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Editorials
Friday, June 2, 2000Extra session needed
to fix discrepancyTHE 1992 Hawaii election ballot listed a proposed constitutional amendment described innocuously as "Provide that all state Senate members must run at the same time in the first election after reapportionment." It was approved, 217,462 to 164,492.The issue: A constitutional amendment approved in 1992 would give some incumbent senators who seek re-election longer terms than their challengers.
What few realized -- even among the legislators who approved placing the amendment on the ballot -- was that the fine print of the amendment provided that once every 10 years incumbent senators who win re-election will serve four-year terms. However, if they are defeated, their successful challengers will receive terms of only two years.
This obvious inequity, which cannot be allowed to go uncorrected, came about through efforts to deal with the elimination of two Oahu senatorial districts by the 1991 state Reapportionment Commission.
Former Sen. Russell Blair, now a district judge, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. Blair explains that he wanted to end the commission's practice of reassigning senators to new districts. He wanted all senators to be required to run in the first election after each reapportionment.
The problem was that the senators' terms are supposed to be staggered. Consequently, some senators would be required to run halfway through their four-year terms. Moreover, a way had to be found to return to staggered terms.
Somehow -- no one has yet explained how -- the provision restricting successful challengers to terms of two years while successful incumbents would receive four-year terms was inserted in the proposed amendment. Andy Levin, one of only two senators from 1992 still in the Senate, said he believes the discrepancy was unintended.
The issue was raised by Sen. Les Ihara, who argued that it would be "the ultimate insult to democracy" if the 2002 elections gave incumbents longer terms than challengers.
Reapportionment is one of those boring but essential housekeeping chores of democracy that few people concern themselves about. In this case an attempt to cope with the results of reapportionment has resulted in a fiasco, but few people are likely to bother about it.
Still, the problem cannot be ignored. A special session of the Legislature is needed in order to place corrective language on the November ballot. The Democratic convention passed a resolution requesting a special session and neighborhood boards are being asked to support the idea.
But Senate President Norman Mizuguchi said more senators than only Ihara must show interest before he will schedule a special session. Are all the others blind to this blatant injustice?
To let the current provision stand would be to invite legal challenges and ultimate public condemnation.
Court ruling on Elian
is victory for fatherIT'S not over yet, but the federal appeals court ruling denying an asylum hearing for Elian Gonzalez is likely to stand, meaning that the boy's father will prevail in his struggle with the boy's Miami relatives for custody. And that's how it should be.
The Miami relatives filed the asylum petition, which the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service rejected. The appeals court ruling upholds a lower court decision that the INS acted properly.
It takes no legal expertise to recognize that a father's right of custody should take precedence over that of distant relatives. It would have been grotesque to let the relatives' manipulation of the boy for political reasons -- they have made him a symbol of their war with Fidel Castro -- stand. They claim that they are defending Elian's rights but the claim is absurd.
Because no federal law applied directly to the case, the judges said, the INS had to produce a policy dealing with the "extraordinary circumstances" of the case. The court ruled that the INS's decision that only a parent can act for his 6-year-old child in immigration matters "was within the outside border of reasonable choices."
That seems like an easy call, in the absence of any showing that the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was unfit.
It was incumbent on the government to remove the boy from the Miami relatives and reunite him with his father. Extricating Elian without casualties from the Miami home was difficult but the INS succeeded in the April 22 operation. The boy and his father have since been in seclusion in the Washington, D.C., area.
The death of Elian's mother in their attempt to escape to the United States from Cuba on a flimsy raft makes Elian's story a poignant one. If the mother had survived, the boy would presumably have remained in her custody and in the United States. But with her death the father's right to custody -- and to decide where Elian will live -- cannot be reasonably challenged.
Like most Americans, we wish that Elian and his father remain in the United States. But whether to stay or go back to Cuba is the father's decision to make.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert 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
