By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

THE Northern Marianas on Saturday will celebrate 31 years of political union with the world’s most powerful nation.
Federal and local officials interviewed by this reporter said this year’s anniversary of the Covenant is “special” despite congressional moves to end local control over the minimum wage and immigration, which the CNMI government and business leaders oppose.
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said the “sanctity” of the Covenant should be upheld.
“We just have to live up to the sanctity of the Covenant. We believe in the Covenant. We believe in democracy,” he said in an interview.
The 61-year-old governor said the people of the commonwealth cherish their U.S. citizenship which gives them opportunities to secure a better education and a better standard of living, among other benefits.
David Cohen, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of the interior for insular affairs, said the Covenant is “a very special, historical document” that still holds the key to the islands’ future.
“This is a very special Covenant Day because so many of the important issues that are addressed in the Covenant are now being debated. Congress is focusing on possible actions that have the potential to alter the way of life in these islands,” he told Variety in an interview.
“On the one hand, it’s causing a great deal of anxiety here. On the other hand, it’s fascinating to hear the thoughts and insights of people who were there at the inception of the Covenant sharing their views and what they believe were the intentions of the drafters.”
Cohen is on island as President Bush’s representative to the Covenant Section 902 consultation talks with the CNMI government
Former Ambassador F. Haydn Williams, the U.S. president’s representative in the negotiations with the NMI panel that drafted the Covenant, earlier told a U.S. Senate committee that local control over minimum wage and immigration was supposed to be temporary.
But the legal counsel of the NMI Covenant panel, Howard P. Willens, disagrees.
He is now the governor’s special legal counsel.
“Mr. Willens recently said that the NMI only agreed that Congress could assert control over minimum wage and immigration at a time and in a manner of (the NMI’s) choosing,” Cohen said. “Mr. Willens also said that the intention was that Congress would consider local conditions as they existed at that time, to determine, whether and how, to assert federal control over wages and immigration. Who is right? As a lawyer, even though I was not there at that time, reading the document, I have to say that Mr. Willens’s position is much more plausible. If there was an intention to automatically apply federal wage and immigration control to the CNMI after the trusteeship ended, they easily could have put that in the Covenant. They did not.”
But Cohen, who has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and who has authored several law textbooks, said the Covenant also states that Congress “has the authority to impose federal wage and immigration law anytime it chooses.”
He added, “The question for today is not whether Congress has the right to impose federal wage and immigration law on the CNMI. The question is whether that would be good policy. These are questions that are being considered in Congress right now and it is very important that the people of the CNMI participate in this discussion.”
The Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America was overwhelmingly ratified by NMI voters on June 17, 1975.
After it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, the Covenant was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on March 24, 1976.