exist as the governments of most territories do not, and, until, to get to the delegation issue, until there is a disposal of some of the plenary authority that Congress holds and an investiture of some of that power in the people of Guam, anything we do is kind of spinning our wheels. We need to have that investiture and when that investiture and when the people of Guam are acting as sovereign citizens in the same manner that other Americans get to act as sovereign citizens in drafting their constitution, when the votes of the people of Guam are meaningful outside of the confines of our borders and have meaning that carries to Washington, D.C. and to the United States of America, then I am entirely in favor of a constitution. But, until then, I don't know that it would really serve a useful purpose other than to eat some time up.

The issue of delegation is a very important one. Congress already delegates authority to the government of Guam. The very existence of the government of Guam is a delegation of congressional authority. But, it is revokable. It is utterly and absolutely revokable. If Congress chose to, tomorrow, you know, God forbid and I'm certain this would not be the case, but if it chose to, tomorrow, notwithstanding the fact that Senator Pangelinan, myself and Vice-Speaker Blaz were elected by the people of Guam, we could be removed from office, the legislature could be abolished, the Governor could be replaced by the Commander Naval Forces Marianas who would rule by fiat and decree. Those powers exist in Congress. Congress can do that. So long as authority is simply delegated, that will always be the case. It is critical, it is absolutely critical, that the status change be coupled with a partial disposal of those authorities. We believe that it can be done. We believe that, under the Territorial clause, Congress disposes of property all the time. And we think that if there is a serious effort to take a look at this issue, on a broad basis, and not deal with it in such a cursory manner, as the executive branch apparently did, the executive branch who seems to think there are limits to congressional authority, that our view will be justified. And we believe that it is critical that we understand that, fundamentally, there is no purpose to talking about Commonwealth if it does not involve at least a partial disposal of the plenary powers of Congress to the people of Guam.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you, Senator. Senator Mr. Pangelinan? Or, excuse me. Senator Blaz?

Mr. BLAZ. As to the constitutional question, it's the cart before the horse, Congressman, and I think that Senator Forbes said very eloquently put it. I think that we need to dispose of the situation regarding our political status. First, that question needs to be addressed and answered and resolved before we engage in the process of forming a constitution.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you.

Mr. PANGELINAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the attempt to place a constitution before the people of Guam prior to the resolution of the political status of the people of Guam is an attempt to move the train away from the platform without the Chamorro people on board. And it cannot happen, it shall not happen, and I will not let it happen.

Any kind of resolution with regards to internal self-government for the territory of Guam must first resolve the issue of Chamorro

self-determination. It's as simple as that. It is what the people of Guam desire, it is what they voted for. It is concurred with by those people who have voted on the Commonwealth Act, and have said they will give up the right to vote on Chamorro self-determination. They have disenfranchised themselves in recognition of the inherent right of self-determination for the native inhabitants of Guam. We ask that the Congress recognize this, that the people out there have extended and expressed and exercised their constitutional right to a vote, and in the expression of that constitutional right they have chosen to recognize the inherent and inalienable right of self-determination for Chamorros only in resolving the political status of Guam. Thank you.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you very much and, before I yield to Mr. Faleomavaega, I'd just like to let the two gentleman from the third branch of government know that the primary intent of the legislation 2370 is simply to rectify what is an apparent imbalance in the way that the three branches of government are dealt with. Well, I never went to law school. I did go to some school and in those, I always heard that the three branches of government were supposed to remain separate and co-equal. Now, obviously, in the real world, that somehow gets muddled up and one of the ways that we resolve that is to make sure that the third branch of government takes on the characteristics of an original court of jurisdiction or an Organic Act court, in our case, or take on the trappings of a constitutional court. I recognize the amount of emotion that is involved in the survey which I conducted regarding the elected Attorney General and a couple of other matters before the people of Guam which were subject to Organic Act changes. This was the one that attracted the most attention and was the one that was closest in the outcome of my survey. I certainly don't mean to demean anyone in-who takes another position as my good friend, Judge Lamorena, and I mean that because we were classmates and good friends. I don't mean any disrespect to the Superior Court at all. And, with that, do you have any questions?

