Let’s Wait and See

Over the last 26 years as a journalist in both sectors, I’ve been privileged to see events unfold both here at home and throughout the region.

Undoubtedly, this is one time in our regional developmental history when basically every island government is struggling to make sense of the Asian contagion, coupled with the more serious issue of “life after US financial aid expires” in the near term or a federal takeover of immigration in the NMI. I offer my observations.

Discriminatory federal policy

The US Labor Department is reviewing the industry wage in American Samoa. It is a wage system where every industry has a wage level to protect Samoa’s competitive advantage. If it can be implemented in American Samoa, then common sense dictates that such arrangement should and must be equally implemented in the CNMI. Anything short of this translates into an unequal application of federal policy on wages.

Hypocritical federal policy

President Clinton trumpets his commitment to ensure that the “economic good times” doesn’t “leave anybody behind”. Yet, the very agenda of his administration insofar as the CNMI is concerned is diametrically the complete opposite. I ask Mr. President that you put your mouth where your money is regarding the fate of islanders in this American territory each of whom is a US Citizen. I challenge you and the Pinto Boys to make good on your commitment to ensure that “nobody is left behind”.

Indeed, we may be reeling for answers and hope as we regroup to rebuild our tomorrow under the “Stars and Stripes Forever”. But what we are asking from our benefactors in Washington is the review of issues based strictly on facts and not the logical though warpedly prepared reports so trumped-up by Interior’s OIA to fit its agenda. In short, what we’re asking is to save US mainland taxpayers money from perpetual wasteful spending by malcontents at Interior. To subscribe to OIA’s agenda is to force US mainland taxpayers to pay millions of dollars for ill-conceived policies founded on joblessness and helplessness. This would be totally irresponsible and this isn’t our vision in terms of the future of our children.

Is helplessness, unequal application of federal law, discrimination, economic terrorism or annihilation and willful exclusion of the NMI in the ongoing “economic good times” the very essence of the principles of American Democracy? Friends and foes, let’s begin anew under the spirit of cooperation and harmony in that whether we like it or not, it’s time that Washington comes to grips with its own insensitivity that only translates into hardship for recipients of ill-conceived policies. It is unhealthy for both sides of the Pacific especially for US mainland taxpayers.

Quest for sovereignty

Across the Pacific, I’ve followed with special interest the progress of

Indigenous Hawaiians in their quest at nation building. Below the equator are the Kanaks, indigenous New Caledonians, who are second class citizens in their own country. Both groups have taken on the agenda of conquering sovereignty, a long and difficult journey. History is replete with chapters of how the US and France have displaced native Polynesians and Kanaks in Hawaii and New Caledonia. I sincerely hope that their quest for sovereignty or political freedom will someday turn to fruition.

Throughout the region, leadership must reinvent paradigms and focus most of its attention on wealth and jobs creation. In other words, all must look from within to determine if policies have encouraged or discouraged lasting investments. It’s a daunting task which requires strong resolve to reinvent old ways that have blocked the arteries of building a healthy economy. Both sectors must meet and trump out their cards in forthright fashion. If anything, please don’t employ political answers to economic issues.

Mounting regional conflict

The mounting feud between China and the US has its own advantage insofar as the Micronesian region is concerned: strategic importance. Denial of the region to China becomes even more important as other conflicts escalate in, i.e., North and South Korea, Japan and North Korea, or Japan and Taiwan or China and the Republic of the Philippines. The increase in military exercises in the NMI and the Philippines is a tale that we haven’t lost our strategic importance and not when some $82 million in military infrastructure improvements are now pouring into the US territory of Guam.

Each break of dawn, I pray that the Land of the Rising Sun doesn’t make any substantive mistakes in its reform efforts that would send it sailing into the sunset. If that ever happens, the entire Asian, European and US economies would sink into the abyss of severe global recession man has ever known in this century.