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Friday, November 23, 2007

E-mail:
   journal@ntamar.net

Phone:
   (692) 625-8143
   (692) 625-8146

Fax:
   (692) 625-3136

Mail:
   PO Box 14
   Majuro, MH 96960
   Marshall Islands

In Person:
   On the ocean road
   behind Formosa
   in Uliga, Majuro
The long, boring wait to vote Human guinea pigs call for recompense
Two groups of Rongelap Islanders are seeking compensation from the Nuclear Claims Tribunal for radiation experiments conducted on them in the 1950s by US government doctors. Tribunal Public Advocate Bill Graham filed a motion for compensation for 21 Rongelap Islanders late last month that seeks compensation for the experiments conducted on them when they were injected with radioactive Chromium-51.
Gas nearly
$5 per gallon
Majuro gas prices hit an all-time record this past week, with prices at the pump rising to close to the $5 per gallon mark.
In response to world market fuel prices puncturing the $90 per barrel level two weeks ago and continuing their upward spiral to more than $100 per barrel, Mobil Oil Micronesia has raised its fuel prices to local dealers twice in recent weeks.
JAL flies in
this Friday
The fourth Japan Airlines charter flight of 2007 arrives this Friday, with about 200 Japanese tourists ready to hit our shores.
JAL will be operating two more charters during December to bring this year’s total number of flights to six.
MIVA officials indicated that the JAL flights have helped raise the number of tourists to the RMI to their highest level ever in 2007.
At least voters at CMI could sit down at the head of the line. Photo: Douglas Henry
Election fiasco
By GIFF JOHNSON and SUZANNE CHUTARO
Final preliminary results from the Marshall Islands national election are not expected for days, with counting in Majuro proceeding at a snail’s pace following a disorganized and complaint-ridden voting day Monday in the capital. The last polling stations did not close until nearly 5 am Tuesday after the government issued an emergency order late Monday requiring most polling locations to stay open well beyond the required 7 pm closing because they were so late to open on voting day. The Journal was barraged with complaints from voters not only about the many hours that they spent in lines and difficulties in night time voting because the Electoral office did not plan for lights to be in place in the outdoor voting locations, but also about confusing and conflicting voting instructions given out by Electoral officials. “It’s the worst election ever,” said Tony Muller, a former Majuro councilman and mayoral candidate and the head of the country’s telecommunications agency, about the lack of organization in this year’s vote.
AG defends US voter deadline
Election officials in the RMI changed past election practice by requiring that Marshallese voters living in the United States had to have their ballot envelopes stamped by the post office no later than November 18 to be valid for this election. Local attorney David Strauss criticized the decision saying the election law does not make a distinction between voting location, simply saying that ballots must be postmarked “on or before” the election date. But Attorney General Posesi Bloomfield told the Journal that the decision requiring the December 18 postmark for Marshallese voters in the US was so that no on would be voting after the polls closed in the RMI. “There is no way anyone should vote after our polls close,” Bloomfield told the Journal Monday as the election was in progress in the RMI. November 19 in the US is November 20 in RMI. The RMI President’s Office web site posted official instructions for postal absentee voting on November 6, but did not list the deadline for post marking the ballot envelope, saying only that voters outside the RMI should “post it as soon as possible.”
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