Republic of the Marshall Islands The man at the helm of this ship is a pirate

The predictions on this website about the consequences of the Marshall Islands government’s policy failures are coming true. The list of bad choices made by the current ruling group in the Marshall Islands government grows every day. The people will pay the price for these bad choices after the current ruling regime falls. The Marshall Islands government is broken and needs to be fixed.

The RMI is a small country that, despite receiving a lot of aid from the United States, remains poor, so it will always face the difficulties and challenges that are unique to developing countries. But the RMI’s problems are exacerbated by the fact that the government has been hijacked to serve the feudal lords of Kwajalein rather than the people of the country.

The current ruling party is not a national party, but a party of Kwajalein feudalism. As such, it cannot provide national leadership to advance national causes, it only provides leadership for the causes of the Kwajalein ruling elite. This makes it tempting to compare the Marshall Islands ruling party to a mafia sting operation, where organized corruption infiltrates legitimate institutions.

The Mafia has taken over and on the surface everything is business as usual, but in reality they are just robbing the treasury for their own profiteering. Once they have drained as much money as possible, they disappear. Unless someone stops them, they can’t get away with it.

As we predicted months ago, the Marshall Islands government is a ship of state hijacked by pirates and lost at sea, both domestically and bilaterally and multilaterally. Let’s look at the folly the pirates left behind.

RMI Broadcast Controversy

The Marshall Islands Daily News reports that the Board of Directors of the National Telecommunications Authority (NTA) of the Marshall Islands has rejected a directive from the President and Cabinet of the Marshall Islands to stop the development of wireless television broadcasting in the Marshall Islands. The Cabinet’s order to terminate the development of NTA’s broadcasting capacity is clearly selective and arbitrary, as the national government provides many services in the Marshall Islands that are provided by the private sector in developed countries, and the NTA has refused to comply.

Reports are now circulating that Tony DeBrum and his agents want the NTA to cease providing certain broadcast services so that the Marshall Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) will have a monopoly on wireless television services in the Marshall Islands. However, there are also reports that Tony DeBrum may have a conflict of interest due to his personal financial interest in MBC. Furthermore, it is unclear whether MBC has the capacity to provide services, meet demand, or develop a private sector market for the services provided by the NTA.

Furthermore, handing the monopoly of next-generation wireless television in the Marshall Islands to a company that DeBlum may be able to control raises other concerns that the NTA may wish to consider in carrying out its regulatory functions to protect the democratic and public interest in public broadcasting in the Marshall Islands.Using control of the political and legal process to control private sector businesses, and vice versa, is the model that Larry Hillblum followed to become the richest and most powerful man in the Northern Mariana Islands, and one that he is reportedly planning to replicate throughout the Pacific.

Tony DeBlum was reportedly Hillblum’s replacement and his business and political partner at UMDA, and DeBlum is now trying to take control of MBC through UMDA. We also recently learned that DeBlum may be working with Hillblum on a plan to establish an RMI Embassy in Vietnam and have DeBlum or even Hillblum serve as the RMI Ambassador. Considering Hillblum’s controversial political, legal, business and personal lifestyle history before he disappeared at sea off Saipan and was presumably eaten by a shark, one can’t help but wonder what lessons Tony DeBlum learned from Hillblum that he is now putting into practice in the RMI.

Perhaps private sector wireless television broadcasting has a bright future and should be developed, but instead of developing a national policy on privatizing this and other government services, the Marshall Islands Cabinet has been manipulated like a puppet by the de facto head of state, you guessed it, Tony DeBroom. Instead of developing a fair and equitable policy to open the market to competition in sectors that are ready for privatization, the Cabinet, under pressure from DeBroom, has targeted the NTA.

The concern is that many of the laws and policies that were enacted during Tony’s maneuvering of the Marshall Islands state are linked to Tony. As we recently reported, Tony or his agents reportedly may have land rights near certain public landfill projects that could result in government payments that benefit Tony, and Tony’s request for increased U.S. payments to Kwajalein Atoll while he was foreign minister directly benefited Tony as his political godfather, Imata Kabua, became wealthy as a result.

Nuclear claims compensation

In early 2008, elected leaders from Bikini, Rongelap, and Utirik attended a U.S. Congressional “field hearing” hosted by U.S. Congressman Eni Faleomavaega when he visited the Republic of the Marshall Islands at the invitation of Tony deBrum. During that testimony, the atoll leaders urged the Marshall Islands ruling party and the U.S. Congress to support passage of Bill 1756. Neither Faleomavaega, DeBlum, nor the Marshall Islands ruling party he controls has taken any action to support S.1756.

