Diego represents NMI at Pacific confab

Gov. Juan N. Babauta has delegated Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente to represent the Commonwealth in the Conference of the Pacific Community in Palau this Friday.

Benavente will be leaving Thursday. The conference will end Saturday, but Benavente said he is planning on staying in Koror “for a couple more days.” He will fly back to Saipan on Monday, Nov. 21.

Babauta’s running mate will be off-island when the absentee ballots are tabulated and the final results of this year’s general election are revealed on Saturday, Nov. 19.

He refused to comment when asked how he felt about being away on the “big day”.

The Babauta-Benavente tandem placed third in a tally of poll votes for this year’s general election.

With 3,228 or 26 percent of the total votes, the incumbents are currently 269 votes behind Covenant Party’s Benigno R. Fitial and Timothy P. Villagomez, and 143 votes behind independents Heinz S. Hofschneider and David Apatang.

The Commonwealth has been waiting for over a week now for these overseas votes to be counted and finally determine the winner of this year’s close gubernatorial election.

A total of 1,602 absentee ballots have been mailed or personally issued to overseas voters.

The Conference of the Pacific Communities is a biannual high-level meetings held by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, headquartered in Noumea, New Caledonia.

SPC was founded as the South Pacific Commission in 1947 by Australia, France, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Canberra Agreement. The group now includes four of the founding nations—the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have withdrawn—as well as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and twenty other Pacific island nations and territories.

According to SPC’s website, the 4th Conference of the Pacific Community will carry the theme: “Youth empowerment for a secure, prosperous and sustainable future.”

The agenda for the conference include the appointment of the next director-general, outcome of the corporate review, the Pacific plan and other regional issues.

Lourdes T. Pangelinan, formerly on the staff of ex-Guam Gov. Joseph F. Ada, has been the SPC director general since January 2000. She is SPC’s first woman chief executive.