Must trash old paradigms
At Issue: Holding jealously to well learned old and unworkable approaches to new challenges.
Our View: NMI must scrap its love affair with a TTG relic in our efforts to revive the sputtering economy.
When the Northern Mariana Islands was one of six administrative districts in the former Trust Territory Government, its funds for all government operations hailed from Washington, D.C. for many years.
In the process, there developed the perception that these funds were “freebies” and celebrated in Christmas-like spirit even in the blistering heat of summer. Only a handful excellent students of government understood the source of these funds or that it wasn’t free: someone’s paying for it. The rest of the local population had no inkling that it (funds) came from US mainland taxpayers.
Indeed, the NMI was fortunate to have inked–via the Covenant Agreement–the guaranteed seven-year funding used to build basic infrastructure. While we were never quite successful at it, at least the basics are set in place that allowed phenomenal economic growth in the late eighties and early nineties.
The benefits of this opportunity allowed us to sever US grant funds for government operations in 1993. No other insular area has attained such goal other than the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. It goes to illustrate that despite its unintentional misgivings, the basic tenet of the Covenant Agreement works wonders!
For the most part, our misses to diligently address and resolve qualitative issues were derailed by our treasured love affair with the so-called scarcity mentality. We could have overcome such misgivings, but equally in abundance throughout the political landscape is the attitude of adolescency. The tide waits for no man but we allowed this troublesome adolescency to reach epidemic proportions!
It behooves every leader worth his claim of leadership to empathize (not sympathize) with the dreams and aspirations of our people. The acquisition of lifetime skills is a better alternative over nickling and diming their sense of hopelessness to death. Let’s get rid of that ever dangerous sense of dependency.
Let’s show them better and brighter tomorrows by taking them to venues where they can begin acquiring lifetime skills. Old paradigms have fizzled out in the sea of new challenges. Let’s trash it, now! Si Yuus Maase`!
