In pursuit of an ethically sound deal

I respect the Malites’ conviction that the Trust Territory government dealt their family a serious injustice. I do not object to the fact that the family is pursuing compensation for land that was taken from them. What I do disagree with, however, is the ethically questionable way that their compensation deal with MPLA was negotiated, and then all the dirty politics that followed when the Attorney General’s Office sounded the alarm.

Assuming that the Malites have a legitimate claim for compensation, it would have been better had the MPLA board and the Malite estate simply acknowledged and resolved the ethical problems with the deal, and then gone back to the drawing board. In a new round of negotiations, board members with ties to the estate could have recused themselves from the decision-making process, and the land could have been re-appraised independently, fairly, and more reasonably.

It would have been a pain to start over, but a worthwhile one if the intention all along had been to secure a just, legally acceptable, and ethically sound deal. But that’s not what happened. Instead, litigation was mounted against Pam Brown, attacking her legitimacy as attorney general and demanding that she pay the CNMI back her wages. The timing of the litigation and the plaintiffs’ ties to the estate and to MPLA leave little room for even the most stubborn optimist to assume best intentions. And while public resources are drained fighting this spiteful suit, attention is diverted from the real issue that remains unresolved, i.e., the ethical impropriety of the compensation deal.

In closing, I’d like to thank the Malites for responding to my letter to the editor, both privately (in a phone call I received last week), as well as publicly (in their own letter that appeared in the Saipan Tribune on April 16).

I want to make it clear that while I support their right to pursue justice for their cause, I deeply believe that any pursuit of justice must itself be waged justly and honorably. Even the appearance of impropriety corrupts that pursuit, and one family’s claim of justice should not be the source of further injustices to the community, and to all other families who presently and in the future might deserve their own just compensation.

Tina Sablan
Navy Hill