The Chamorro grudge

Several weeks ago, a close relative asked me if it was OK for her to go to Remy Lloyd’s beauty salon and get her hair done. “Sure,” I said. “Go right on ahead; I don’t have a problem with Bruce anymore. As far as I am concerned, we’re on friendly terms now.”

But a few years ago, when Bruce was Froilan Tenorio’s Public Information Officer, I considered Bruce the enemy. He was persona non grata in my book. He was high on my Nixonian enemies list.

That was back when I was extremely critical of Froilan Tenorio’s administration (before Lang finally embraced free enterprise). I satirized Lang in several columns I wrote for the now defunct Pacific Star. I lambasted Froilan and Jesse for their support of the federal minimum wage and their hostility toward our vital garment industry.

Needless to say, Mr. Lloyd was not too pleased with me at the time. After all, he was PIO–and I was probably making his job difficult for him. As it was, he had enough problems spinning some of Lang’s more memorable statements, such as the one concerning David Cahn’s intrinsic worth relative to about ten or twenty CNMI legislators.

Anyway, it wasn’t too long before some of Mr. Lloyd’s unflattering remarks came to my attention. That is one prominent fact about the CNMI: what you say about another party usually gets back to that party, since the community is so small and you never can tell who is related to whom, or who is friends with whom. And then you can be assured that the party in question will not be doing you any special favors any time soon.

The problem is made still worse when big government is involved. It is one thing to tell friends and relatives, “Don’t patronize so-and-so’s establishment; he reportedly said this and that about me.” It is quite another, however, to abuse the power of the state to punish your sworn enemies. Which, unfortunately, happens all too often, particularly during a change in political power.

I have to admit that even for me, as straight and objective as I try to be, the temptation is far too great. What if I were a government bureaucrat or a politician, with the power to accept or reject some permit or application?–with the power to award or refuse a lucrative government contract?

You can be assured that many of us would probably be extremely tempted to come up with any possible legal excuse to thwart our enemies. After all, the best thing you can do to your enemy is not to bash his skull in or resort to physical violence–which would be foolish–but to use the law against him; to get him in trouble with the law, to pass a law against his business interests, under the pretext of the public good, so that the law is wielded as a legal yet brutal weapon.

The only solution to this problem is limited government–the reduction of the power to harm others through the state, whether it be Clinton and the IRS, or some CNMI leader and some local government agency.

Limit government and, please, by all means, do patronize Remy Lloyd’s establishment.