The 902 Consultation Talks

The upcoming 902 Consultation Talks will bring the two sides to the table to trump out their cards on the official agenda. Edward B. Cohen, the so-called president’s special representative to the talks is rumored to be bringing in a host of experts to discuss “transition” issues. Lt. Governor Jesus R. Sablan would present an agenda quite different and apart from Cohen’s.

The rapacious and fallacious Cohen agenda is without legal foundation at best, a strong arm tactic at worse, with all the trappings of a bully pulpit apparently convinced that he knows best what we are better poised to decide as actual recipients of policy decisions from within and without. In other words, transition can only occur if and when the US Congress changes and deletes Covenant provisions on labor and immigration.

For this to happen, it’ll take such strange and unheard of phenomenon like the sun rising in the West in these isles. As such, it is best for our once faithful partner turned adversary to learn how to LISTEN to the voice of the governance of these islands for it is the indigenous people who will suffer the consequence of ill-conceived federal policies they (federal bureaucrats like Cohen) who never had to stay behind to get a taste of decisions he and his bosses wanted effected here.

Cohen is miffed that the NMI contingent isn’t prepared to discuss transition. This attitude is quite familiar–cart before the bull syndrome–to which we have been victims in terms of federal policy fomulation where we were never consulted on an equation that includes the NMI as the direct beneficiary.

It’s mind boggling though that he has the audacity to attempt a forced discussion of a substantive issue that lacks legal authority. Either he knows this by heart or he has no other choice but to carry-out a hollow marching order or his government career would be flushed down the tube.

Partnership, Mr. Cohen, is a two-way street which requires that in all major federal policy formulation, your side of the Pacific must make it a habit to doing two things from the outset: 1). Defer to the Covenant Agreement. 2). Consult with the people at the local level where governance rightfully belongs. Furthermore, it is very strange how you have used US mainland set of economic conditions as equally applicable out here. It is for this reason that the troubled federal agency you represent must learn to LISTEN before leap frogging with fatal policies that doesn’t provide for experimentation that leaves room instant rewinding if they don’t pan-out as originally envisioned.

Finally, the people of these isles are not guinea pigs by any stretch of the imagination to experiment with unproven or ill-fated economic policies to which we know by heart of Interior’s failure throughout the Micronesian region for the last 37 years. Therefore, the notion of re-establishing a truly good working relationship is for your side to begin learning how to LISTEN to the governance who are the direct beneficiaries or victims of well thought-out or ill-conceived policy decisions. Welcome to the NMI!

•••

Interior’s willful attempt to usurp or violate the basic tenets of the Covenant Agreement reminds me of a famous Native American chief who express sadness over the loss of their spiritual land to the white man: “They made us many promises, more than I can remember. They promised to take our land and they took it”.

In the case of the NMI, it isn’t land taking that they want as much as the grand opportunity to return the lifestyle of the indigenous from what it is today to one of helplessness in abject poverty, right front and center as perpetual recipients under the federal rolls. But this runs contrary to Clinton’s “Welfare to Work” program. Perhaps Cohen or Allen Stayman has an answer why the shift and contrarian approach?