Hypocritical decision on Leg. Initiative 11-1: The Issue: The decision by the electorate to limit the voting of "land alienation" or Article XII to NMI descent in the recent midterm election. Our View: We are a long ways from understanding th
Since 1978, we have allowed stateside US Citizens to vote in local elections, including proposed amendments to the NMI Constitution. In the recent midterm election, we have also allowed them to vote on political candidates, including a legislative initiative to exclude their participation in the disposition of land ownership.
Land was, is and will continue to be an emotional issue for all the right and wrong reasons. However our warped view on this issue, our decision to exclude fellow US Citizens from partaking in the disposition of land ownership on the basis of race is at best immature, at worse, a total contradiction of the 15th Amendment of the US Constitution.
There are two issues that we’ve treated with adolescency: 1). That we can continue discriminatory policies as to deny fellow US Citizens their basic rights. 2). The boxed-in mentality that we can have our cake and eat it too. This attitude where we have decided to swim in the sea of “feel good” scarcity mentality must go. We can’t perpetuate the other “feel good” mentality of “Us against Them”. We must now accept that under a democratic form of government, citizen rights can’t be denied on the basis of race.
Furthermore, the land transactions here privately owned land and the homestead program is riddled with abuses. Locals have seen fit to sell their last property only to head to public land as squatters. So what good is this provision where we use it to sink into the abyss of landlessness? Yes, the property stayed in local hands but there’s this apparent mentality that locals can sell among themselves and still get homestead land or squat in public land. So much for our shortsighted vision to protect land for posterity.
What is even more worrisome is the arrogance with which we openly tell fellow US Citizens that they can’t own a piece of this rock. Lest we forget, the family unit is the very foundation and most powerful fiber of unity in any society. Such is the very forte of families right here in the NMI. Such great universal value must be embraced without due regard to ethnicity. In other words, let’s not be on the forefront in the arrogant displacement of families from near and far who have decided to make these islands home for their children. It is the most unconscionable, if not, egregious form of racism in a land that has become Americana!
Think about it in that it isn’t worth it openly alienating the rights of every US Citizen who’s made these islands their home. Si Yuus Maase`!
