Benjamin M. Cepeda stepped down as chairman of the Democratic Party and plans to seek a House of Representatives seat representing Precinct 1 under the independent gubernatorial team of former governor Juan N.\u00a0 Babauta and former senator Juan S. Torres.<\/p>\n
Cepeda\u2019s resignation comes barely three months since the Democratic Party reorganized, elected its new set of officers, and launched a membership drive.<\/p>\n
Sources said Cepeda stepped down over \u201cinfighting\u201d within the party, and that he was \u201cnot given respect that he deserves as chairman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former representative Rosiky F. Camacho has replaced Cepeda as the Democratic Party\u2019s new central executive committee chairman, Democrat Jesse Taisague confirmed yesterday.<\/p>\n
The Babauta camp separately confirmed with Saipan Tribune yesterday Cepeda\u2019s move to their fold. \u201cWe welcome everybody,\u201d one of them said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
Top officials with the Babauta camp did not want to elaborate, and asked that the media contact Cepeda directly. Cepeda could not be reached as of press time yesterday. He previously ran for Precinct 1 but didn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n
In mid-March, the Democratic Party officially announced their gubernatorial candidates for the November elections: candidate for governor Edward M. Deleon Guerrero, a longtime Democrat and former Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director, and former representative Daniel Quitugua as lieutenant governor bet. At the launching, Cepeda said the Democratic Party took the lead in exploring options to improve political and economic opportunities in the \u201850s to the \u201880s.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on Friday afternoon, Democratic Party candidates led by Deleon Guerrero and Quitugua, along with delegate candidate Andrew Salas, issued a press release stating their stand on Article 12 or the land alienation provision of the NMI Constitution.<\/p>\n
In the press release, they said they are \u201cvehemently opposed to any attempt, by anyone, to change, amend or remove the mandatory restrictions on land alienation in Article 12\u2026\u201d The full text of the Democratic Party candidates\u2019 press release will be published in full in Wednesday\u2019s paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Benjamin M. Cepeda stepped down as chairman of the Democratic Party and plans to seek…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[152,65,133,38],"class_list":["post-36145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-deleon-guerrero","tag-house","tag-run","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36145","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}