Frustrated locals lash at local leadership

Whether it is appropriate or not, local expression in favor of a federal takeover is meant to lash out at local leadership for its inefficacy at wealth creation. Many of those who expressed this view are victims of leadership’s inability at wealth creation. It is the only vehicle capable of jobs creation.

In short, these are local people who have been jobless for more than a year and find it awfully frustrating landing a job in either sector. The writing on the wall is all very clear: Whether we like it or not, the Clinton Administration is hell bent to ruin the economy of these islands to its satisfaction. While it preaches wealth and jobs creation, it does the exact opposite when dealing with the CNMI. But it is quite magnanimous to others when pushing for the Caribbean Basin Initiative to augment regional free trade under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

With an agenda dead set to bring the local economy to its knees, it is a bit shocking that some of us are still talking about refining our relationship with the Clinton Administration. Are we really so blind and ignorant as to be desperately desirous of sleeping with the enemy? How do we refine a relationship when the other partner simply wants out? What then must be our focus of attention in this sour relationship?

Local leadership must take a hard look from within. Its focus must center on sustaining the balance of economic activities that now supports the local coffers. Any further assault on what’s left in the local economic sector would explode right up our faces in serious joblessness and instant poverty. We must steer clear of the notion that we’ve already caught the thousands of fish in the open waters neglecting that a fish in boat is better than the million out there.

You need not go further than the expression of frustration by our people against leadership’s inability at wealth creation. While you’re worried about rebuilding a relationship, theirs is the obvious lack of jobs anywhere in either sector. They’re saying they want jobs right here and now and you haven’t been up to your fiduciary responsibility to encourage wealth creation that translates into jobs. You’re all too busy worrying about the $100,000 deposit, imposing protectionist control over what type of business ought to be permitted here, yet you also want free trade zone as the single magical pill to resolve industry substitutes?

There’s the constant display of wanting your cake so you can eat it too. You can’t have it both ways. It’s either one or the other. In other words, either you’re a believer in the free enterprise system where government governs best where it governs least or bring in a meddlesome bureaucracy to tighten the nook by imposing more strangling regulations on businesses. What’s the apparent accompanying problem in this adolescent exercise?

Most at the helm aren’t willing to LISTEN to the pulse of the local economy or the sentiments of the people they represent what with pre-conceived notions that their tired paradigms are the best solutions to tired old problems. While it regurgitates the same unworkable paradigms, joblessness among the local people intensifies and even with this being the chief complaint lodged with their offices, it seems they’re still unwilling to LISTEN to their people’s voices. Isn’t it true that your job as representatives of the people is to be able to listen and hear their concerns so that you can help resolve them forthwith? Has purposeful neglect turned into a personal forte?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it once more: The trait of a good leader is being able to lower one’s self so he can listen to the true sentiments of his people out in the villages. This is the very trait for which President Lincoln is famous for–visiting and listening the troops out in the field. It should be yours as well.