2007: A year of living dangerously

And now we wait. The U.S. House of Representatives, where most things that bedevil the Northern Mariana Islands usually originate, have been captured by a resurgent Democratic Party after 12 years of being in the minority. Only the Virginia Senate race remains to be decided, where Democrat James Webb holds a slight lead over Republican Sen. George Allen. The party that wins the race will lead the Senate for the next two years. If Webb wins the seat, the Democrats will hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate. An Allen win, on the other hand, would split the Senate 50-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney, as president of the Senate, in position to cast the tie-breaking vote on crucial measures. As of this writing, the [I]New York Times[/I] says that, with 99.9 percent of the votes counted, Webb had a lead of about 6,700 votes out of about 2.3 million votes cast. That is still a slim margin and the final outcome could still end up either way. There is even talk of a recount if the winner’s lead is razor thin enough.

Regardless of the outcome of this particular race, it is safe to say that the ambit has been laid for a possibly tumultuous year ahead for the CNMI. With Rep. Nancy Pelosi at the helm of the Democratic House, several of the party’s pet projects, including the proposed minimum wage hike, will surely resurface in 2007. Even the issue of labor and immigration could be revived.

Washington Rep. Pete A. Tenorio himself ruefully observed that the CNMI is not particularly popular in Congress right now, having been dragged into the limelight by the Abramoff scandal and all other mini-scandals that came in its wake. Several Democratic candidates stumped their way to victory by bringing up this issue again and again, painting an unflattering portrait of the CNMI in the minds of American voters. The islands have become the favorite punching bag of Congress each time lawmakers get into their muckraking mood. The sad thing is that nobody bothers to actually come over here to check out if the allegations still hold true. In the mind’s eye of these candidates, the CNMI will always be soiled by its past and no amount of improvements could erase that from their minds. Even sadder, these candidates only remember the CNMI come election time, and only because they want to put one over their opponents.

* * *

The abrupt resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of Republican losses during Tuesday’s mid-term elections can only be described as too little, too late, the ineluctable result of voter dissatisfaction over the handling of the Iraq war and doing little to repair the damage wrought by the drubbing that the GOP got at the hands of voters across America. It also paints him as nothing more than a fall guy for all the mistakes that the Bush administration did in its war against terrorism.

Whether his replacement, ex-CIA chief Robert Gates, is capable of bringing the “fresh perspective” that President Bush is looking for remains to be seen. I don’t pretend to be an expert on how the Pentagon should carry out these wars it is making in the name of “freedom” but even a disinterested observer can see that the U.S. military is already treading water on this issue, and senior Defense officials have been quoted in news reports as saying that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are turning out to be even more complex than what they had anticipated and planned for.

Whatever strategy the Pentagon comes up with must not only involve putting out the insurgent fires and the successful rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan but also the complete and final withdrawal of American troops from these countries. Any pronouncements of “success” must involve no less than these.

* * *

Along with bad economies come crime. The two have an inverse relationship that feed on each other: A thriving economy usually has a diminishing crime rate, while a declining economy has an escalating crime rate. Crime rate is therefore an excellent parameter for measuring how well an economy is doing. In the case of the CNMI, the picture is not looking good. Not good AT ALL.

Crime is on the upswing and this time, it is more personal. Before, thefts and snatchings and arson were things that happen to other people, to people you don’t know. These days, though, it seems that you could count yourself lucky if criminal acts are perpetrated on people you know and not on you yourself. A colleague was recently robbed while she and her family were visiting the Grotto. As she so aptly said it: “We’ve been on the island for more than a decade and this was the first time this thing has happened to us.” This could only mean that things are getting worse for a lot of people on the island.

My fear is that we haven’t even seen the bottom yet. The nadir is yet to come and one could only speculate with horror on how bad things are going to get before it gets any better.