Eligibility issue is now on PGC’s hands

The Pacific Games eligibility issue rule is now on the Pacific Games Council’s executive committee’s hands whether it would follow the recommendations made by the Charter Review Committee or still honor the rule used during last year’s Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa.

This was the announcement made by Northern Marianas Amateur Sports Association president Michael A. White during NMASA’s monthly meeting on Thursday at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium conference room.

White said the CRC, of which he is a member, met during last month’s Oceania National Olympic Committee meeting held in Fiji where they agreed, in a 3-2 vote, of using the old eligibility rules.

White said the CRC were given two choices on which rule to follow in future Pacific Games. First was only allowing U.S. citizens or citizens born in the island they are representing and the other was the pre-Apia rule allowing non-citizens to join in the competitions.

He added the executive board is expected to meet sometime this month to decide on their recommendation of going back to the old eligibility rule and the scrapping of the current ruling allowing only citizens of competing island nations to participate.

The CRC is proposing to return to the old eligibility rule before the current ruling was adopted in 2005. The PCG amended the Pacific Games eligibility ruling in the charter allowing citizens of member nations to compete in the regional Pacific Games and Pacific Mini Games.

The CNMI is one of the island nations that were affected by the new eligibility rule after it was unanimously passed during a PGC meeting in 2005. The CNMI have athletes who are non-U.S. citizens but are longtime residents or alien workers.

The 21-member nation PGC had met several times last year in Apia, Samoa to discuss and review several proposed amendments of the eligibility rule. PGC president Vidhya Lakan of Fiji created the CRC in order to study several recommendations for the eligibility ruling.

David Tupou of Tonga is the CRC chairman with White, the Cook Islands’ Tina Brown, Papua New Guinea’s Sir John Dawanincura, and New Caledonia’s Charles Cali as members.

This will be a welcome news for the CNMI if the PGC executive committee abides by CRC’s recommendations since it would allow tennis stars Kana Aikawa and Ji Hoon Heo, and the 6th Micronesian Games gold-medal winning table tennis team to compete again in future Games.

Aikawa is a Japanese by birth but is a Canadian citizen who polished her tennis skills in the CNMI while Heo, the current top junior player, is a Korean who also honed his skills on Saipan under the guidance of coach Jeff Race. The table tennis team, meanwhile, are mostly composed of nonresident workers.