Missing equation in leadership
The future is here! Let us not waste time worrying about our relationship with the federal government. It has gone sour and the intermittent recurrence of federal interference with a vicious agenda is basic reality in this relationship. Nothing is new. Our detractors are believers that government is the holy grail for all our inadequacies. We beg to differ in that we believe in civil society.
It is very unsettling to hear some of our 902 members utter that we succumb to federal pressure on labor and immigration at the expense of the local economy. Our relationship isn’t an issue anymore. It is the failure of local leadership to protect the rights of the NMI to work for wealth and jobs creation. We were treading on the right road until we made all the wrong turns whenever convenience becomes the closest exit.
The frustration of the indigenous people–who clearly expressed their sentiments in the recent Jon Anderson Show–favoring a federal takeover isn’t premised on their understanding of the impact of Interior’s agenda. But it is all too clear that they no longer trust their local leaders in handling wealth and jobs creation. Many of them are searching, if not, clamoring for jobs in order to support their families but have not been able to land one over the last year.
This is the direct result of local leadership who failed them in their obligations on wealth and jobs creation. It is now beginning to haunt them for the message has steadily been left at their doors that a lot of locals are clamoring for job opportunities to no avail. Can local leadership rise to meeting difficult decisions to save their people from the hardship of poverty and joblessness?
Today, there are 200 locals applying for every single job opening in both sectors. In short, as a result of leadership’s failure at wealth and jobs creation, they’re saying let the feds in to clean up a mess leadership has failed to resolve in grand fashion. Such is the message from the people at the village level.
Do we really want to continue discussing refinement of our relationship when the lead federal agency wants to turn the hands of time 20 years back even at the expense of destroying the economic livelihood of the indigenous people throughout these isles? Is this a reason to try to rebuild upon an already sour relationship?
Friends, such a view isn’t only warped but smacks of illogic and lack of common sense. The indigenous people are looking for employment. Let’s work on wealth creation first for it translates into jobs creation. It’s pure common sense that this becomes our primary agenda. Si Yuus Maase`!
