Setbacks Mark Lame Duck Season for Koror Governor
Koror Governor Yositaka Adachi has another seven months to lead the state before officially passing the baton to a new governor, to be elected on November 14.
Lately however, recent action by the Koror State Legislature seems to mark a point where he is now an actual lame duck governor. On April 30, with a 14-1 vote, the Koror State Legislature calling for a more restraint spending, overrode the governor’s veto. The governor’s budget request of $15,610,850 was reduced by $2,300,000, a 15 percent reduction.
The veto is the first time in his 11 years as governor that he has been overridden. Leading the defiant legislature are Speaker Eyos Rudimch and Vice Speaker Frnaco Gibbons, who also chairs the Ways and Means Committee. Rudimch and Gibbons are the leading gubernatorial candidates to replace Adachi.
In another setback for Adachi, Associate Justice Kathleen Salii has lifted the 10-day temporary restraining order issued on April 25 against the Koror State’s House of Traditional Leaders from imposing and enforcing the “bul” on visitors to Jellyfish Lake.
Traditional chiefs can declared a "bul" or a ban to allow ailing sites to recover. Last year extreme drought has decreased the population of the country's famous Jellyfish Lake.
Local chiefs wanted the lake closed to the public until the jellyfish population recovers.
In an 8-page ruling on May 2, Justice Salii also denied Gov. Adachi’s motion for preliminary injunction, thus allowing the HOTL to enforce the “bul”, with an actual trial to be scheduled later on.
