According to ehistorylib, in 2005, Micronesia had an estimated population of 106,487 people with a population growth rate of 0.9%. The economy in 2005 was largely based on tourism, fishing and subsistence agriculture, with major exports including tuna and copra. Foreign relations in 2005 were largely focused on development assistance with Micronesia receiving aid from a number of countries including the United States, Japan and Australia. The politics of Micronesia in 2005 were dominated by President Leo Falcam who had been elected to office in 2003 after a highly contested election which had resulted in violence between supporters of different candidates. Falcam’s government implemented major economic reforms aimed at improving living standards for all Micronesians as well as encouraging foreign investment.
Yearbook 2005
Micronesia Federation. In the March 8 parliamentary elections, eight of the ten senators who were to be elected were re-elected. Micronesia’s single-chamber parliament has 14 members, ten of whom are elected for two years and the rest for four years. For Chuuk, only four, including a new one, were approved by five members because of irregularities in the election. According to the electoral authority, the result in one of Chuuk’s districts could not be approved because there were many more ballots in the urn than there were signatures of registered voters. At the end of the year it was still unclear whether there would be re-election in the district. The voters also had to decide on three constitutional amendments, including one that was based on the recognition of the laws of one state in the other three states. A majority voted for all three proposals, but the result of the vote was not binding because the additions were not supported by a three-quarters majority.
According to countryaah, Palikir is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Federated States of Micronesia. A senator from Faichuk, who is part of Chuuk, submitted a bill in March to make Faichuk the Federation’s fifth state. Faichuk, which consists of several islands and has 20,000 of the country’s more than 500,000 residents, has tried to become independent from Chuuk for the past 40 years. The reason is that the islands receive too little support from the central government. Since 2000, there has been an interim government in Faichuk.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym FM stands for the country of Micronesia and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
MICRONESIA. – Part of Oceania, which includes the westernmost island groups, to the North. and to the NE. of New Guinea. The vast majority are very small islands of coral origin, and hence the name, which was proposed for the first time by GLD De Rienzi (1831) and welcomed, with the current borders, by Dumont d’Urville. They compose it: the Mariana Islands with the others scattered to the North. and to the NE. of this group and sometimes reunited under the designations of archipelagos of Magellan and D’Anson; the Caroline islands with the Palau; the Marshall Islands and the Gilbert Islands. The division has an ethnographic rather than a geographical meaning, although even with regard to the populations and their somatic type, Micronesia is now considered a section of Polynesia (see). Certain particular aspects of the Micronesians and their civilization are due to the relative proximity of New Guinea and Indonesia, whence, especially through the Philippines, some more recent ethnic and cultural influences came to them. But the easternmost archipelagos of Micronesia already present the typical picture of central Polynesia.
Languages. – The languages of Micronesia, according to the classification of A. Thalheimer, are: Kusaie and Yap (the first in the Caroline archipelago, the second in the island of Yap); Gilbert (in the archipelago of the same name); Marshall (in the homonymous archipelago); Ponape and Buny; Ruk and Mortlock: Merir, Uluthi, Uleai, Sataval. They are linked to the Melanesian languages and in particular to those of the Bismarck Archipelago. For general characteristics, see then melanesia ; maleopolynesian, languages. Micronesian has a very similar phonetics to Melanesian (but in addition it has š); in the morphology the very archaic pronominal system is distinguished; it has a dual, a trial and a quatrial (with inclusive and exclusive forms for the first person), as well as a complex division into classes. Although geographically belonging to Micronesia, the languages of the Palau islands and the Chamorro of the Saipan island (Marianne) are directly reunited with the languages of the Philippine islands.
