Need for an Attorney General

At Issue: The need for a confirmed Attorney General who can set purpose and direction for law enforcement here.

Our View: Attorney General-Designate Herbert Soll should receive the green light from the Senate.

Over the past two years, the NMI has suffered significantly from the lack of a chief law enforcement officer, an office whose role is even more vital in the enforcement of local laws.

This oversight has cost the NMI so much at least perceptually in terms of our faint resolve to enforce local laws to strengthen our democratic institutions. The perpetual employment of the so-called “acting” AG didn’t help us any except to see a new fall out of private attorneys seeking dismissal of cases against their clients as a result of the lack of a legally situated Attorney General.

If anything, detractors of the NMI have viewed the lack of a confirmed AG to mean that we are far removed from the commitment to enforce local laws designed to ensure that our government is one of laws rather than of men. It’s sad that this setback has given birth to a common expression at the grassroots level of what we know of as “selective prosecution”. It is up to Attorney General-Designate Herb Soll to rectify this and other concerns pertaining to law enforcement.

We’re not sure whether the Senate rejection of Maya Kara is premised on mature reasoning other than to victimize her for something she can’t be held accountable for in any form or fashion. In the process, the administration never intervened to ensure that the NMI secures a constitutionally situated Attorney General. Need we always resort to judicial disposition to tell us what is legally right?

Perhaps politicians and bureaucrats need to review the supremacy of laws and the principle of separation of powers to weed out all the confusion that have done nothing but earn the unsavory trophy of indecisions. The notion of seeking judicial review each time we agree to disagree is a tale of our lack of confidence in the decisions that we make even after long thoughts have gone into specific issues.

In the process, we’ve given greater power to one of three equal branches–the judiciary–when most of the issues require an agreement based on the supremacy of laws. It is an issue that requires revisiting by all concerns in that the net effect is one of turning the islands into a litigious community and arbitrarily granting more power to an equal branch of government.

For now, we ask the Senate to confirm Attorney General-Designate Herb Soll so we can proceed with the business of law enforcement forthwith. Si Yuus Maase`!