Indeed, commencement season begins

Speaker Benigno R. Fitial mentioned in last Monday’s Asunton Congresso of the beginning of the Commencement Season. The season starts this coming Friday with the first graduating seniors going through ‘pomp and circumstance’ at a certain high school.

Like Speaker Fitial, I find it troubling how little, if anything, and other than faint commitment, has local leadership done to increase the strength of our local scholarship program or job opportunities. I can’t imagine the discrepancy or willful violation between what was said about this issue in umpteen number of speeches versus actual resolution. Troubling? Definitely!

****
I think it’s just as appropriate a time for me to revisit the dire need for an overall socio-economic plan. We have to have one, sanctioned by the legislature, to guide us through thick and thin. If we continue disregarding the need for a blue print, ad hoc solutions will predominate in everything we do in the resolution of substantive issues.

It remains leadership’s uppermost responsibility to “plan for” the future. Ad hoc planning or the so-called “plan by” eventualities is the surest ticket to paralysis in both sectors as is the case today.
Old paradigms must change with visions of what the future ought to be. I await leadership’s disposition on major reforms now languishing in the Senate.

****

Perhaps our entrenched men of wisdom are still confident that if nothing else works we can revert to our long gone subsistence economy.

Well, I’m prepared for it but it is nightmarish when coconut trees are dying from beetle infestation. Therefore, out the window goes the coconut economy.

Brass and bronze, once items for collection and sale by young boys some 35 years ago, have all been picked-up with fine tooth comb on the hills of this isle. There’s nothing up that alley either!

Fishing? The price is a bit too steep for average family pocketbooks. And only those who have learned traditional fishing would get to eat fish, true or false?

Root crops like taro, sweet potatoes, and tapioca for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Let’s see you place them on the table for kids who are used to milk and cereal or other fastfood meals.

Selling pencils? Not quite and not when we have more than one vendor selling real inexpensive though quality office supplies.

Purse snatching around the hotel district area in Garapan? Nah! The cops are out walking the streets 48 hours a day looking out for, well, the purse snatch squad!

Peddling drugs and dope? These categories would either get me killed shortly or land me in slammer to endure the emptiness of a cell’s four walls. Not ready yet to fastforward stupidity!

Flesh trade? Nah! I am, if I may say so myself, a darn good Christian! Can’t afford to even think of my old folks turning and twisting in their graves because I have decided to live in filth.

If anything, these are quick fixes that people resort to when the economy takes a nose dive into real hardship. Well, I am convinced that the usual ‘snooze season’ is but history!

****
I quizzed a lifetime prisoner why jail over his personal freedom. Said he: “Sir, here, my meals are free and served three times daily. Hospital bills plus accommodation in this compound are also free! No need to worry about clothing. It’s also a freebie except it comes in one color, bright orange! Other than that, don’t worry, be happy, everything’s a freebie!” Now, that’s worrisome a mentality. We may be dealing with permanent jail birds if half the prisoners feel the Susupe Compound is a safe haven for them all paid for by taxpayers. A` Saina!