Lang’s vindication
Froilan was right. Way before the Office of Insular Affairs’ scandal ever broke out, former Governor Froilan Cruz Tenorio was already fully aware of Mr. Stayman’s character as a true scoundrel: as a man fully capable of abusing his power to discredit the Commonwealth.
While others were constantly telling him to be more mature, to be less rigid, to give in or to compromise more, Froilan knew he was right about Allen P. Stayman. He knew Stayman could not be trusted to be impartial. That is why the former governor refused to meet with Mr. Scoundrel on several occasions.
After all, how could our governor meet with a man who was improperly plotting against our local self-government at every possible opportunity? Who was eagerly writing press releases that depicted our islands in the worst possible light?
Now we know what was motivating Mr. Stayman all along. It was not compassion for the plight of our guest workers. It was not a noble concern for the CNMI’s best economic and political interests. It was not a commitment to exemplary “American values.” It was highly biased liberal politics through and through.
Governor Froilan C. Tenorio knew this, and he acted decisively upon his convictions. For this, he was severely criticized for being too harsh, for being too belligerent–for being too critical of the all-mighty U.S. federal government.
Some people even accused Froilan of going too far, of “Interior-baiting”–of a Joe McCarthy-styled fixation on federalization as the all-consuming CNMI threat (which it was and still is). Others accused him of foolishly turning the CNMI into an exclusively partisan issue, to be clearly divided between U.S. Democrats and Republicans.
Now we know that the partisan divide was there all along–that Froilan didn’t create it; Stayman, Miller and others did. It was the protectionist labor union interest that initiated the campaign to portray the CNMI as a slave-labor state. Stayman merely encouraged it. He dedicated himself to distorting the facts in order to advance his partisan cause.
Froilan knew that the 902 process was useless. Stayman himself stated that federalization was a “non-negotiable” issue. So the former governor scrapped the talks–while his opponents stubbornly clung on to the 902 fantasy, only to abandon it later in the face of cold, hard, sober reality.
If these Interior Department developments prove anything at all, it is that former Governor Froilan Tenorio was right about our detractors. He dealt with them properly.
We only hope that the current administration fully exploits these favorable developments to expose the nefarious anti-CNMI conspiracy once and for all.