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask Senator Forbes and I appreciate your raising the issue of the concerning the Treaty of Paris because this goes, again, to the very fundamental issue that I had tried earlier just to understand exactly, not only the current status of Guam as a territory, how this relates to provisions of the Federal Constitution, and what this means for the Commonwealth Act under H.R. 100. Before asking this question, I would like to note, for the record, I don't know whether it was by fate or by some circumstance but it was just yesterday, by express mail, I received a pamphlet that was sent to me by the Cabazon tribe from California. And I want to express my [speaking in Chamorro] "si yu'os ma'ase" to the good residents and the leaders of Guam for receiving the tribal leaders and the members of the Cabazon tribe when they visited Guam. I am just simply reiterating what I've read of this that was just received yesterday in my office and I kept querying why the gentleman from Guam keeps asking this question about being a tribe. You know, there are 12 tribes of Israel, so the book says and they were very blessed. But I just wanted to raise the question because it does tie into the whole question of treaty rights, sovereignty issues, the

right of self-determination, and where does this put Guam in the middle of all these legal terms. The first thing I wanted to raise is that Guam was a byproduct of war and we all live and breathe as a matter of history. Guam was annexed by the United States and, under the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, Senator Forbes, and maybe you can enlighten the members of the committee and for the record, does this mean that the native inhabitants of Guam still had inherent rights of the characterization of being a sovereign people? Still, despite being under or annexed by the United States? Mr. FORBES. In terms of the reading that I have done, with respect to the Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Paris, incidentally, has been referenced in certain court decisions having to do with the establishment of the unincorporated_territorial status, but the reading that I have done is that the Treaty of Paris basically, in addition to transferring physical possession and sovereignty over those territories that are ceded by Spain to the United States, specifically the Island of Guam, the Island of Puerto Rico, and all the islands that constitute the Philippine Islands at the time of the Treaty, it also transfers-the United States accepted certain responsibilities. Now, what those responsibilities are, although the Treaty is a treaty between Spain and the United States of America, they accept responsibilities for the inhabitants. In this Treaty, they say that they shall determine, and actually, it's much more specific than that, it says Congress shall determine what civil rights the natives, and this is an important point, the natives shall have and, you know, forgive us for freely translating native of Guam into Chamorro, since anybody who was here at the time the Treaty of Paris was concluded, anybody that was in Guam was Chamorro, so, I don't know who they could have been referring to, other than Chamorros, that the civil rights and the political status of the natives of the territory ceded, such as Guam, shall be determined by Congress. Now, to us, that seems a very significant point because under the broad Territorial clause powers that were in existence since the Constitution was established, Congress shall make all needful rules and regulations with respect to the disposal or administration of territories, but here in this Treaty, we have a very specific charge leveled upon Congress, that Congress actually took upon itself voluntarily, to assume responsibility for the people themselves.

Does the Treaty of Paris confer upon Chamorros and, in particular, a certain residual sovereignty? I don't know of that argument can be made. It's very clear to me that Spain is ceding to the United States territory that Spain feels it owns and is ceding to the United States the responsibility to care for Spanish subjects. But, does it definitely place a charge upon Congress to resolve these questions? I think it does. And even more important, I think it opens the door to a way to solve this apparent dilemma that people seem to feel about how can you have an exercise of self-determination just for Chamorros? Well, if Congress has accepted, in the Treaty of Paris, the charge that it will determine the civil rights of the native inhabitants, i.e. the Chamorros in Guam, that, to me, gives Congress very broad powers to determine what those rights are. And, in the past, that broad power has been used by previous Congresses to determine, well, how little rights can we give them,

