2PSCom? No. 6

By STANLEY T. MCGINNIS TORRES
Special to the Saipan Tribune

So far we’ve learned what the process will be, how the Second Political and Economic Status Commission will be organized, what its responsibilities are, how transparency will be maintained and how much it will cost. We learned what form the final reports and recommendations will take and how those recommendations will be voted on by the citizens.

This week we’ll look back at the circumstances that led to the first agreement between the U.S. and the Northern Marianas, the “Covenant.” As we see what the motivations of the U.S. were during the original negotiations we can see what has changed and we will have a better idea whether continuing the “commonwealth” status with the U.S. is still in the best interest of the Northern Marianas people or if there are any other forms of political status that would better enable the NMI people’s aspirations to full and meaningful self-government.

World War II essentially destroyed Saipan and the thriving, agricultural-based Japanese economy here and on Tinian. After World War II the U.S. Navy ruled the Northern Marianas, except Rota, for many years and in the ’60s the Trust Territory was transitioning and political rule was shifting to the Interior Department of the U.S. government. In both cases, economic development on Saipan, Tinian and Rota was purposely stifled to suit the purposes of the U.S. and its military. The Northern Marianas was an economic wasteland by then with little or no opportunity for the prosperity once enjoyed by the Japanese of these islands. By the 1970s, with the U.N. and other U.N. member nations calling for an end to colonialism by powerful countries, the people of the Northern Marianas and the U.S. government were both looking at new ways to structure the relationship between them.

The Vietnam War was just ending and the U.S. saw unstable conditions in Asia, making it in the best interest of the U.S. military to maintain a presence here or at very least to keep any other strategic power from gaining a position here. It was in this light that the Covenant was negotiated. The view of the U.S. at the time was that “Micronesians” were unable to govern themselves and they conducted behind-the-scenes discussions and made numerous comments that were quite condescending toward islanders and their intellectual abilities. Once these documents were revealed through Freedom of Information disclosures many years later, it became obvious what some of the U.S. motivations in drafting the Covenant really were and that U.S. interest alone was at the heart of that agreement.

If you would like to see what these deprecating documents reveal, I refer you to a series of National Security Action Memorandums originating in the U.S. Kennedy White House; or the minutes of various closed meetings held to form a Task Force to change Micronesian regional policy; a series of written policy decisions outlining an “open drive to win the plebiscite” that would be called for; discussions of whether to employ “hard-sell or soft-sell” tactics to win the election; discussions allowing only “sanitized” versions of NMI economic reports to be released to the public; orders that none of the political motivational sections of the report ever be released at all; discussions about how to successfully time the coming elections for best possible chance of a U.S. win; and the text of the official statement of the then Secretary of the Interior regarding strengthening their control over the region and the mounting of an open campaign to get the Micronesians to vote for affiliation with the U.S. These are lengthy documents and I offer you the opportunity to view them at my office on Capital Hill or I can send you a copy.

A major tactic to get enough of the general population to vote “for” the Covenant was to hire a series of propagandists/U.S. friendly “journalists” to keep a steady stream of pro-U.S. information presented to the potential voters. A couple of those information “spinners” still call these islands home or at least keep up the barrage of written, pro-U.S. commentary these several decades later. Over time they were successful so that in the ’70s when the vote was held, a majority (about 78 percent or some 3,000-plus) of voters chose U.S. affiliation through the “Covenant.”

Fast-forward to 1990 and the U.N. dissolves the Trust Territory but the Covenant, only 14 years old by then, was already starting to show federal interference on self-governing and problems regarding immigration, labor, and other local issues. By the 2000s, the Marine Monument and the 200-mile economic zone were unilaterally taken by the U.S. without recourse or even a vote of the local people. These and other self-government issues have spurred the formation of the 2nd Political and Economic Status Commission.

The long and short of it is that times have changed, conditions have changed and it is time we took another look at the Covenant and the system of rule it imposes to see if there are other ways to structure our economy and our political connections to the rest of the world that work better for us, the citizens of the Northern Marianas. Maybe so, maybe not.

Next week we’ll have a short review of the commission and its mandated responsibilities and look at just when this process will get started. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments about this week’s article at 664-8903 or rep.torress@cnmileg.gov.mp.

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Rep. Stanley Tudela McGinnis Torres is a member of the House of Representatives of the 17th Legislature