At the closing panel of Friday\u2019s \u201cPreserving the Planet for Posterity through Partnerships: the Pagan Preferred alternative,\u201d the speakers reached a consensus to oppose the U.S. military\u2019s proposed use of Pagan Island.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Joseph Leon Guerrero felt that the environmental impact statement the military is seeking comments on is a process that normally happens after a decision is made on whether an activity is conducted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was to come to your property, and say, \u2018Mr. Torres, I want to build my house over there, and I want to put my garage over here, and my septic tank over here,\u2019 and you say, \u2018Wait, hold on, don\u2019t you have to ask first if I\u2019m going lease it to you, before you ask me to comment on your house?\u201d he said, giving an analogy to the crowd gathered.<\/p>\n
He later brought up the issue of compensation, wondering aloud if there is a price or value that can be placed on a people not being able to go back to their home islands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m really concerned about is we don\u2019t prepare for the possibility and when the time comes to negotiate [for compensation], they will use the only other example, an uninhabited island, the Farallon de Mendinilla. \u2026What was the value of FDM? Thirty-four cents per square meter. That is not acceptable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Diego Kaipat, a Northern Islands resident, started his address with a \u201cvery big \u2018no\u2019 to the military takeover of Pagan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who have lived on the Northern Islands are a testament that we can live there without electricity, we can live there without turning on the stove to cook your food, we learned how to live with nature, and with all this issues that are popping up now. If they give us the opportunity early on to start and rebuild our lives again, we won\u2019t be in this predicament now,\u201d he said of his desire to see Pagan resettled.<\/p>\n
Other panel speakers echoed the desire to see a redevelopment of Pagan.<\/p>\n
Rep. Felicidad Ogumoro lamented what she described as a lack of conversation with the military.<\/p>\n
Guam\u2019s Peter Perez said Pagan is a \u201cbeautiful stronghold\u201d that is a connection to Marianas\u2019 past.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur spirits are there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Delegate candidate Andrew Salas cited the United States\u2019 \u201cmilitary-industrial complex\u201d as the obstacle when it comes to Pagan.<\/p>\n
Jesus Taisague, another candidate in this year\u2019s election, pushed for the redevelopment of Pagan to \u201creturn people to their ancestral lands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the closing panel of Friday\u2019s \u201cPreserving the Planet for Posterity through Partnerships: the Pagan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[332,200,541,67],"class_list":["post-181282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-fdm","tag-military","tag-northern-islands","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181282","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}