you know, what can we get away with in terms of denying certain rights? But, the word determine to me is not a minimalist_term. It can-it means you can give the Chamorro this many rights or that many rights or as many rights as you want, including the right to exercise self-determination. And, as far as the equal protection clause, we've already had court decisions in the CNMI that have upheld provisions in the constitution of the CNMI that restrict the ownership of property, specifically to Chamorros and Carolinians of CNMÎ descent and the courts determined there, very clearly, that, notwithstanding the equal rights provisions of the Constitution, that Congress, under the Territorial clause, could pass legislation and, through their endorsement of the CNMI constitution had passed legislation allowing for this apparently discriminatory, although we believe not discriminatory at all, practice to exist. So, we think the Treaty of Paris is a very powerful weapon for arming Congress with the power to resolve these issues favorably and we feel, again, not to pick on the Administration, that the Administration is less than creative in examining this and was quite audacious in attempting to say that you, the Congress, didn't have powers that so clearly you have. There is no limitation on what Congress can do when it comes to territories, and, in this case, what is can do when it comes to resolving the rights of natives in those territories.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I just wanted to make this observation, Senator Forbes, for the record that as you are probably well aware, that under the Federal Constitution there are two distinct groupings whereby the Congress has direct authority to deal with. Those are the Indian tribes and the Treaty rights pertaining to the Native American Indian tribes, and the territories. And you've just quoted, quite eloquently, that specific provision about the Territorial clause which groups all of us, the rest of us, where territories-but, as I've cited earlier to Mr. Staymen, the problem is that we are the only territories that are placed under this listing that the United Nations has. Indian tribes do not have that in the United Nations. We have it. The Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam has that specific listing. And because of our listing as a non-self-governing territory, it also means that not all the provisions of the Federal Constitution applies to the three territories, so-which adds another problem. To say that we're all Americans but in substance, we do not have all the same rights and privileges as other Americans. So, I just want to-and, by the way, historically, too, Congress has never been consistent in its dealings with the territories.

Mr. FORBES. That's clearly the case.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. And I'm just adding more to the problem but I just wanted to share that with you and I sincerely hope that maybe the provisions of the Treaty of Paris will enlighten some of our friends downtown to see that there is a way to resolve this dilemma that we're all faced with constantly.

The counting process, as stated earlier by Mr. Garamendi, when this plebiscite took place in 1982, was it just a plebiscite among the Chamorros in their self-determination or did it include all the nonChamorros as well?

Mr. FORBES. It was island-wide. All registered voters.

Mr. PANGELINAN. It was all registered voters of the territory. Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Then, why is the Administration making such a big thing about non-Chamorros and Chamorros participating in the process?

Mr. PANGELINAN. It seeks to disenfranchise Chamorros. Well, it enfranchises everybody else. And for me, that is-you cannot reconcile those two positions. The Administration is saying that we cannot, as a Federal policy, disenfranchise those people living on Guam because they happen not to be Chamorros, but we can disenfranchise Chamorros and it's an OK Federal policy. It's doublespeak and it just cannot carry, I think, not only in terms of the Constitution, but I think it-morally, they cannot carry forward that argument.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. And just for the sake of the record, I know my time's up, when the plebiscite took place in 1982, with the vote of 75 percent plus, this voting result included both Chamorros and non-Chamorros, am I correct?

Mr. FORBES. Yes, it did.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. OK.

Mr. PANGELINAN. And the non-Chamorros voted in that to include a recognition of a Chamorro-only vote on self-determination. Mr. FORBES. Incidentally, not to consume time you don't have, Congressman, I think this committee should look very strongly at the implications of statements that were made by the State Department at the U.N. and apparently in the testimony today about how the Administration seems to suddenly believe that, yes, there is a right of self-determination but that everyone in Guam should vote on it. I thought the Civil War was fought on the basis of ensuring the nullification could not occur and that States could not secede. If someone can leave California, show up in Guam or American Samoa, register to vote in 24 hours, and suddenly acquire a right of self-determination that he or she did not have 24 hours before when they were in California, the implication to me is that this Administration has turned 100 years of history on its head and has suddenly decided that Californians have the right to secede from the United States of America. It makes no sense.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Senator Forbes, I know my time is up and I want to say that your observation, you hit it right on the head of the nail. The District of Columbia is a classic example of how Congress has exercised its absolute authority. There's supposed to be an elected mayor, there's supposed to be an elected city council. Now they have an appointed board of Governors controlling all the affairs of the District of Columbia whereby some 600,000 American citizens reside. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know my time is up. Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you. Mr. Mansur, would you like to raise a point?

Mr. MANSUR. Yes, thank you, Mr. Underwood. Chairman Young has really been fully committed to working supporting self-determination and I think that's evidenced by a number of things that he's done, particularly the past years, all the effort he's been putting into resolving the Puerto Rico statue issue and it's interesting. The fundamental premise of the Puerto Rico Status bill, the United States Puerto Rico Political Status Act, is based on mutual consent because you have three stages and you don't move ahead until you