compact of Free Association Special Negotiator Allen Stayman, who represented the U.S. State Department at the event, said Remengesau stressed three major goals in his inauguration speech:
• To protect the environment
• To recognize the importance of the private sector in improving Palau’s economy, and
• To blend indigenous traditions with modern values and ways.
Major addresses by the new president and traditional leaders were repeated in both English and Palauan.
Among those in attendance were Federated States of Micronesia President Leo Falcam and high-ranking officials from a number of Asia-Pacific nations, including Australia, Japan, the Marshall Islands and Taiwan.
Marshall Islands President Kassai Note was scheduled to be present at the inauguration but political problems at home — including a failed Nitijela (legislature) motion for a vote of no confidence in Note’s government last week — apparently kept him at home. Among opposition criticisms of the Marshalls’ leader is that he travels too much.
President Remengesau, the former Palau vice president, succeeds Kuniwo Nakamura in the republic’s top elected position.
Palau, like the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands once was part of the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
As part of the inauguration festivities, the new president, on Thursday, officially opened the Palau International Coral Reef Center.
The center, which will engage in reef research, training and educational activities, is a joint project of the U.S., Japan and Palau.
