HONOLULU, Hawaii (PIR) — President Tommy E. Remengesau, Jr. and Vice President Sandra S. Pierantossi were inaugurated as the new leaders of Palau Friday during ceremonies at Asahi Baseball Field in the capital.<\/p>\n
Compact of Free Association Special Negotiator Allen Stayman, who represented the U.S. State Department at the event, said Remengesau stressed three major goals in his inauguration speech:<\/p>\n
\u2022 To protect the environment<\/p>\n
\u2022 To recognize the importance of the private sector in improving Palau’s economy, and<\/p>\n
\u2022 To blend indigenous traditions with modern values and ways.<\/p>\n
Major addresses by the new president and traditional leaders were repeated in both English and Palauan.<\/p>\n
Among those in attendance were Federated States of Micronesia President Leo Falcam and high-ranking officials from a number of Asia-Pacific nations, including Australia, Japan, the Marshall Islands and Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Marshall Islands President Kassai Note was scheduled to be present at the inauguration but political problems at home — including a failed Nitijela (legislature) motion for a vote of no confidence in Note’s government last week — apparently kept him at home. Among opposition criticisms of the Marshalls’ leader is that he travels too much.<\/p>\n
President Remengesau, the former Palau vice president, succeeds Kuniwo Nakamura in the republic’s top elected position.<\/p>\n
Palau, like the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands once was part of the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.<\/p>\n
As part of the inauguration festivities, the new president, on Thursday, officially opened the Palau International Coral Reef Center.<\/p>\n
The center, which will engage in reef research, training and educational activities, is a joint project of the U.S., Japan and Palau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Tommy E. Remengesau, Jr. and Vice President Sandra S. Pierantossi were inaugurated as the new leaders of Palau Friday during ceremonies at Asahi Baseball Field in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55743","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}