The Office of the Attorney General issued a statement Wednesday last week clarifying the rules of succession to the Office of the Governor.<\/p>\n
Saying he is deeply saddened by the passing of Gov. Eloy S. Inos, Attorney General Edward Manibusan said, \u201cIt is with a deep sense of regret that the Office of the Attorney General feels that it is necessary to provide an explanation for the law of succession to the governorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter carefully reviewing Article III, Section 7 of the Constitution, my office has concluded that no special election is required,\u201d Manibusan said.<\/p>\n
He said the Constitution requires a special election only if the individual assuming office is assuming the office of \u201cActing Governor\u201d or \u201cActing Lieutenant Governor.\u201d An individual will only assume the office of \u201cActing Governor\u201d or \u201cActing Lieutenant Governor\u201d if vacancies occur for both the governor and the lieutenant governor at the same time. <\/p>\n
\u201cHere, the office being assumed is the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor\u2014not the Office of the Acting Governor or Acting Lieutenant Governor. Therefore, the Commonwealth Constitution does not allow for a special election,\u201d Manibusan further explained. <\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres became the governor upon the death of Inos. Similarly, Senate President Victor B. Hocog is now the lieutenant governor. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have spoken with Governor Torres and have informed him that the Office of the Attorney General stands ready to assist him in an orderly transition,\u201d Manibusan added. <\/p>\n
In his message about the passing of Inos, Manibusan said: \u201cThe Commonwealth has lost an extraordinary man who devoted much of his life to public service and to the people of this Commonwealth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article III, Section 7 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides for the succession to the Offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Attorney General issued a statement Wednesday last week clarifying the rules…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4025,8949,86,67],"class_list":["post-217856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-commonwealth-constitution","tag-governor-torres","tag-oag","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217856","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}