Now, Marshall Islands Foreign Minister De Brum is trying to blame the nuclear test victims for the Department of Foreign Affairs’ failure to support the U.S. Senate’s S. 1756 nuclear claims compensation project. He even singled out Rongelap and Bikini Atoll for not signing a letter, which the leaders of those atolls believe is neither an accurate nor a wise way to address the S. 1756 issue caused by Tony’s failure to support the proposed legislation in a timely manner.

As the RMI public knew that the RMI support for S. 1756 was slow to come, Tony DeBlum began looking around for someone to take the blame for him. He also used his well-known tactics of confusing the issue and the public so that he would not be held accountable for his mistakes and poor choices on behalf of the people.

Unfortunately, under DeBroom, the Marshall Islands Journal has become the PR arm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as a result, the MIJ will only listen to Tony’s version of events, allowing confusion and misinformation to erode public understanding.Thus, the MIJ quoted Tony as saying that he was “surprised” that Senator Rongelap wanted the bill and the Senate Committee’s report to make clear that the Senate had no commitment to further appropriations beyond S. 1756 in response to the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ Change of Circumstances Petition.

De Blum believed this would “close the door” to further compensation claims for nuclear testing. This shows how incompetent and weak De Blum was as foreign minister, and how hollow his excuses for failing to lead have become.

The fact is that Bikini and Enewetak requested this language to strengthen their appeals in federal court, and the RMI should have been helping the atolls with the NCT ruling because a successful appeal would have opened the door to further compensation negotiations under the NCT ruling. By not advancing S. 1756 and its committee report, which stated that Congress would not commit to further responses to the CCP, any benefit has been lost, and Bikini and Enewetak’s chances of success have been diminished.

Furthermore, if the RMI had sat down with the 4 atolls earlier this year to work out a sound policy and strategy regarding S. 1756, it would have been easy for Congress to come up with a statement of the CCP’s attitude that limited the scope of the statement of Congress’ intent to the NCT’s grant of land to Bikini, Enewetok, Utilik, and Rongelap. The RMI should have worked with the 4 atolls and supported Bikini and Enewetok, rather than surrendering without a fight like the Tomain government under the control of the Tomaine.

While such a statement is not binding in law or policy, it may help the four atolls in federal court and it will not close any doors. Just as Tony dishonestly claimed that the Marshall Islands did not support the bill because a senator opposed it, his claim that the commission report language requested by Bikini and Enewetak and supported by Senator Rongelap will “close the door to future reparations” is simply dishonest.

In the eyes of the U.S. Congress, any additional assistance or compensation from the Chinese government is a favor and discretion, not a legal obligation, so unless Bikini and Enewetok win, there is nothing to lose by supporting AB 1756. Tony’s fabrication of dishonest excuses shows that he is using misinformation and confusion to mislead and deceive the people, and he must think the issues are too complicated for the people to know he is deceiving them. This shows that while he pretends to be one of the people, he actually thinks he is superior to them and thinks the people are not smart enough to realize that he is deceiving them to keep himself in power and make Imata Kabua even richer and greedier.

Furthermore, it is ironic that the deBrum-controlled Marshall Islands government refuses to work with four atolls and six more that could benefit under S. 1756 because the Kabua-deBrum-Tomeing AKA party platform promised to empower local governments in the Marshall Islands. The ruling party in the Marshall Islands reneged on that promise by refusing to support S. 1756, which would have improved the quality of life on 10 atolls.

Romi land Legal issues with use

As we recently reported, in addition to the Marshall Islands ruling party’s failed efforts to blackmail the United States over land use in Kwajalein, we recently revealed concerns within the Marshall Islands government about a new land use law that would reportedly require the United States and the Marshall Islands to use public funds to pay the equivalent of “lease” fees to landowners near public landfill projects. Some of those familiar with the matter were concerned that changes to the law, reportedly pushed by Tony DeBlum, would benefit him as the owner of land near public landfill projects, including the Majuro Airport renovation project.

Not only does the United States and the Marshall Islands need to investigate this, the FAA and the Department of the Interior are apparently aware of this possible problem. If the land use law DeBrum is allegedly proposing is another plot to use Marshall Islands land law to force the United States and the Marshall Islands into expensive long-term lease agreements, then this could rob the United States of public funds that could otherwise be used for education and health care. Clearly, the entire practice of leasing land for public projects in the Marshall Islands may need to be re-examined.

Just as the current ruling party in the Marshall Islands is trying to blackmail the United States into paying more leases to the feudal lords of Kwajalein, the attempt by DeBrum’s party bosses to appropriate the Rongelap Atoll Resettlement Trust Fund by demanding lease payments from the community is another example of the abuse of land by feudal powers in the Marshall Islands. It also shows that the Kabua-DeBrum-Tomain military government is trying to get rich quickly before the corrupt regime collapses.