By Zaldy Dandan – Variety Editor
HALF a century ago today, the NMI was still a Trust Territory district administered by the United States. The Covenant, which would make the islands part of the U.S., was still pending in the U.S. Senate. That was why then-District Administrator Francisco C. Ada vetoed a bill passed by the district legislature calling for a constitutional convention, saying it “may be too presumptuous.” He also noted that the bill did not identify a funding source. “We cannot commit funds for which we have not been given appropriations,” Ada was quoted by Marianas Variety as saying.
In other front-page news 50 years ago, several members of the public voiced opposition to a proposed $2.50 fee — worth about $15 today — that the local airport authority wanted to impose on each passenger. The authority sought the increase to help fund operations at Saipan’s newly opened international airport. At a public hearing conducted by the district legislature, “Some opponents…voiced that it would be better to close the airport if its operation would bring another burden on this community. Others objected to the proposal because it would mostly affect residents of Tinian and Rota, who need to travel to Saipan for hospital care, school, shopping, and to transport their farming crops….”
In the Trust Territory High Court, a local man who had “taken the life” of another local man was sued by the victim’s family for $440,000 — worth about $2.6 million today — in damages. The defendant had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter but had not yet been sentenced. The chief justice postponed sentencing until further order of the court because of “threats, attempts and promises of further attempts to do harm to the defendant, to do harm to his counsel, and to do harm to the prosecution.” He said he would not tolerate further attempts to influence the judicial process and that such actions would be dealt with “most strongly.”
There was good news, too. Variety reported that the U.S. government had finally lifted all restrictions on foreign investment in the Trust Territory. According to the TT Department of Resources and Development, the islands were now offering a favorable climate for foreign investors. There were no real estate or corporate taxes. There were no restrictions on the repatriation of dividends, interest, or related fees. Wages and salaries were taxed at 3%; gross revenues at 1%. Import taxes were low, and the only export tax was levied on scrap metal.
Not bad at all.
TT residents, Variety noted, “are faced with a paradox in the area of foreign investment and economic development. On the one hand, they wish to completely control their lives; on the other hand, they seek economic and social benefits which can only be obtained through relaxation of restrictions on and promotion of active import of alien capital.”
Variety also featured a speech delivered by U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-Rhode Island, regarding the proposed Covenant with the NMI. Pell — now best known as the sponsor of Pell Grant legislation — opposed the Covenant. “I am convinced,” he told his colleagues, “that our national interest would be best served by rejecting this proposal.”
As for the argument that the islands were “of major importance to the security of the United States in the Asian and Pacific regions,” Pell said “such a rationale does not require the creation of a Commonwealth. Provisions guaranteeing the nonavailability of these islands for military purposes can be written into any bilateral agreement. In addition, there exists the unexplored option of negotiating an international treaty declaring these islands — or this entire area — off-limits for military purposes.”
He added that “in the wake of our tragic experience in Indochina, and at a time when the United States should be pruning back its extensive network of overseas commitments, it is difficult to see the benefits of creating a costly and permanent obligation for the United States in islands lying 4,000 miles west of Hawaii and 7,000 miles west of California.”
In the U.S. Senate, the Covenant faced some “surprisingly sharp opposition from a small coalition of conservative Southern and Eastern liberal senators,” including Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, George McGovern, and even the majority leader himself, Mike Mansfield.
Among the Covenant’s leading proponents was U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, a moderate-conservative Democrat of Louisiana.
During the Senate debate, Johnston reminded his colleagues of “one thing which I think is of absolutely critical importance here. That is the fact that if these islands came into the possession of a foreign power — Russia or China — they would be an immense menace to the United States and our interests in the Pacific. They would leapfrog over Taiwan, leapfrog over the Philippines, and be right smack in the middle of the Pacific, with a base for radio communications, for submarine warfare, for refueling, for all those things that these islands, so strategically located, could furnish.”
On Feb. 24, 1976, the U.S. Senate approved the Covenant (H.J. Res. 549) by a vote of 66 in favor and 23 opposed, with 11 members not voting.
At the Washington, D.C., office of the NMI political status negotiators, the “celebration lasted all night,” Howard Willens and Deanne Siemer wrote in their indispensable 2002 book “An Honorable Accord.”
“Telephone calls back home conveyed the good news to friends and relatives. ‘We’re in,’ they shouted, waving American flags. And indeed they were.”
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Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the NMI Society of Professional Journalists’ Best in Editorial Writing Award and the NMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His four books are available on amazon.com/.
