{"id":379508,"date":"2022-11-11T06:04:20","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=379508"},"modified":"2022-11-11T06:04:20","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:04:20","slug":"palacios-our-coalition-is-solid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/palacios-our-coalition-is-solid\/","title":{"rendered":"Palacios: Our coalition is solid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and his running mate, Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang, during a press conference at their headquarters yesterday. (KIMBERLY B. ESMORES)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and his running mate, Mayor David M. Apatang, have officially met with their Democratic Party counterparts to make official their alliance for the upcoming runoff election.<\/p>\n

According to Palacios, after meeting yesterday with Rep. Tina Sablan (D-Saipan) and her running mate, Leila Staffler (D-Saipan), he can confidently say that their coalition is a solid one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coalition is solid. Tina made a commitment to support us and we want to thank them and their party for their support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Palacios said the discussions they had circled around what kind of programs and policies they would like to see from him if he and Apatang win the runoff in the weeks to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are folks in their camps that want to be assured that we will look at and be open to implementing some of the programs and policies that\u2019s in their platform. And that\u2019s not a problem at all for us because, albeit our platforms are probably written differently, they\u2019re basically the same and that\u2019s good governance, efficient government, integrity and following the rule of law, so there\u2019s not a lot of difference,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some of the major issues discussed during the meeting, Palacios said, was health insurance, how government departments should be run, and the evaluation of economic issues like the fiscal integrity of the government, fiscal situation, how to move forward with the looming fiscal cliff post-ARPA, and CW-1 issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cTina and Leila both have a very robust plan on these and we\u2019re going to look at that. We talked about how we are going to right this government and how do we put the right people in the right positions to run the departments or agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In addition to agreeing on policies that they should implement if they win the gubernatorial race, Palacios said discussions were also had on campaigning for the upcoming runoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no longer just going to be our campaign. We\u2019re now including Tina and Leila to help us in that regard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the results of the elections, Palacios said he extends his appreciation to all those who have supported him and Apatang.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe runoff is going to be very challenging because it\u2019s going to be in a little over two weeks, so we\u2019re getting ready fairly fast here. But we\u2019re very excited. \u2026It\u2019s a lot of hard work, but we\u2019re good to go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Apatang encourages everyone who supported AD in the last election to support them again in this upcoming runoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to encourage our people to take a look at where we stand and we continue to ask for your support for this upcoming runoff. We continue to stand with the platform of \u2018rebuilding trust\u2019 and that\u2019s our common commitment to our people in the Commonwealth. So we\u2019re humbly asking our citizens of the Commonwealth to please help us out. It is time to change this government. Give it back to you, guys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for his thoughts regarding the recent partnership between the independent parties, Apatang said he is glad the parties are joining together for the good of the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir platforms are pretty much the same as ours. We want to pursue the same issue, which is to reset the government. We need to work together and tackle the things that have been happening here in our Commonwealth. And they\u2019ve got some good ideas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and his running mate, Mayor David M. Apatang,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":379509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379508","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}