Since the Spanish administration who came and claimed the islands for Spain in honor of Queen Mariana of Austria and ruled our people henceforth then sold us to the Germans without ever consulting with our Guelu’ yan Guela’ our ancient ancestors. Then the Japanese took control at the onset of WWI. Again, the League of Nations authorized the Japanese to mandate the Mariana Islands without the native’s consent whatsoever. Shortly afterward, the Chamorros and some Carolinians were enslaved into hard labor.
And after WWII, when the U.S. won the war, our people became U.S. nationals by ward of conquest. Japan and the U.S. entered a peace treaty. Again, the natives did not have a say in this treaty. It was this time that the United Nations consented to have the U.S. administer the islands as trustee under a trusteeship agreement. Furthermore, the U.S negotiators manipulated our people into signing the Covenant in ENLISH as official language knowing full well that the translation word for word cannot reflect the actual understanding in Chamorro to English. Interpretation of what is meant in Chamorro or Carolinian should have been used to reflect the actual understanding of the Covenant sections during the translation phase.
Most of our people at the time did not fully understand what SOVEREIGN entails. And so today, based on the Covenant, U.S. is sovereign which means they can super legislate from Washington without our say. Our delegate cannot even vote in the full floor of the U.S. Congress that is legislating policies that affect our lives some 6,000 miles away. With a stroke of a pen, a federal law just like the CNRA is made applicable to the NMI without our say.
What kind of U.S. citizens are we if we cannot even vote for the president of the United States. Second class?
U.S. Public Law 110-229 or the Consolidate Natural Resources Act of 2009, section 711 allows the CNMI to have a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representative. Even this section is questionable at best. Why? Because in the U.S. Constitution, there is a process to add additional member in Congress through apportionment. Additionally, it must be ratified by three-fourths of several states in the union. Even though the argument can be made that it is a non-voting delegate, a member sitting in the subcommittee can make recommendation to the committee as a whole that affect legislation in the U.S. Congress. The funding for the office of the delegate draws from the U.S. taxpayer dollars. Is this constitutional?
This is some of the 97 reasons why National Chamorro Association filed a lawsuit in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and in the International Court of Justice to plead that the Chamorros and Carolinians have been taken for granted big time due simply to our strategic location in the Pacific.
GLENN H. MANGLONA
National Chamorro Association
of the Mariana Islands
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