Guam to push for change in political status

Transcript

Guam is expected to decide within weeks whether or not to hold a referendum on the future of its political status. 

The island is currently a non-incorporated territory of the United States, but Guam's governor says this form of colonialism can't go on. 

RNZ International's Jamie Tahana reports. 

As a non-incorporated territory, Guam's residents, despite being US citizens, are unable to vote for President, the rights of the US Constitution don't apply, and their only delegate to Congress can't vote.No one's more aware of that fact than the island's governor, Eddie Calvo, who in a speech earlier this year pledged to try and change that.

EDDIE CALVO: It's time that we confronted the fact that for nearly 400 years the state of our island has been colonial. It is the unchanged and unrepentant shadow cast upon our long and unshackled destiny. Now confidence may be the one trigger that can change that colonial state once and for all.

Mr Calvo has establish a decolonisation commission, which is expected to report this month on whether to attach a plebiscite to November's election. If it goes ahead, Guamanians will select one of three options -- pursue the possibility of becoming the 51st US state; free association with the US, similar to New Zealand's relationship with the Cook Islands; or full independence. The chair of the Guam independence taskforce, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, says he's happy the time may have finally arrived to change Guam's confused status.

MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA: In a way, Guam represents a previous historical era. A time when colonialism was common. And in a way, much of the world has come to an understanding that colonialism was bad and we should eradicate it from the world, but there's still Guam where this hasn't happened.

But the path to a referendum isn't easy. Mr Calvo's government needs to conduct a territory-wide education campaign, before securing enough signatures to force a referendum. It also has to overcome a legal hurdle that requires 70 percent of the native Chamorro people to sign with the decolonisation registry, a task which many have said is impossible. But Robert Underwood, a former US Congressman and the president of the University of Guam, says while it's difficult to work out how to include Chamorro people in the process, it's imperative that they have a key say.

ROBERT UNDERWOOD: When you have a colony how do you decolonise it? Do you include everybody who showed up because they are a colony or do you try to sort out who are the people who really have primary claim? And so in the case of Guam I think the case is pretty clear that it is the Chamorro people who have primary claim over this process.

Dr Underwood says that, in any case, a vote would only be the start of a very drawn-out process, as the ultimate decision on Guam's future rests with Congress. Statehood would require the support of the other 50 states, and he says it's unlikely that states like California, with a population of close to 40 million, would support Guam, with 160,000 people, having just as many Senators in Washington. And with Guam's strategic importance to the US in its pivot to Asia, where the Pentagon plans to spend close to $10 billion upgrading Air Force, Navy and Marines bases, Washington is unlikely to let go easily. Michael Lujan Bevacqua says a vote would only be the start of a very long battle.

MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA: That's why we can't simply look at this as simply like a vote alone, it has to be part of a larger struggle. The United States has been very clear that whatever we vote on, it is not binding to them. And so it's really going to be up to us then to submit it to them [and] try to work with them.

Whether people support severing or tightening ties with the US, all camps on Guam agree that its current political status is unfair and undemocratic.