Back to the Stone Age: Is this what we really want?

By Ricky Delgado
Special to the Saipan Tribune

Believe it or not, there are only two things that must happen to get the CNMI headed in the right direction. They are actually so simple that it pains many to see that no one has rallied the population to get up and make systematic changes that would go a long way to the betterment of our collective existence. It’s almost as if the majority of our population has just given up and waits patiently until the last of days.

Right now, we are broke, the feds have an Iraq war to fund, the Japanese have found other more exotic destinations, the garment business that people loved to hate has left the island and along with it over $50 million in government revenues, oil is at $115 per barrel, and we still have not privatized CUC, so your electricity bills are amongst the highest in the civilized world. This is our new reality.

The biggest reason for our collective suffering is that we still hope that the same way of thinking that got us here in the first place will somehow get us out of this monumental mess. It won’t. And that’s what we need to accept, that the world around us has changed so much that we can’t cling to the romantic notion of the “good old days” or the way things used to be. The world around us has changed so much since the 1990s.

Look around you. America may elect a black man as President for the first time in its history. Oil has gone from $10 to $114 per barrel, putting the likes of General Motors and Ford close to bankruptcy. Closer to home, could you ever have imagined that our cousins from Guam would have houses whose value has doubled over the last four years on average to a staggering $250,000. In 1989 on my first trip to Saipan, it seemed like Saipan was leaving Guam in the dust. We are now going in opposite directions like two ships in the night.

And yet, despite all that is going on around us, we still cling to Stone Age belief, that owning land is a path to wealth and prosperity. People in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Guam have a lot less land than the average person in the CNMI, and yet their movie theaters are staying open, their hospitals are better staffed, and their schools are in better shape. The path to wealth and security is not land, it’s education and health. Look at all the old rich Spanish families in the Philippines who had all the land—many are now poor, and the Chinese who owned no land are now very rich.

So why are we so obsessed with keeping so much land that is not being used? Not even for planting? After all, if raw land is truly to have value, it must be producing crops. How many of us still want to toil in the hot sun, or even know the first thing about agriculture? Many know nothing, and couldn’t plant enough to eat a decent meal, let alone feed a family. So, again it is everyone’s moral obligation to convince the people living in the past that we must put some of this unused land to good use. Why must we continue with an apartheid-like system which doomed South Africa and Nazi Germany to failure, when we can hardly keep ourselves afloat and maintain a decent quality of life?

Ask yourself, does it really matter if we sold or allowed either individuals or the government to sell or at the very least lease for 99 years 25 percent of the beach front land to developers who can bring in retirees that can build new houses, eat in our restaurants, fly on the airlines that service us, pay some real estate taxes so our government could have more money for better doctors, teachers, and other public essentials? Why do we need to wait another four years before something is done and its already too late?

So once we get over the old ways of thinking, all we need to do is plead to our leaders to work together for their children and grandchildren’s own sake. Yes, I have heard it a thousand times, there are at least eight different people who want to be governor of the CNMI, and they will never work together, no matter what. Each is afraid that taking a stand that will cost him the election.

But we need our leaders to focus on the business at hand. Let them compete next year having shown what they have accomplished. Otherwise, what will become of us? Fact is, whether we like it or not, we all share and are connected to the same islands, and even if we can’t stand the guy or girl next to us, we still need to work with that person even for our own self-interest and that of our families and friends. If the CNMI suffers, we all do, and no one is exempt.

Let’s not let our inertia, apathy, and our bad old habits condemn us to a Stone Age existence. For future generations, we need to do something now. All of us are morally accountable and should work for change we can believe in.