The Azmar certificate

When you apply for a job, you would normally submit your resumé and application and convince your prospective employer that you’re the best candidate for the job. You’re hardly in any position to demand that you be given the job first and then—and only then—would you submit your application and proof of your credentials. A year ago, I became aware of Azmar’s application to strip mine Pagan. Since then, MPLA has been asking Azmar to submit all the necessary documents—financial or otherwise—to complete the permit application and prove its mining credentials. A year later, Azmar still hasn’t complied with MPLA’s numerous document requests.

This repeated failure prompted MPLA staff to recommend that the board terminate all negotiations with Azmar and issue a Request for Proposal to solicit other bids. However, in a move that defied logic, the board went against the staff’s recommendations and voted on Aug. 17, 2004 to grant Azmar another 60 days to provide the required documents. It is important to note that contrary to what has been misreported time and time again, the Board never granted Azmar a conditional mining permit on Aug. 17. It merely agreed to review the documents requested of Azmar at the end of the 60-day submission period. Afterwards, the board would decide whether to (1) grant Azmar the conditional two-year permit upon proof that all pertinent requirements had been met; or (2) immediately cease entertaining Azmar’s permit application if Azmar failed—for the umpteenth time—to fully comply with MPLA’s document requests.

After this stunning decision was announced at the Aug. 17 Board meeting, Don Farrell boasted that Azmar might even comply with MPLA’s requests a lot sooner than the allotted 60 days. In fact, way before the 60-day deadline expired, Farrell appeared on MCV and announced that Azmar was ready to do business. However, shortly before the Economic Conference took place in Los Angeles last September, Ken Moore threatened that Azmar would no longer submit any more documents to MPLA until MPLA issued Azmar the mining permit. Ken Moore’s audacity never ceases to amaze us!

Meanwhile, frustrated over the MPLA board’s “internal distractions,” Don Farrell intentionally or unintentionally spilled the beans and revealed the plan that had been hatched in LA by Azmar, the Governor, MPLA officials, Senators Luis Crisostomo, Joaquin Adriano, Joseph Mendiola, Paul Manglona, and others present at the LA Conference. And what exactly was that plan? Despite Azmar’s repeated failures to comply with MPLA’s document requests, our officials—many of whom hold the highest elected offices in the CNMI and who took an oath to serve and protect all of us—concocted a plan to invent a “certificate,” thereby bypassing proper procedures and instantly conferring “qualified” status upon Azmar to strip-mine Pagan. Shame on them!

But what to make of those “pesky legalities”—of having to comply with the requirements of the CNMI Constitution and applicable local and federal laws? Why, the group had a solution for that, too. Simply have MPLA grant Azmar another 90 days to comply with MPLA’s ad nauseum requests to submit those missing documents and, hopefully, no one would notice that the application was supposed to have been completed and scrutinized, thereby eliminating the new to create a so-called “certificate.” And what an amazing feat of wizardry that would have been to successfully pull off.

Time and again, Azmar’s representatives have blamed MPLA and everyone else for their repeated failures to obtain the permit when they have only themselves to blame. In his Sept. 17 Letter to the Editor, PaganWatch member Ray Mafnas quoted from the movie “Cold Mountain”: “They created the weather; stood in the rain and complained it’s raining!” This is no rocket science, folks! If Azmar is a truly qualified company, then why has it been so impossible to prove that by now? Why must a “certificate” be invented to bestow upon Azmar that which it repeatedly failed to obtain the legitimate way? This is an outrage! Remember, nobody’s above the law!

My fellow CNMI citizens, are we supposed to believe that our leaders walked out of that LA meeting with Azmar having negotiated the best deal for the CNMI? I hardly think so. Do not be fooled by the gloom and doom predictions forecasted by Farrell and friends. Fear is an old tactic employed to get innocent people to bend to one’s will, and is one of the oldest tricks in the book! We’re not dumb and we certainly aren’t anywhere near desperate that we ought to allow ourselves to be bullied and frightened into settling for Azmar’s lousy lopsided deal, even if some of our elected officials tell us that “7 percent is reasonable.” Many, many of you from all walks of life, both from within and outside the CNMI, have expressed your hearty support of Pete Perez and the entire PaganWatch team’s efforts to arm our citizens with our most effective “weapon against mass deception”—an enlightened and informed mind. I taotaota! I Tanota! I Linalata! Aramasasch! Faliwasch! Malawasch! Our People! Our Land! Our Way of Life!

Cinta Matagolai Kaipat
UNMIA president
PaganWatch member