Former governor Juan N. Babauta is now the Republican Party of the NMI\u2019s president as a result of Friday night\u2019s election of officers at a general membership meeting dotted by tense discussions over the acceptance of 1,077 new and returning members, mostly from the Covenant Party.<\/p>\n
Former Covenant Party members almost outnumbered GOP members during Friday night\u2019s meeting at the Garapan Central Park.<\/p>\n
Babauta is not saying whether he will run again in the next delegate election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am leaving everything open. Nothing is off the table when it comes to politics but tonight, I say to you and the general public that I am here to serve as chairman of the party. I\u2019m in a supportive role and whoever wants to run for any public office, I\u2019m going to be there to return the favor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Danny Aquino, a member of the Republican Party\u2019s executive committee, challenged the party\u2019s acceptance of 1,077 individuals, considering that the whole executive committee was not consulted nor made aware of the application forms until during the general membership meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chairman can\u2019t unilaterally accept the 1,000-plus applications. \u2026There are procedures. I don\u2019t object to anyone of you coming into the party but let\u2019s do it the right way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he does not want to lose any more Republican members especially with the 2012 elections just around the around, just because the party does not live by its rules.<\/p>\n
Outgoing president Juan I. Tenorio, who did not want to seek re-election, said he received on Friday morning over 1,000 requests to join the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
Some members, including former speaker Arnold Palacios who is now the director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife, said the party should accept those who turned in their applications to become members. The crowd applauded.<\/p>\n
Babauta said while he acknowledges Aquino\u2019s concerns, he accepted the applicants to become members of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of you Covenant members who want to be Republicans, you went through the process. That process has been completed and it\u2019s official. All of you are now Republican Party members,\u201d he said, drawing applause from the audience.<\/p>\n
Babauta\u2019s election as party president came a few days after Fitial hired him for a $1 contract to become the governor\u2019s special adviser to the United States Federal Regional Council.<\/p>\n
Babauta left yesterday for San Francisco, California where he will be joining Fitial to attend this week\u2019s meeting of the Region 9 Federal Regional Council.<\/p>\n
Former speaker Oscar Rasa, chairman of Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s Blue Ribbon Committee whose end goal is to dissolve the Covenant Party and transition its members to the Republican Party, said the application forms he submitted on Friday comply with the Republican Party bylaws.<\/p>\n
Rasa said there are still some 300 pending application forms that they hope to turn in soon.<\/p>\n
[B]New officers[\/B]<\/p>\n
When Tenorio opened the floor for the election of five board members, Babauta was the first one to be nominated.<\/p>\n
Besides Babauta, the others who were elected as board members were DFW\u2019s Richard Seman, Ramon \u201cRay\u201d Salas, Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director Edward Deleon Guerrero and Coastal Resources Management director Rita Chong.<\/p>\n
When the five were elected, they met briefly to select among themselves the new officers.<\/p>\n
After emerging from their meeting, Tenorio announced that Babauta was chosen president; Chong as first vice president, Deleon Guerrero as second vice president, Salas as treasurer, and Seman as secretary.<\/p>\n
Their terms took effect immediately.<\/p>\n
The members also re-elected Roman \u201cBo\u201d Palacios Jr. as national committeeman, and elected Viola Alepuyo as national committee woman. Alepuyo is a Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission board member and Retirement Fund counsel.<\/p>\n
Palacios clarified that the new national committeeman and committeewoman\u2019s term won\u2019t start until September 2012.<\/p>\n
He said technically, MaryLou Ada is still the national committeewoman.<\/p>\n
Palacios said he will again work with other party officials to bring to the CNMI the new Republican National Committee chair, Reince Priebus.<\/p>\n
In 2010, Palacios and Tenorio were able to bring to the CNMI then RNC chair Michael Steele.<\/p>\n
Palacios said that Priebus had said he will support all the U.S. territories, not just the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to bring the chairman over just to see how the territories are because we\u2019re completely different than a state. We\u2019re smaller but in any other respect we\u2019re more difficult to manage,\u201d he said, referring to the diversity of opinion and culture.<\/p>\n
During Friday\u2019s meeting, Tenorio thanked party members for working with him during his two-year term and reiterated that he will no longer be active in politics. <\/p>\n
Among the former Covenant Party members who were at the Republican Party general membership meeting were Community and Cultural Affairs Secretary Melvin Faisao, Public Lands Secretary Oscar Babauta, Customs director Jesus Mafnas, Marianas Public Land Trust chair Alvaro Santos, and Zoning Board chair Diego Blanco.<\/p>\n
Only a few elected Republicans showed up at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Babauta\u2019s former opponent in the delegate election, former House floor leader Joseph Camacho who was Fitial\u2019s candidate in 2009, was also at the meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former governor Juan N. Babauta is now the Republican Party of the NMI\u2019s president as a result of Friday night\u2019s election of officers at a general membership meeting dotted by tense discussions over the acceptance of 1,077 new and returning members, mostly from the Covenant Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}