A youth voter-awareness group may have succumbed to a case of \u201cpolitics\u201d this election season, which may cause them to dissolve, according to group adviser Irene Tantiado of MILE CNMI.<\/p>\n
Tantiado is contesting a MILE press release endorsing the gubernatorial and now runoff candidates Heinz Hofschneider and Ray Yumul. The statement was released while she was off-island.<\/p>\n
Tantiado said she and other core members of the group were not informed of the decision made by board chair Angel Ichihara, adviser Ronnie Doca, and other members to endorse Hofschneider.<\/p>\n
The topic of endorsement did come up at group meetings but they chose not to endorse a candidate out of respect to their differing opinions, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to keep the group clear of these things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In the press release, Doca is described as \u201cthe adviser for the group\u201d who \u201cwas pleased that its members were able to decide amongst themselves on who[m] to endorse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tantiado said she has had zero response from the Docas since the release.<\/p>\n
It is unclear which member of the group wrote the endorsement. Doca contacted both of the island\u2019s newspapers with the statement.<\/p>\n
Ichihira said the \u201cmajority of the group\u201d voted to endorse Hofschneider at a meeting a week prior to the election. However, Tantiado contests this \u201cmajority\u201d that Ichihira claims. She said six core members were not aware of Ichihara\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
One of them, MILE secretary Aaron Cabug, confirmed he and other core members never endorsed such a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are somehow becoming political. We are happy with AJ going to the radio [to support Heinz], but not using MILE,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He believes if MILE were to endorse a candidate, all members should have supported the decision.<\/p>\n
Tantiado hopes to sit down with Doca, Ichihara and the rest of MILE when she returns this week. <\/p>\n
She hopes the group will agree that the endorsement was not \u201cofficial.\u201d If not, the group would dissolve or she would leave as adviser, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A youth voter-awareness group may have succumbed to a case of \u201cpolitics\u201d this election season,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[866,315],"class_list":["post-184747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-irene-tantiado","tag-ray-yumul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184747","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}