By Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng)
As another election season takes shape in the Commonwealth, I believe we need to talk about something larger than any one candidate, political party, radio interview, or campaign. We need to talk about how political machinery works when repetition begins replacing documentation, when inconvenient findings are minimized as ordinary government problems, and when carefully selected numbers are presented without the context necessary for the public to determine what they actually mean. This is how misinformation becomes powerful. It does not always arrive as an obvious fabrication. Sometimes it works by taking one piece of information, separating it from the rest of the record, repeating it confidently, and hoping that eventually the public remembers the talking point instead of the underlying facts.
That concern came back to me while listening to former Governor Ralph DLG Torres discuss his record during his recent KKMP interview. I listened because I genuinely wanted to hear answers. I wanted to hear the former governor confront the difficult questions surrounding his previous administration with documentation, specificity, humility and accountability. Instead, too much of what I heard sounded like explanations intended to move beyond those questions rather than fully resolve them. When someone who previously occupied the highest elected office in the Commonwealth asks the people to return him to that office, however, the standard cannot simply be, “Here is my version of what happened.” The standard should be: here are the records, here are the audits, here are the numbers, here is what went wrong, here is what I accept responsibility for, and here is why you should trust me again.
Consider BOOST.
The historical record is not difficult to locate. The BOOST program was funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. The Torres administration itself publicly identified ARPA as the funding source. Contemporary legislative reporting stated that approximately $17 million was allocated to BOOST and roughly $15 million had been committed to approximately 400 applicants out of about 4,000 applications. Legislative scrutiny also raised serious questions about the program’s administration, including testimony that there was no standard operating procedure in place for reviewing or awarding BOOST grants.
That is why the former governor’s assertion that there was approximately $7 million left in BOOST funds deserves much more than repetition during an interview. It deserves reconciliation with the documentary record. If $7 million remained, then show the Commonwealth exactly where that figure comes from. Was it unobligated money? Unexpended money? Money allocated but never awarded? Awards that were subsequently cancelled? Funds returned to ARPA? Or is the $7 million being confused with some other allocation or program? These distinctions matter enormously. Based on the publicly available records I have been able to verify, I cannot reconcile a simple claim that BOOST had $7 million remaining with the contemporaneous reporting that approximately $17 million had been allocated and roughly $15 million committed.
That is not a partisan accusation. It is arithmetic, and arithmetic should be answerable with records.
The larger financial record also cannot simply be brushed aside as politics. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that CNMI auditors had identified serious audit findings that remained unresolved for years. For fiscal year 2021 alone, auditors identified material weaknesses involving financial reporting, the financial close process, reconciliations, cash management, procurement, physical inventory, recordkeeping and monitoring. GAO further reported $52 million in questioned costs associated with federal award findings for FY2021 and $104.3 million in cumulative questioned costs remaining unresolved as of September 30, 2021.
Those are not Facebook rumors. Those are not campaign memes. Those are findings documented by government auditors and reported by the Government Accountability Office.
To his credit, Torres has recently acknowledged that his administration experienced serious financial management and accounting problems and that there was room for improvement. He has also disputed some of the characterizations now being made about the Commonwealth’s liabilities, deficits and ARPA finances. Those distinctions deserve to be heard and examined fairly. But acknowledging that context does not erase the findings themselves. Nor should disagreement over whether a particular accounting figure is properly described as “debt,” “liabilities,” “negative net position,” or something else become a distraction from the documented weaknesses in internal controls, financial reporting, procurement, reconciliation and federal program compliance.
This is precisely how political narratives can distort public understanding. A complicated record becomes reduced to competing slogans. One side says everything was disastrous. The other says everything has been exaggerated. Somewhere between those competing narratives are audited financial statements, federal reports, legislative hearings, appropriations, expenditure records and documents that belong to the people of the Commonwealth.
The answer is not to silence either side. The answer is to put the evidence on the table.
That principle extends far beyond the CNMI. The Center for American Progress made a similar point this week while defending its own research against an effort to force its retraction. Whatever one’s political ideology or opinion of that organization, the underlying democratic principle is important: independent data, evidence and analysis are essential to public debate, particularly when the evidence is inconvenient to those holding or seeking political power.
The CNMI should demand the same standard.
We cannot allow our politics to become a contest over who can repeat a narrative most effectively. We should not accept uncomfortable audit findings without examining them, but neither should we allow those findings to be waved away as politics merely because they are uncomfortable. When a candidate disputes a number, show us the ledger. When someone says money remained, show us the account and its disposition. When someone says an audit finding has been resolved, show us the corrective action. When someone says a previous characterization was misleading, show us precisely why.
I want to make something equally clear: I am not telling anyone in the Commonwealth whom to vote for. I respect the intelligence, independence and sacred responsibility of every voter to make that decision for themselves. My purpose is not to tell our people what conclusion to reach. My purpose is to insist that they be given enough factual information to reach their own conclusion.
Ralph Torres is entitled to campaign. He is entitled to defend his record. He is entitled to challenge criticism he believes is inaccurate, explain the extraordinary circumstances his administration confronted, point to accomplishments, and ask the people of the Commonwealth for another opportunity to lead them.
But he is not an unknown candidate asking voters to judge what he might someday do. He is a former governor asking voters to judge what he already did.
That distinction matters.
His previous administration was surrounded by significant controversy. The CNMI House adopted articles of impeachment against him in January 2022, although the Senate subsequently acquitted him. That history does not automatically determine whether he deserves another term, and it should not be used as a substitute for examining the evidence. But neither should it disappear from the conversation simply because another election has arrived. A former governor seeking to return to office carries a record with him, including its accomplishments, controversies, audit findings, unanswered questions and lessons.
That means the burden of rebuilding trust does not belong to the voter.
It belongs to the person asking for that trust again.
If the former governor believes the public has misunderstood his administration, then this campaign provides an extraordinary opportunity to correct that record. Release the supporting documents. Reconcile the disputed numbers. Sit for interviews where difficult questions receive complete answers. Address BOOST transaction by transaction if necessary. Explain the audit findings rather than merely characterizing them. Tell us what was wrong, what was right, what you would have done differently, and what safeguards you would implement if entrusted with the office again.
That is not persecution. That is accountability.
And accountability should apply equally to every candidate, every administration and every political party. If Governor Palacios, Lieutenant Governor Apatang, legislators, mayors, agency heads or future candidates make factual assertions about public money, they should face exactly the same expectation. Our standard cannot change depending upon whose name appears on the campaign sign.
The people of the CNMI have lived through enough economic hardship, political division and uncertainty to deserve more than competing versions of reality. We deserve documentation. We deserve transparency. We deserve leaders willing to answer difficult questions without treating those questions as personal attacks. Most importantly, we deserve an election in which citizens can distinguish verifiable facts from political messaging.
I am not asking anyone to vote against Ralph Torres.
I am asking Ralph Torres, and every person seeking the people’s trust, to give voters enough truth to decide for themselves.
Because when someone has already governed, has already accumulated a public record, has already faced serious controversy and impeachment proceedings, and then chooses to seek the governorship again, the people should not have to prove why they are skeptical.
The candidate must prove why he should be trusted.
And that proof should not come from political machinery, campaign advertisements, Facebook arguments or carefully constructed talking points.
It should come from the record.
Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng) is a CNMI born independent researcher, cultural advocate, and founder of the Refaluwasch Journal of Knowledge and Culture (RJKC). His work focuses on Pacific governance, resilience, Indigenous stewardship, and sustainable futures for island communities. The views and opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NMI News Service or its staff. All assertions are the sole responsibility of the writer.
