JOSE PANGELINAN SAN NICOLAS

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Spouse: Guellermina Hofschneider-San Nicolas (deceased)
Children: Henry, Michael, Patrick, Coreen and Ana SN Santos,

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Elementary: Tinian Elementary School
High School: Saipan Intermediate High School
Basic Education: 56 hours on Police Management
(No formal college education and higher education)

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

Current Job: President
Company/Agency: SN5, Inc.

Previous Jobs:

1st resident department head for Police Department on Tinian, 14 years

1st chair, Tinian Municipal Council, involved in amending the constitution

2nd chair, Tinian Municipal Council two terms, vice-chair for two terms
Commissioner, Tinian Casino Gambling Control Commission

Q. What would you consider the top three issues or concerns facing the CNMI that demand immediate action from our government leaders?

A. Cut the unfruitful department or institution in the government, that is, all the useless institutions in government. That’s the main thing for us to do—to look after the expenditures first, then cut those unnecessary posts like duplicate positions.

Second, stop voting people into public office for personal gain or interest. For example, don’t vote for somebody if he doesn’t know anything about the economy.

Next is to stop hiring dollar-a-year employees because even if the contract says payment to the employee is one dollar a year, these people still become government employees. These employees don’t achieve productivity yet they keep plenty of fringe benefits like per diem allowances.

Also, look for exporting instead of importing basic commodities. An example here is chicken. We can raise our own chickens here, instead of buying chicken from outside.

Q. What ideas can you bring to the table to revive the CNMI economy?

A. A politician should not control business people. A politician should not talk about economy when they are not qualified to talk about business to improve our economy. These people should talk to the politicians, not the politicians talking to business people.

Q. What is your vision for the Commonwealth and Tinian? And what are the steps that must be taken to achieve that vision?

A. As a businessman, I would like to find a means for Tinian and the Commonwealth to make money. For example is the noni juice. We have a big land on Tinian for this; the only thing we need to do is to find market. Japan needs volumes of containers a month. So my vision is, if I get in, I would work with my delegation and the government of Tinian to make this factory a reality and to take some part of the land here to plant noni so we could export them to Japan, Korea and the US, instead of [relying solely on revenues from] casino, BGRT, and others. We need to come up with something in our natural resources that we can sell.

Q. What needs to be changed in people’s ways of thinking and doing things as a means to help you achieve your vision?

A. We have to go out and educate our people that politicians are not the right people to create moneymaking machines, but the business people. We have to educate our people that a business-minded candidate should be in the office, not politicians who would appropriate funds only. We need politicians who would find moneymaking machines. If we do this, we can accomplish everything: better education, better police department, better health and hospital. Everything is better because we have a business-minded government. But for those people who just want to become congressmen and senators because of popularity and family and friends, then we would not accomplish our vision for our children. We have to encourage and educate our people to elect people for the interest of the entire CNMI.