Letters to the Editor

No endorsement

For two days in a row last week, Saipan Tribune mentioned in its stories about the public auditor that “Gov. Tenorio has offered the job (of public auditor) to Mr. Harwell” of San Francisco. That’s not true.

In an October 6th letter to Mr. Wendell Harwell, the Governor stated that he will keep Mr. Harwell’s letter and resume under consideration. Nowhere in that letter did the Governor offer the job to Mr. Harwell. Outgoing Public Auditor Leo LaMotte recommended Mr. Harwell. The Governor has yet to decide on who will be the next public auditor.

Frank Rosario

Press Secretary

Family violence

Recently, as part of Family Violence Awareness Month, the CNMI Family Violence Task Force (FVTF) sponsored performances of Our House, a play which grapples with domestic violence. More important than the performances, however, are the FVTF’s efforts to raise awareness around for a modest fund-raising showing of Our House on Thursday, October 19.

While I applaud those concerned citizens who attended the fund-raising event, I am concerned that it did not garner the attendance one would find at a political fund-raiser. Family violence is a very pressing issue which affects the entire Commonwealth, in one way or another. As such, it should warrant everyone’s attention and consideration. We all need to, as the FVTF motto advises, “Break the silence” behind which domestic violence hides. If we do not speak up against family violence, we are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. By not saying anything, we perpetuate the silence.

How can we break the silence, though, when we pay more heed to politics than we do to family violence? Indeed, attending a political fund-raiser as opposed to a domestic violence awareness events reflects a distorted arrangement of priorities that is symptomatic of the very silence which harbors domestic abuse.

In response to my concern, some apologists may present a slew of excuses: “There wasn’t enough publicity”, “I didn’t know about it”, or “There are just too many fund-raisers going on”, to name a few. However, these same excuses may describe many political fund-raisers which still pack the house. Such excuses do not excuse the sad fact that not enough people are willing to face and deal with the issue of family violence.

I write not as a disgruntled director for the performance touched the hearts of those who did see them, which is the most any director can ask for anyway. Rather, I write as a concerned human being who has, himself, suffered from family violence, and believes that many others out there continue to suffer too.

Will you be part of the solution, or part of the problem.

Galvin Deleon Guerrero

Just for the show

On October 26, 2000, the messiah from the office of Insular Affairs of the U.S. DOI was welcomed to the CNMI carefully disguised as the U.S. king of kings, bringing an early Thanksgiving and Christmas care package to the CNMI shepherds amounting to 12 million dollars. Although the funds are clearly a no-strings attached, and a rightful entitlement granted to the CNMI by virtue of the Covenant, the award ceremony was somewhat portrayed as if Uncle Sam had suddenly transformed itself from a CNMI hater into the most humane and altruistic benefactor of the people of the CNMI.

Let the record show that the 11 million dollars of CIP was rightfully due the CNMI, and the one million dollars of compact impact funds, which I considered chicken feed, was a long overdue accounts payable on the part of the U.S. for the horrendous financial and socio-economics expenses incurred by the presence of Freely Associated States citizens in the CNMI since the implementation of the CNMI Covenant some 23 years ago. That one million dollars payment by Mr. Aranza was the epitome of the highest degree of insult he brought along with him. To compound his insult on the CNMI, he had the gall to refer to our local labor problems as “disgusting.”

It is my opinion that his presence in the CNMI was not only disgusting and inappropriate, but a complete waste of time and a callous expenditure of American taxpayers money. Mr. Aranza could have mailed the checks, sent them by telegraphic transfer, or simply send them by ‘slowboat’. After all, the CNMI was not in a rush to spend the funds anyway. I’ll bet that the CIP as well as the Compact Impact Funds are so thoroughly fraught with conditions for expenditure, as is usually the case accompanying federal entitlement, that the CNMI will not be able to spend the funds freely and as it choose.

For a federal official to characterize the turn over funds, our own funds, as if it was a bonus for our government, is one of the most deceitful acts. In, shorts, the CNMI gained nothing from Mr. Aranza’s visit and his highly publicized hand-over of the federal checks. The funds are ours anyway, so what is the big deal. Some Chambers members comments that the small amount of the compact impact fund was simply bread crumbs, is an understatement. It is not even enough to pay for the interest alone on the corpus of the local funds expended over the last tens of years on behalf of the U.S. government and the FAS citizens.

I wonder if this recent “gift” from OIA is in some way a desperate quick fix downpayment to jump start the Clinton administration’s long overdue plan to provide the CNMI a “package of economic initiative” to improve the CNMI’s living conditions. The U.S. is only days away now, and we have yet to see an official blue print of OIA’s and it’s puppet, IGIA’s (Interagency Group on Insular Areas) real economic plan to get the CNMI through these desperate and critical financial periods, and to really get moving with positive economic development action plans.

I will not be at all surprised if OIA will do absolutely nothing to help the CNMI before the end of this year, other than via a pretentious and superficial action of assistance as recently demonstrated by Mr. Aranza with the presentation of the disaster relief checks. While the U.S. government brags about its economic success and the unprecedented accumulation and distribution of the wealth’s of the nation to very single American citizen, it deliberately chooses to the ignorant and uncaring about the desperate efforts by the people and the CNMI government to get on their feet and try to catch up with federal gravy train that is moving at a gigantic speed, and certain to leave all of us behind permanently.

I hope that next time, OIA will send our checks by mail. This way, we will be spared from being call “disgusting” right on our face. There is nothing as insulting as being “paid” 12 million dollars of our own money, and then be threatened by low level smart ass bureaucrat.

Pete A. Tenorio