Commonwealth Ports Authority Board of Directors Chairman Jose C. Ayuyu speaks during a board meeting in the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting classroom at the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport on Friday.
IN response to the concern of Tinian Sen. Karl King-Nabors about the possible renaming of the Francisco Manglona Borja/Tinian International Airport, CPA Board Chairman Jose C. Ayuyu said, “Take it easy, relax, don’t panic.”
In an interview on Friday, Ayuyu said the current board has no intention of changing the name of the Tinian airport again.
King-Nabors, in a letter to Ayuyu, said “revisiting” the previous board’s decision to rename the Tinian airport in honor of the former Senate president and Tinian mayor is “going against the decision of the people of Tinian.”
But Ayuyu said the board respects the people of Tinian, and that he himself supports the new name of the island’s airport.
“So I’m not sure what the senator is worried about,” Ayuyu said.
He said the issue was on their agenda because there were members of the community who expressed concern about the previous board’s decision to rename the Tinian airport instead of allowing the Legislature to do so.
He noted that the airports on Rota and Saipan were renamed through legislative action.
But Ayuyu said the issue was not a priority for the CUC board, which, he added, has no objection to renaming the Tinian airport after Borja.
However, Ayuyu believes the previous board’s action set a bad precedent.
He said all airports and seaports in the CNMI belong to the people of the Commonwealth. Hence, significant decisions, including renaming those ports, should be done by the elected representatives of the people in the CNMI Legislature.
Ayuyu said if he were already the chairman of the CPA board back then, he would have asked the Legislature to rename the Tinian airport in honor of Borja.
“What we are saying is, it would be nice and proper to follow the protocol and have it go through the legislative process,” Ayuyu said.
“I’m almost 100% sure that the Rota and Saipan delegations will honor what the people of Tinian want. So they want to keep the name? That’s good. We support that,” Ayuyu said.
However, he said, it appears that the Tinian senator “is trying to make this a political discussion.”
“What we are doing is we are just doing the right thing,” Ayuyu said.
If King-Nabors thinks that including the matter on the board’s agenda was a waste of time, Ayuyu said, “actually, what the [previous] board did … created a waste of time for us. If they’d done this right, [by] bringing it to the Legislature, we wouldn’t be having members of the community addressing this issue now.”
