PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Giff Johnson

For Marianas Variety

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (Nov. 17) — Marshall Islanders go to the polls today to elect national and local government representatives. But the opposition has turned the national election into a vote on the newly revised Compact of Free Association treaty with the United States.

Marshall Islands President Kessai Note’s government has gained the local parliament and U.S. congressional approval of a new, 20-year funding extension for its Compact with the United States.

The recently renegotiated deal will bring over $1 billion in funding to the government through 2023 and also about $2.3 billion over the next 60 years to Kwajalein landowners, who host the key U.S. missile testing range.

But opposition leaders and Kwajalein landowners, who have formed the Ailin Kein Ad (Our Islands) party, are adamantly opposed to the new deal, saying the funding terms are woefully inadequate and that the U.S. is infringing on Marshall Islands sovereignty.

Opposition politicians have made the Compact the centerpiece of their election campaign, saying that Monday’s national election is a test of the people’s support for the Compact. If given a majority of the 33-seats in parliament, Ailin Kein Ad leaders say they will go back to the U.S. in an effort to renegotiate a better deal for this central Pacific nation.

Opposition leaders say that the new Compact deal is a throwback to colonial times.

"The Compact is no longer an international agreement between two sovereign nations," said Ailin Kein Ad party chairman Jiba Kabua, a senator since the mid-1990s. It "is a master plan giving control of the Marshall Islands to the U.S. in perpetuity."

He said the party isn’t anti-American but wants a Compact deal "that is fair and just to both Marshallese and Americans."

Note, who is running unopposed in Monday’s election, has held a 19-14 majority in the parliament since he took office in Jan. 2000. His United Democratic Party counters the Compact opposition by arguing that the new Compact includes increased annual funding and trust fund contributions that will leave the Marshall Islands with more than $600 million invested by 2023 to replace expiring American aid.

The Bush administration-offered funding package — which included elimination of a number of key provisions benefiting the Marshall Islands, and modifications of Marshall Islanders unfettered visa-free access to the United States to live, study and work — has been amended by both the U.S. House and Senate to improve benefits to the Marshall Islands in response to heavy lobbying by Note’s government.

Still, the improvements have not mollified the opposition, who want the Compact renegotiated.

Ailin Kein Ad party members Tony deBrum, a former finance minister and negotiator of the first Compact with the U.S., and Phillip Muller, a former long-time foreign minister, are both attempting comebacks. They experienced unexpected rejection at the polls in the 1999 election that swept Note to power on an anti-corruption, reform platform.

Many of the parliament races are expected to be close — with in some cases fewer than 1,000 registered voters for certain atolls.

The wildcard in Monday’s election is the large number of off-shore absentee votes from Marshall Islanders living in the United States that began pouring into Majuro last week.

In previous national elections, the absentee vote has been insignificant. But this year, Marshall Islanders living in the U.S. could easily determine the results in many atolls, with estimates of as many as 5,000 postal ballots — nearly 20 percent of total registered voters — being predicted by some election observers.

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