Performance: Fitial vs. Benavente

I wasn’t sure how to answer Duñg Malas when he sought for my view of current economic conditions here. But having been an issues oriented person, I thought it beneficial to offer my two cents bit.

I liken the CNMI’s economic condition to that of a broken engine, pistons bent and out of sync, cogs lose and out of place, oil leaking from the head gasket, while the driver turns off the headlights to, well, save fuel.

Our engine started sputtering to a screeching halt some six to eight years ago when we injected lighter fluid into the gas tank. As though this wasn’t enough, we even poured brakish water into it, stood back hoping a quick-fix would do it.

What’s the issue here?

It’s what leadership does right in center of a deadly storm at sea as the ship begins to sink.

Captain Diego Benavente–during his tenure–was asked who should be saved over others. His answer was the men who manage the ship in trouble.

Captail Ben R. Fitial gave a different answer–save the children and women and let the men die as heroes.

The former had his fate in mind while the latter was willing to sacrifice self for others. This is the real difference between an inexperience politician and a seasoned leader who understands what it takes to save these isles from total financial meltdown.

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Speaker Benigno R. Fitial took over the helm last year bravely untangling the messy policies of paradise. He knew what must be done to prevent the final impact descending on ignorant people at the village level.

Benavente doesn’t understand the ramifications of negative policies approved during his reign. Fitial does and wasted no time putting them through the review process.

Fitial had a proactive approach to rectifying what the younger Benavente has ruined, pushing for positive policies to salvage what’s left of investor confidence. Where Benavente dilly-dallied, Fitial showed confidence in the substantive measures he’s pushed through both chambers.

Unfortunately, some of these measures have been languishing in the Senate not that the review process is difficult, but more a matter of political gamesmanship as to further fuel joblessness and poverty among our people in the villages.

The more appropriate approach would have been to proactively push measures that would revive investor confidence. But the politics of arrogance took greater importance as to neglect the fact that a year’s delay turns into three years of wasted time that eventually hit the most vulnerable in the Northern Marianas Community–people at the village level.

This is the realistic difference between the two speakers. One had no inkling of the importance of image in terms of investment policies, the other the realistic and experienced person who understands that image–via positive policies–is everything. This is the truth and there’s no two ways about it either.

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I’m not out to get anyone in what I have just explained. But I was itching to set the record straight in hopes that the electorate sees the difference from a set of facts.

If your past is riddled with ruinous policies, it’ll be all uphill trying to rectify it today. It’s there for public scrutiny. What I have said may poke your fragile ego. This is where Karisso Professors must get their facts straight lest you’d be hurling nothing but hot gastric air far removed from reasoned analysis based on facts. Let the truth set you free within the confines of reason! A` Saina!

Strictly a personal view. John S. DelRosario Jr. is publisher of Saipan Tribune.