Mounting sense of fear
Beneath the graceful showmanship of forced smiles lie a deep sentiment of fear which now fuels a sense of helplessness in the minds of the indigenous people. The condition of the local economy is no longer news for them. It’s old fodder to which they now ask: What is local leadership doing to rekindle our hopes of a brighter tomorrow?
I’ve spent hours on end soul-searching for some concrete answers to no avail. How I wish I could answer that query with a definitive response. But each time I revisit the issue I find mountains of queries than answers. Perhaps the biggest culprit in this deepening sense of helplessness is in leadership’s decision to quit “dreaming” altogether.
Someone once said “‘It’s in dreams that we build our tomorrows’. But it seems that those at the helm have stopped dreaming for there seems to be no other goal other than a quick exit of the bad times that has engulfed this archipelago. It won’t go away and the quality of life would sink in the process amidst the deepening Asian crisis. If they sit on their laurels, the severity of hardship at the family level would burst beyond simple acknowledgment of the bad times that has found its way into these isles.
The saddest part in this crisis is the stubborn acknowledgment that the sun rises and sets in the west. Our elected leaders are groping for answers hoping that by some quirk of fate, the golden sunset will never disappear in the west. They long for the good old days when the NMI was a recipient of the Japanese Bubble Economy.
That bubble has since burst, and even in the Land of the Rising Sun, those happy days are gone!
A mother related: “If this condition persist that is lodged on the greater problem of leadership crisis, then it means I must bring home my kids because I can’t cough out the money to send them to college in the US mainland. Their father and I have worked all our lives to show them better times. It seems our leaders do not have the same level of commitment and now our kids would have to be forcibly brought home as a result of this lack of vision?”
Along panoramic beach road, various fundraising activities are being held during week days or weekends, including families whose loved-ones need kidney transplants. I feel wounded that we no longer have the resources to attend to this serious health need. I have talked to affected families who’ve finally come to terms with reality: the cost of acute medical care is no longer free. Said the maternal spouse: “This is the only way to help my husband and I pray to God that He gives us the time and patience to raise enough money so he could be sent for a kidney transplant”.
Small tourism-related businesses (those still in operation between La Fiesta and Garapan’s hotel area) have braved the decline in visitor arrivals hoping that the worse has reached bottom. Far from it. Not for as long as Japan vacillates on needed reforms to uplift herself and the rest of the Asian economy. The NMI would begin seeing the ripples of economic recovery sometime in the year 2002. It’s the vacuum between now and that year that is most worrisome, if not, troublesome for most people in business. Quizzed a businessman: “What do we do in the interim?”
Why and how did local politicians lose their enthusiasm for real leadership? Those at the helm no longer dream of building the first family home. They’ve gone past that stage. Their kids have taken over that primary goal to build something for their own families too. This vacuum of dreamlessness has translated into a gaping hole in leadership. The enthusiasm to lead is stifled and compromised by the apparent lack of goals. It is encapsulated in the pill of mañana and this prescription alone is more than sufficient to numb the role of leadership. Can local politicians pull themselves out of their comfort zone?
