When leadership loses collective focus
Since 1993, we’ve fought battles between here and Washington against the Clinton Administration’s agenda of a federal takeover of local control on immigration and minimum wage. Ironically, it is an administration that believes in wealth and jobs creation it works the exact opposite when it comes to the CNMI.
In the process, local leadership is thrown into a corner a bit confused over the demands of the Clinton Administration and the obvious need to defend the economic future of these islands. Then came the vicious assaults of the Asian crisis, sending the primary industry (tourism) into double digit losses in tourist arrivals, therefore, additional losses in revenues, further throwing the role of government into the murky waters of uncertainty.
The obvious question is: Whose cards do we play-up, the unrelenting federal agenda of a federal takeover, the devastation of the Asian crisis; all the protectionist measures to strangle growth; or our rights to proactively defend participating in the American Economic Community?
Indeed, we fell prey to the US Department of Interior’s paper tiger scared to death that it might turn into a real tiger. So we were dashing not in the snow but in the deep jungles of our inability to articulate our position straight from the heart. We were so scared we even miss the seeing the bigger picture. We’ve obviously lost the requisite momentum in this warfare premised on grand posturing and fiery rhetoric. In fact, we’ve lost purpose and commitment as to engage in guarding all the wrong entrances and exits. But just what is it that we’ve neglected so royally?
It’s the rights of the indigenous people under the umbrella of the American Economic Community to pursue a progressively higher standard of living in all that we have undertaken and earned in the past 20 years. We should have instantly focused our attention in this matter in that it would determine the quality of life in the next millennium. It would determine whether the $60 million in direct contributions from the apparel industry would be around much longer and all the indirect taxes it has generated.
What Paul Charron has stated is the truth that if we don’t treat the apparel industry as a partner in these difficult times, we would lose the opportunity to maintain the standard of living that we relish today. Time is no longer in our hands. Every minute that ticks by without proactively seeking to save this industry is time lost. We either learn to join hands with the only major economic sector that works(apparel manufacturing) or face the consequence of joblessness and helplessness for thousands of local employees.
The fact that there are 200 applicants per public sector job opening should sound the alarm bell that jobs are becoming rare in both sectors. It warrants that local leadership takes proactive strides in sustaining what is left in the local economy before the eventuality of an economic meltdown turns up its ugly faces in every corner of this archipelago. In short, let us move decisively now and defend the very sector we’ve dismissed with a juvenile attitude when in fact we know it is the only sector that works these days amidst a deepening crisis. Finally, we must learn to accept fish in the boat–a guarantee any which way you view it–over fish in the water. Am I making sense?
