{"id":18319,"date":"2011-09-16T05:24:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T05:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=18319"},"modified":"2011-09-16T05:24:03","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T05:24:03","slug":"house-oks-review-of-cnmi-relationship-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/house-oks-review-of-cnmi-relationship-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"House OKs review of CNMI relationship with US"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Haidee V. Eugenio<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>By a vote of 15-0, the House of Representatives passed yesterday a bill creating a commission that will reexamine the CNMI&#8217;s political relationship with the United States since the signing of the \u201cCovenant\u201d 35 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>That \u201cCovenant\u201d is the document that establishes a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>After several years of trying, Rep. Stanley Torres (Ind-Saipan) finally succeeded in having his bill pass the House.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m glad that after many years, this bill passed the House. I hope the Senate will also do the same,\u201d the author of House Bill 17-7 said.<\/p>\n<p>Vice speaker Felicidad Ogumoro (Cov-Saipan) said the bill&#8217;s passage will finally give the CNMI an opportunity to reassess its relationship with the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>Torres&#8217; House Bill 17-7 creates a Second Marianas Political Commission that will reexamine \u201cwhether the people desire continuing in a &#8216;commonwealth&#8217; relationship with the United States pursuant to the terms of the original Covenant agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The commission will also reexamine whether continuation of that relationship is in the peoples&#8217; best interest, \u201cor whether some other political status would better enable them to fulfill their aspirations of full and meaningful self-government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Passage of the bill also comes two years after the federal government took control of CNMI immigration pursuant to U.S. Public Law 110-229, which also paved the way for the CNMI to elect its first nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>HB 17-7 will initially cost the CNMI $50,000 for the operations of the Second Political Status Commission.<\/p>\n<p>But during yesterday&#8217;s session, Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan) offered a floor amendment that will change the initial funding from $50,000 to \u201cup to $50,000\u201d that is authorized to be \u201creprogrammed by the governor\u201d instead of the Legislature no later than 60 days after the appointment of the members.<\/p>\n<p>House members adopted Yumul&#8217;s floor amendment.<\/p>\n<p>The Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations, which reviewed and recommended passage of the bill, said there&#8217;s \u201cjustifiable reasons to support a Commonwealth return to the negotiation table with the United States in the matter of revisiting the areas of self-government and its political status with the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>HB 17-7, House Draft 1 now goes to the Senate for action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Haidee V. Eugenio Reporter By a vote of 15-0, the House of Representatives passed&#8230;<\/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-18319","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\/18319","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=18319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}