Journal 1/4/1974
P2 Hey! Majuro’s gone one — a real 24-hour place. Name’s Zackius’ Restaurant. Like 3am? We’re open. For the guys at the hospital, the police on patrol, the graveyard shit at the power plant and little hungry you, after late night powering, partying or dancing.
P2 Micronesian float in Rose Bowl parade Micronesia will be the theme of the Continental Airlines float entry in the famous tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California on New Year’s Day, according to the airline’s general manager Barrie Duggan. Two Air Micronesia employees, Lucy Kono of Palau and Remy Cabrera of Saipan have been selected to ride on the float, which will have waterfalls, Micronesian-style native huts, palm trees and beaches on it. The parade precedes the annual Rose Bowl football game, one of the best-known of American football spectaculars.
P10 Do you want to get into hot water? Then make your reservation at the Eastern Gateway, Majuro’s finest hotel.
Journal 1/4/1991
P2 MBC will be back soon You might wonder by MBC is off the air this week. Is it going to be off the air for the rest of this year? According to Victor “Bwera” Milne, the station is only temporarily off the air. He said the crew is having a New Year vacation.
P19 Kabua-Imata iroij dispute moves closer to trial The Kabua family iroijlaplap title dispute continues its march toward a showdown at a trial scheduled for April. High Court Chief Justice Philip Bird heard a series of motions last week, for the third month in a row, and ruled against both Kabua Kabua and Imata Kabua in two separate motions.
P21 Jepta dances in the street because church is small Christmas Day was full of excitement in Majuro. Down at the Bukot Nan Jesus church, there were hundreds of people gathered to watch the shows. The church was small for the crowds, so the jeptas did their dancing outside on the street. The jeptas who danced there on the ocean side road at Delap not only their song were good but their beats. The crowds who gathered at this place really enjoyed a dance from Lroij Atma Zedkaia’s jepta from Rairok.
P22 Big decline in voter turnouts The number of people turning out to vote have continued a steady decline since the 1983 vote on the Compact of Free Association when some three-fourths of registered voters turned out. Records from the Electoral Commission show that the number of registered voters has been increasing each election, but the number of voters casting their votes has been going down. In 1983, for the Compact vote, of 14,477 registered voters, 10,724 voted — 74 percent. The 1987 Nitijela election saw 17,913 registered voters, with 12,513 voting, a turnout of 70 percent. The Con-Con election of late 1989, there were 18,468 registered voters but fewer than half turned out to vote — just 8,973. Last month, the number declined considerably. Of 18,644 registered, only 5,914 went to the polls — 32 percent.
Journal 1/7/2000
P1 Brand new Mr. President The Marshall Islands used the first working day of the new millennium to elect a new President. Three-term Speaker Kessai Note was elected by the Nitijela Monday morning, taking office with the backing of the United Democratic Party’s strong anti-corruption platform that has promised island voters major reforms to government operations.
P6 Fluke? We here at the Journal rarely, if ever, write about the difficulty that we routinely have in finding government staff at the capital building. Frequently over the past couple of years, and especially the past four months of election fever, we have gone to the capital to find someone — often with a prearranged appointment — only to find he/she: a) just stepped out, b) didn’t come yet, c) is still on the way, d) all of the above. Imagine how stunned we were Tuesday morning when, in a two-hour stretch of exercising our legs along the corridors of the capital, we found secretaries, assistant secretaries, assistant attorneys general (all of them), the new President, senators. In fact, we batted 1.000 Everyone we looked for, and even some we weren’t looking for, we found. Was it a fluke? We hope not. But it sure is a news item.