Passport sale

debate continues

By Giff Johnson

Despite claims that the Marshall Islands sus pended its controversial passport sales to Asians in August 1996, a cabinet minister claims that the sales continue and that money from the sales is going into the personal bank accounts of the agents.

And in an unrelated effort to shut off the apparently continuing sales pro gramme, a leading government mem ber of parliament introduced legisla tion to ban all future sales of Marshallese citizenship, a bill that was shelved until the January session of

parliament.

Criticism of Marshall Islands passport sales came from an unexpected source dur ing a nationally broadcast session of the Nitijela (parliament) in late September when government minister Litokwa Tomeing asserted that the controversial government passport sales program had not stopped in 1996, as claimed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We heard that the sale of passports ceased a year ago, but some people are still selling passports,” he said.“ The money generated from the sale of passports is for the public and people deserve to benefit from this revenue. But the people who are still selling passports are putting this money into their personal savings,” said Tomeing, who did not name names or pro vide more details. “These people should be prosecuted and punished.”

Tomeing’s allegations were countered by foreign minister Phillip Muller who said emphatically that “not one passport has been sold since a year ago August,” and urged his Nitijela colleagues to stop “nit picking” on small issues like passports since the nation was facing many more serious challenges that need to be addressed by the leaders.

Almost every day of the most recent 25day session, critics ragged government ministers about the passport program and the sizeable influx of Chinese carrying Marshall Islands passports. The local news paper repeatedly had letters to the editorial criticising the government over the pass

port program, letters claiming, like Tomeing, that the money from the sales wasn’t going to the government but was falling “in the pockets of just a few indi viduals in the higher echelon of the gov ernment ... who have become overnight wealthy people and do not want anyone to bash about the Chinese.” There has been unconfirmed speculation that the sales have continued but with the government backdating the passports sold to August 1996. Cabinet members said that SUSIO million had been earned from the sale of passports in the past two years.

In a culture that favours the oblique, the foreign minister couldn’t have been more to the point. “I said it during the August (1996) session, I said it again in January, I said it at the beginning of this session and once again I’m saying it that after the cab inet halted the sale of passports one year ago, not one passport has been sold since,”

Muller said.

Still, Senator Ataji Balos, the chairman of the parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a bill to amend the citizenship act that would repeal the gov ernment’s authority to sell passports, ban ning all future sales. Legislation in the 1980 s authorised the government to sell up to 3000 passports.

Muller said that late last year, cabinet recognised the problems with administra tion of the passport program and decided to halt sales. The US which had repeatedly raised concerns about the program, is satis fied with the full explanation the govern ment has provided, and “now they don’t have any more problems with it,” he told parliament. During the early and mid 19905, there were repeated and unsuccess ful attempts by Asians to enter the US using purchased Marshall Islands pass ports.

A treaty with the US, while allowing Marshall Islanders visa-free access to America, explicitly bars naturalised citi zens who haven’t met minimum five year residency requirements from using their passports to enter the US Muller said he wanted to clear up the passport issue because the Nitijela has been focusing on it for a long time, despite the fact that “we have other issues which are more important than passports.”

He said the country needed to focus on climate change, sea level rise, and eco nomic development, among others, instead of “nit-picking” on passports. ■