In an interview on Friday, the retired judge said there is a misunderstanding of the CNMI’s political ties with the U.S.
He wants to bring this to the attention of the U.S. Congress, along with the CNMI’s need to be given an opportunity to be heard in the nation’s capital.
“The voice should have been exercised by the people of the CNMI but it has never been exercised properly,” Lizama said noting the significance of this year’s election which will finally give the CNMI a delegate seat in the U.S. Congress, a right that he said he fought for since he was in his 20s.
Lizama was the Territorial — now known as the Republican — Party candidate for Washington representative in the CNMI’s first election in 1977.
He lost to the Democratic candidate, Edward DLG. Pangelinan.
Lizama said he ran because he was disappointed that the NMI’s Covenant negotiators, which included Pangelinan, accepted commonwealth status without a delegate seat in the U.S. Congress.
Lizama said the most important issue to bring up to Congress is the Covenant, the U.S. law that made the islands part of America.
He said he has met with Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka’s state director, Michael T. Kitamura, to discuss his platform and position on issues as a delegate candidate.
He met Kitamura when he and his campaign manager, former Sen. Ramon S. Guerrero, visited the American senator’s office early this month.
Lizama said he and Akaka are very good friends.
When Lizama was the director of the Territorial Economic Opportunity Office in the early 1970s, Akaka was the state director of Economic Opportunity Office in Hawaii.
At stake in this election, Lizama said, is what the CNMI is going to be decades from now.
The job of a congressional delegate, he said, is “incredibly multifarious” and should include the ability to foresee what the CNMI is going to be 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years from now.
According to Lizama, “the seed” was planted in 1976 with the enactment of the Covenant.
“But how do you want to see this seed grow?” he asked, referring to the CNMI’s current political status.
The “seed” has grown and is bearing fruits, Lizama said, but the CNMI delegate must be able to answer this question: “How can our dreams continue to grow on the conditions where they originally started?”
