Editorials
Saturday, November 28, 1998

Questionable decision
in Guam’s elections

PRESIDENT Clinton postponed a scheduled stop in Guam en route to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Malaysia because he didn't want to arrive in the midst of a campaign for a runoff election for governor. It initially appeared that no candidate had received the 50 percent plus one votes required for election under Guam's Organic Act and that a runoff would be necessary.

The staff of the Guam Election Commission issued a statement that Democratic Gov. Carl Gutierrez had won only 49.8 percent of the vote, implying that a runoff with Republican candidate Joseph Ada, a former two-term governor, would be required.

Then something peculiar happened. The commissioners met nine days after the general election and certified that Gutierrez had achieved the 50 percent requirement with 24,159 votes to Ada's 21,147. They arrived at this conclusion by ruling that 1,312 ballots without votes for governor should not be counted in the total, reducing the number needed for a majority. There were also 1,291 write-in votes and some spoiled ballots.

This decision was reached at a meeting with the commission chairman absent. The chairman, Republican Joseph Mesa, said he had scheduled the meeting for a Friday and was not informed that it had been changed to Thursday. He also pointed out that the public was not told of the change, a violation of the open meetings law. "There seems to be some conspiring here," Mesa said. "This is so deceiving."

At the meeting, the three Democrats voted to certify Gutierrez's election and prevailed on one Republican to reverse her vote and join them; one Republican voted no. The Democrats overrode staff members' questioning of the legality of the meeting -- which certainly deserved to be challenged.

This cleared the way for Clinton to stop in Guam when he visited Japan and South Korea. At least this scandal-plagued president thought so.

But questions persist. The FBI is investigating allegations of fraud in the elections. The Guam Superior Court, reviewing records to recruit potential jurors, found that 571 aliens were illegally registered to vote. Sen. Mark Charfauros, a Democrat, declared, "This election was stolen from the people."

For its size, Guam has been a big contributor to the national Democratic cause. Gutierrez met twice with Clinton to urge more autonomy for his island, each time delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee.

The question is was Gutierrez really elected or should there be a runoff. The courts should decide -- without regard to the money he and his supporters have given to the national party.

Military construction

FEDERAL law requires the Defense Department to hire local contractors in Hawaii and Alaska when their unemployment rates are higher than the national rate. Because Hawaii's jobless rate has exceeded the national rate since 1995, local contractors stand to benefit from this law.

But no federal or state law defines state residency requirements for military contracts, a significant omission. Senate President Norman Mizuguchi says the law hasn't been enforced and local contractors are not benefiting.

The military rejects Mizuguchi's contention. An Army Corps of Engineers spokesman said 81 percent of the corps' projects last year went to local contractors. A spokesman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command said the Navy is in full compliance.

The real problem is not lack of compliance. The problem is with the concept behind the law. It converts military construction projects into welfare programs for local contractors, at the expense of the taxpayer. By excluding nonresident contractors, the law restricts competition, with the result that the government may pay more for a project than it otherwise would.

The defense budget should not be a welfare program for local contractors. Military contracts should go to the lowest qualified bidders, wherever they are from.

Quebec secession

THERE is little doubt that the separatist Parti Quebecois will win the election Monday in Quebec. Opinion surveys give the party a commanding lead over the Liberal Party, which favors keeping the French-speaking province in Canada.

That would suggest Quebeckers want to secede from Canada. But they don't. The same polls show that two-thirds of Quebeckers oppose secession. This includes both French speakers, who make up 82 percent of the province's 7.3 million people, and the English-speaking remainder.

Twice the people of Quebec have voted in plebiscites on separation from Canada -- in 1980 and 1995 -- and both times they have rejected it. But Premier Lucien Bouchard wants a third plebiscite. This man just won't give up.

Canada has bent over backwards to accommodate the Quebeckers. Quebec is the only Canadian province that is not bilingual and the only one with a Napoleonic legal code. Twenty million English-speaking Canadians are required to learn French in school but Quebeckers don't have to learn English.

Polls in Quebec suggest that many of its citizens are tired of constitutional bickering and fear independence would hurt their pocketbooks. Quebec has the biggest deficit of any province and the worst credit ratings. Independence would probably make matters worse. So why are the separatists favored to win the elections? That is something of a mystery.

Where the United States stands is no mystery. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on her first visit to Quebec a few months ago, expressed Washington's preference for a "strong and united Canada." Evidently most Quebeckers agree.

---

Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor