Asunton Coñgresso

“The parade passes before our eyes but choose to ignore it, a neglect that boggles the mind in the role of leadership who fail to see and capitalize upon our comparative advantages as a US soil so closely situated to a huge Asian market not to mention the US”, said Speaker Benigno R. Fitial, alluding to plans to institute the required legal infrastructure to encourage high-tech investments in the NMI.

Fitial and the NMI delegation recently met with Business Software Alliance representing several giant software companies in the US such as IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. He said Vice President Becca Gould related that her member companies will invest in the NMI if, and only if, the NMI can guarantee protection of their respective product copyright, and employment of educated workforce (software engineers and technicians.

Miss Gould related difficulties her group of companies faces today in hiring H-1 and H-2 workers from foreign countries and is very happy to “know that the NMI controls its own immigration and minimum wage, more importantly, could export duty-free into the US”, Fitial said.

“Getting our ducks in order in the emplacement of the legal and other investment infrastructure would enable these islands to reach new heights in investment or wealth and jobs creation,” he said. “Indeed, we would be headed to new heights beyond institutional investments”.

“While we work on appropriate local legislation to forge conducive investment environment for high-tech industries, we have touched base with our friends in the US Congress to assist us on this and other undertakings requiring the attention of our national policy-makers,” he said.

“The future of the local economy or long-term benefits in the reform measures now under review would take time before we can actually see fruition,” he noted. “These are substantive issues neglected by previous leadership turning paradise into a hell-hole of our young people who are now heading to jetways in search of jobs in the US mainland”.

“Economic hardship as a result of complacency isn’t my vision of leadership’s role. Unless we prepare the future for our children, what have we to offer the six-hundred students matriculating to Hopwood Jr. High next year when they graduate from MHS other than the usual empty rhetoric of political correctness?”

“It takes bold leadership to forge ahead in redefining our long-term economic goals what after all the promises of a brighter future we’ve made at the campaign trail only to fall flat on our face of obvious complacency as to victimize hundreds of young people today looking for meaningful employment,” he said.
“This is the consequence of complacency and the inability of previous leadership to see the larger picture or ‘beyond the years’.”

“An economically prosperous government enables it to funnel public funds to provide meaningful community programs and jobs for the multitude who now look toward leadership for some semblance of pride and dignity in providing for the needs of their families,” he pointed out. “Indeed, it is a difficult road to tread but the leadership is prepared to make hard decisions in favor of long-term benefits over the usual attitude of instant gratification. This isn’t leadership at all but more the role of a moronic follower”.

“We do not owe critics anything at all, but we do owe our young people and those who come after them some sense of hope in terms of their future in these islands”, he said, adding, “this is our agenda and if you can’t lead, then step aside for we have a job to do for posterity”.