Sailing into two sunsets

I wake up each dawn staggering into the bathroom trying to shake off bad tidings of yesterday. As I struggle clear my head, there’s the simultaneous preparation for the worst case scenario on this brand new day.

Out in the economic landscape, I’d thaw out before two sunrises–one in the east, the other out west–somewhat disoriented. I listen to voices in what we refer to as leadership, but even they are confused and aren’t sure what to make of the vicious assaults on the fragile island economy from both east and west.

I look eastward and there seems to be a troubled message: the big red sun is setting into the horizon in the eastern skies. Although Japan’s production is still far larger than the combined production of all other economies in the region that have begun to mature on their own, up ahead the Land of the Rising Sun’s fiscal dominance of Asia would eventually subside. This tidings warrants that local leadership reassess the impending economic trend in the next millennium and I really hope that it is done through studies thoroughly prepared by “think tanks” equipped with real expertise and journalistic mind set to get the job done.

In other words, in planning the economic future of these isles, leadership must take the issue beyond institutional investments. For instance, intuition tells me that tourism will not rebound to the level like “as we know it” until about 12 years from today. And even if it did, it will never be same given the anticipated shift in Japan’s new lifestyles. South Korea will return once more to a healthy economic level, as well as Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and other emerging tiger economies.

The greater question as this pans-out is whether we can ably challenge competing destinations in Japan and East and Southeast Asia. Half-blinded by the heavy dust storm of Asia’s crisis, we pray and keep our fingers crossed in hopes that it’ll settle down hopefully soon. And that’s the best we can do at this juncture given that we never got our act together to stave off any further assaults on the local economy. Local policymakers too have substantially contributed to this mess via the approval of protectionist measures with an aura of Saudi Arabian kings.

Looking westward, federal policy has warpedly shifted from friend to foe. It’s another sunset that is seemingly very strange for this group of US Citizens. Since 21 years ago, we looked forward to bright sunrises at dawn as it descends on the windward side of these isles. Our hopes as US Citizens were recently dimmed and swept off our feet as the US Textile Labor Unions begun muscling into national politicians whose political career they have funded and must now pay.

The Clinton administration is hell bent to bankrupt the NMI by moving funds to Guam. A well planned agenda to ensure that “our minds and hearts will follow” when the local economy is reduced to a total meltdown. We listen on television to President Clinton boasts of the “good times” and that he wants to ensure that “nobody is left behind”. If such statement has any truth to it, I quiz why the purposeful total exclusion of the NMI in the commitment to bring wealth to every community throughout the country.

What are we anyway under the eyes of the Clinton administration? Obviously, the president must have been fed all the venomous information about the NMI. We beg, Mr. President, that you revisit the issue with an open mind. It’ll lead you to the real truth! It’s really sad that each day we wake up to the sunsets of hopelessness emanating from the eastern and western skies. And we’re supposed to be US Citizens or Americans? Assimilation into the greater American economic community is the answer, not discrimination and “mirror mirror on the wall, is the NMI a territory, nation or foreign country?”