{"id":289957,"date":"2018-12-07T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=289957"},"modified":"2018-12-07T06:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:00:46","slug":"nmi-celebrates-constitution-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmi-celebrates-constitution-day\/","title":{"rendered":"NMI celebrates Constitution Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_289958\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-289958\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/David-Apatang-pix2014.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"761\" class=\"size-full wp-image-289958\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-289958\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apatang<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang urged the public yesterday to remember Constitution Day, Dec. 8, as an occasion to celebrate the 40 years that have passed since the CNMI Constitution was created.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur Northern Mariana Islands Constitution is the bedrock of our social, economic, and political development and progress, a growth of our way of life spanning 40 years when our people chose to be self-sustaining and self-governing,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cIn hindsight, we have advanced in every aspect of growth, and today we are proud that we are much better off than in the day before 1977, when our Constitution was ratified by the people of the Northern Mariana Islands, and 1978, when our Constitution took effect.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Since the holiday falls on a Saturday this year, it will be observed by the CNMI government today.<\/p>\n<p>Apatang noted that the CNMI Constitution serves as the framework for 40 years with which the government has conducted its affairs, relationships, and even immigration to establish businesses and livelihood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRespect and fidelity to our Constitution is not a conditional promise anyone of us could make; it is a non-debatable commitment and obligation.  It has guided us for 40 years in maintaining a stable system of law and order, check and balance, and furthering the multi-varied beliefs of our now very diverse population,\u201d the mayor said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang urged the public yesterday to remember Constitution Day, Dec. 8,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":289958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,21,121,67],"class_list":["post-289957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-life","tag-northern-mariana-islands","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289957","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}