Bush's 'Good News'

United States

Bush's 'Good News' for the Pacific

David North examines likely US Pacific policy under George Bush.

EARLY SIGNS are that the new Republican administration will benefit the Pacific region. While the two key sub-Cabinet Pacific posi tions had not been filled at time of writing, the new Pacific team is gener

ally brighter, more knowledgeable and

more united than former president

Reagan’s team.

The key players are: President Bush, who clearly knows more and cares more about public policy in general and the Pacific in particular than Ronald Reagan; Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan, a former member of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, comes to the office knowing more about the territories than most of his predecessors; the Governors of Guam, Joe Ada, Amer ican Samoa, Peter Tali Coleman, and the Marianas, Pedro Tenoria. For the first time in American history there is

a Republican president in the White

House and three Republican gov ernors in the Pacific territories.

Finally, for totally different reasons, the powers of the two Congressmen (delegates) from Guam and American Samoa will be greater this vear than last. While neither delegate has a vote on the floor of the House, both can vote in party caucuses and in commit tees and can serve as de facto ambas sadors for their territories.

Ben Blaz, the Guam Republican, is much closer to the two of Bush’s Cabinet members than he was to thJr predecessors. Blaz and Interior Secret ary Lujan have a great deal in com mon; both are members of somewhat similar ethnic minorities, and both have made good within the establish ment. Blaz was the first Chamorro to secure a general’s star in the American military; Lujan, the first Mexican- American Republican to be elected to Congress, served as a member of the House for the State of New Mexico from 1968 until he declined to run for re-election last year.

More pertinently, over the past four years Blaz and Lujan have shared two

other minority memberships: both

have been Republican members of the Democratic-dominated House of Rep resentatives Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs; and both have been Republican members within the

House Hispanic Caucus, another

mostly Democrat group (minority

members, both blacks and Hispanics, are much more likely to be Democrats

than Republicans).

Further, Blaz was heavily involved

in Republican Jack Kemp’s ill-fated

right-wing campaign for the Presiden cy. Now that Kemp is the new secret ary for Housing and Urban Affairs, Blaz is expected to seek some grants for Guam for housing and other pub lic works from Kemp’s department, which has never been a major player on Guam.

The delegate from American Samoa, newly-elected Eni Hunkin

Faleomavaega the only Democratic

office-holder among this group will be stronger than the last incumbent for the simple reason that Fofo Sunia was crippled in his last year of office by the payroll scandal that led to his resignation and jail sentence. The new

delegate has ample Capitol Hill expe

rience; as Eni Hunkin he served as a staff attorney to Congressman Phil Burton at the height of nis power over territorial affairs (the delegate has

since begun using his chiefly name).

Faleomaveaga, like Blaz, spent most of his life away from the islands in public service. A child of a US Navy petty officer, he went to school in Hawaii and on the mainland, then served in Vietnam before going to law school and on to Washington. He then practised law in Pago Pago and was the island’s Lieutenant Governor be fore being elected to the House arriving there already wise in the ways of the House.

Faleomaveaga’s priorities will be to seek to improve the island’s infrastruc ture; to modernise its electricity gen eration system, the water supply and road system.

Underlying the basic note of optim ism as the nushies’ take office is a sense that this Administration will have a better record (and certainly a better rhetoric on race relations) an often unspoken underlying theme in

Mainland-territory relations.

The Government in Washington is

usually dominated by white Anglo-

Saxon males, while the territories are: Puerto Rico Hispanic; Virgin Is lands English-speaking olack; Guam and the Marianas Chamorro;

and American Samoa Samoan.

Ronald Reagan may not have been a racist but he adopted racist positions, fighting every civil rights bill passed in the last three decades, sought to res tore tax-free status to anti-black schools and made snide remarks about the late Martin Luther King. Bush, on the other hand, had a good voting re cord in the House on civil rights issues and recently attended a memorial ceremony for King.

The Bush position on civil rights, while admirable, may lead in the fu ture to some problems with the is lands. What does a pro-civil rights President do when faced with Amer ican Samoa’s ethnocentric land ownership laws? Or with Guam’s efforts to give the future decision making power about its status not to all citizens, but solely to Guam’s Cha morro population? He may, however, never have to face those issues even though Blaz reintroduced the Guam Commonwealth Bill on the first day of the new Congress.

If Bush does face the Guam status issue, it will be through a knowledge able Secretary of Interior. Lujan has visited Guam several times and on one trip he had a meeting-cum-celebration with the Lujans of the island: all at that session could trace their ancestry back to a time when their forefathers were living in a portion of the Spanish

Empire not yet conquered by the

United States.

Lujan has conducted hearings on the proposed Guam Commonwealth Bill, ana will be participating in the work of an administrative task force (which is having some trouble with the

Chamorro-only provision) studying

the proposal. He will also play a key role in the selection of one of the two key sub-Cabinet posts, that of Assis tant Secretary of Interior for Territo rial and International Affairs. Insiders are expecting a member of an ethnic minority ancvor a woman to again get the job; the job has changed hands frequently in recent years, often with one acting assistant secretary replacing another, and the incumbents have usually been women or Hispanics.

Janet McCoy, once the US High Com missioner for the Trust Territories, held the job on an acting basis until Bush was inaugurated. □