Preparing for Washington hearings

Since the 1993 Oversight Hearing on labor abuses and other related issues, the NMI has become the target of constant bashing, a scheme not so much to right all the ills that have sailed ashore; but to display a power play between members of Congress who are in the deep pockets of the US textile labor unions who link the issue to human rights abuses because it attracts media attention.

The debate is shamefully an agenda of the “glass house” syndrome deflecting all reasonable efforts to allow the NMI the opportunity to assimilate into the greater American Economic Community. These efforts have been quite successful as to make the indigenous people in these isles wonder if this is in fact the very essence of the principles of equality and justice.

In short, our often inaudible voices (within the context of a huge federal bureaucracy) that President Clinton equally applies his economic policy of wealth and jobs creation have conveniently been ignored. This attitudinal deficiency or unequal application of federal policy is the very issue that most islanders (as US Citizens) quiz for they know in their hearts that they belong to a greater country. Suffice it to say, Clinton boasts about the “economic good times” and promises “not to leave anybody behind”. Mr. President, it seems that your pronouncement not only leaves the NMI far behind, but your administration has completely relegated our fate with purposeful design to ignore our aspirations to taste the benefits of the “good economic times”.

The changes, as difficult as the problems they present, were never intentionally planned in that local leadership too has struggled in recent years to impose reforms in everything that pertains to the well-being of guest workers. If you recall, it was Interior’s helmsman Allen Stayman who instigated private investigations that were thrown out by the Murkowski Committee because the US Justice Department says they can’t be “verified”. Essentially, OIA has turned this tiny archipelago into a police state.

America and all that it stands for means so much for the indigenous people of these isles. They too have sacrificed long and hard to make sense of all the controversy forced by the US textile labor unions who have their own defenders in the US Congress. Acrimony is a useless and tiring alternative and all must reinvent their vision to making the NMI a true partner in the robust American economy for it is the very American thing to do, no more, no less. Throwing mud at each other’s face only benefits the media for the players themselves want nothing else but a notch up the rating and, of course, hefty speaking fees.

The NMI leadership must face our benefactors in Washington with full review of fact versus fiction and must ask all the right questions and demand that final full stop is put to an agenda that has turned sober debate into acrimony. Si Yuus Maase`!

Strictly a personal view. John S. DelRosario Jr. is publisher of Saipan Tribune