By Emmanuel T. Erediano
Variety News Staff

COVENANT Day, which will be celebrated this Saturday, will be highlighted by a display of the flags of America’s 50 states, six jurisdictions and five military services, according to retired Sgt. Major Frank G. Cepeda who is helping prepare the display of flags at American Memorial Park.
The 1976 Covenant, which was approved in a plebiscite by NMI voters, passed by Congress, and signed into law by the American president, made the islands part of the United States.
According to Cepeda, the national flag, as well as the state and military service flags, will be announced one by one and carried to the park’s Court of Honor.
The CNMI flag will be the final one carried to the Court of Honor.
Cepeda said the event’s theme is “USA — Our Nation on Review,” and it will start at 10 a.m.
Vicente N. Santos, the former president of the Marianas District Legislature, will speak at the ceremony.
Santos was vice chairman of the NMI panel that negotiated the Covenant.
Cepeda said David Cohen, deputy assistant secretary of the interior for insular affairs, will also speak on Saturday.
According to Cepeda, it will be the first time in 30 years that Covenant Day is celebrated in this manner which will show how the local people — the Carolinians and Chamorros — see the CNMI “fits into the American political family.”
Many of the people in the CNMI, he said, still do not know what their nationality is, and they don’t fully understand the meaning of the Covenant.
He said a majority of the people here still consider their nationality as Chamorro or Carolinian when they are actually American citizens.
Chamorro or Carolinian, he added, is their ethnicity but, as citizens of the U.S., their nationality is American.
Cepeda expressed hope that today’s program will enhance “our people’s understanding of their citizenship.”
The celebration, he said, will also allow those in the CNMI to assess the effectiveness of the Covenant as it was envisioned by the negotiators.
Cepeda said, in his own speech, he will discuss the CNMI’s proximity to other foreign countries “that makes it one of the focal points for economic and political exploitation.”
Aside from Cepeda, those who will join in the celebration include the JROTC Manta Ray Battalion of Saipan Southern High School and Veteran Affairs executive director Ruth Coleman.