GOVERNOR Ralph DLG Torres and his running mate, Senate Floor Leader Vinnie F. Sablan, have challenged their Independent opponents, Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang, to a debate.
Independent gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and his running mate, Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang, talk to media members during a press conference at the AD 2022 headquarters on Thursday.
In response, Palacios said he is willing to debate Torres “anytime, anywhere,” adding, “he’d better be ready.”
Palacios said he takes his public duties very seriously and tries to be “very civil,” but since he has been challenged to a debate, “okay then, but I don’t think another debate will help him.”
Torres and Palacios finished first and second in a three-way gubernatorial election.
The Torres-Sablan team received 5,726 or 38.83% of the votes cast; Palacios-Apatang garnered 4,890 or 33.16% of the votes cast; and the Democratic tandem of Reps. Tina Sablan and Leila Staffler got 4,132 or 28.02% of the votes cast.
Because no one received a majority of the votes cast, the top two tandems will face each other again in a runoff election. Reps. Sablan and Staffler have endorsed Palacios and Apatang.
In a statement on Thursday, Torres said the CNMI deserves “the opportunity to fully compare us directly as candidates for governor and lt. governor before they decide who will lead our islands for the next four years.”
“Therefore,” he added, “we call for a gubernatorial and lt. gubernatorial debate — one-on-one on two separate evenings — to give our people an open discussion about our respective plans for the future.”
“We hope that the Palacios-Apatang campaign supports having a real debate on the issues,” the governor said.
Nonsense
In a press conference on Thursday, Palacios responded to his opponent saying that he, Palacios, is an “absent lieutenant governor.”
“I’ve been very patient and very civil,” Palacios said. “But to me those statements are really childish, really sophomoric, juvenile nonsense.”
He said he has been “out there just like the governor,” but he doesn’t “drag” the press corps with him “to take pictures and make himself look like he’s doing things.”
Immediately after Super Typhoon Yutu and during the Covid-19 pandemic, Palacios said he had been doing the same things the governor was doing.
“He is the governor and he has to be out there,” Palacios said. “And of course, at the end of the day, the governor is the one who makes decisions. Now, am I absent? No. Do I need to be down at the quarantine sites with him every day? No I don’t. I would rather be up there working, and I’ve been working, looking at policies and procedures that we need to follow with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster programs.”
According to Palacios, “I don’t think our governor knows how to handle policies and programs, and even the procedures of FEMA.”
Palacios said he was on the Covid-19 Task Force and post-Yutu disaster team that made sure the Commonwealth received its reimbursements from the federal government.
So for the governor “to say things like that is kind of nonsense — it is childish…. Of course he is out there, pretending he is clearing roads after a typhoon, but he is not clearing roads; it is the mayor’s men [doing it].”
“Why would I ask somebody to take a picture of me carrying a piece of tangan tangan?” Palacios asked. “No I don’t do that. I go to the shelters to deliver bottles of water. I went to the water station in Lower Base and helped the employees and other government workers by giving them water and filling up water containers for the people lining up.”
He said he “doesn’t call reporters to come with [him] everywhere he goes.”
“It’s always been my personality to get things done without a lot of fanfare,” he added.
Regarding the resources provided to the CNMI by the federal government, “I hope that we follow the rules,” Palacios said.
He noted that the CNMI government was not able to get reimbursed for certain items “because the governor’s office did not follow the regulations.”
For his part, Mayor Apatang thanked the people of the Commonwealth for their support.
“I want to continue to ask them humbly to please…help us out in the runoff. We need their support in order for us to change this government,” the mayor said.
He said he and Palacios will “return the government to the people.”
“We need an honest government, a good government,” he added. “We want to make sure that our finances are in order.”
