“It was Gov. Carlos S. Camacho who negotiated that at least 25 percent of the food stamps provided to us by the feds should be spent on local produce and local products used for fishing,” said Cing, who served as Tinian’s Democratic senator from 1992 to 2004.
He added that it was also the Camacho-Ada administration that helped create the tourism industry.
“The Japanese wanted to repatriate the remains of their war dead on Tinian and Saipan, but Governor Camacho told Japan that he would provide land for the creation of memorials in the CNMI so that the Japanese could commemorate their war dead here. The governor, in one stroke, honored the Japanese war dead while ensuring that tourists from Japan would regularly visit the islands,” Cing said. “I really admired his thinking.”
Camacho and Francisco C. Ada were governor and lt. governor of the CNMI from Jan. 1978 to Jan. 1982.
