Surangel Whipps Jr.
KOROR (Pacnews/Island Times) — Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. has retained an attorney in Texas to address a civil case filed against him in Sherman, Texas.
The case was brought by Christa Nastad-Toribiong, the wife of former President Johnson Toribiong, alleging a violation of her due process rights in Palau.
Whipps sees the case as a test of whether he can be sued under the Compact of Free Association.
“Under the Compact, it is very clear that they can’t sue us and we can’t sue them, but I guess this would be a good test of that,” Whipps said during a press conference last week.
He also noted that Palau has the right to protect itself under its Constitution. However, since lawsuits have been filed both in Palau and the United States, he believes the courts should decide the matter.
In a previous interview with the Island Times, Christa Nastad-Toribiong, a former assistant attorney general of Palau, said:
“While it may technically be true that the President of Palau can deem a citizen of a country other than the United States to be an ‘undesirable alien’ inadmissible to Palau for no reason at all, the same cannot be said of U.S citizens. Absent very specific criteria, all U.S citizens have the right to live and work in Palau. A U.S citizen cannot be removed from Palau without reason, just as a Palauan living in the U.S could not be secretly put on a clandestine list and removed from their home in the U.S with no grounds and no hearing.”
Nastad-Toribiong was listed by the Palau government as an undesirable alien in 2022.
