Wow

That is all I can really say about the mentality of Froilan and Fitial as exposed in Abramoff’s book. Wendy thinks it’s not accurate, but I think it speaks volumes about their lack of ethics and skewed thought processes to think of the feds as “the enemy.” Of course, the feds would be the enemy because they—Froilan and Fitial—wanted to keep things going in the CNMI as they always had been. They knew without a doubt that once Uncle Sam took over in the Commonwealth, their days were numbered. They knew they would no longer be able to treat the CNMI as their own personal fiefdom. It is disgusting that their greed and desire to continue raping the CNMI and contract workers led them to believe it was OK to spend $11 million of CNMI taxpayers’ money to try and hold off the federal takeover. They now blame the feds for chasing away the garment factories and causing the economic downfall of the CNMI. The garment factories left because the World Trade Organization did away with tariffs on all clothing manufacturing. They no longer needed the almighty “Made in the USA” tag on garments to avoid paying these tariffs. Those factories went back to their home countries where they now continue to do what Froilan and Fitial wanted to do—keep workers poor and make themselves rich by running sweatshops.

They also seemed unable to grasp the concept that the feds was, in a sense, rescuing these workers from being further abused on U.S. soil. The feds gave the CNMI many chances to change what was going on in the factories; to stop the labor abuses and reduce the number of contract workers. Instead they ignored the feds and tried to resist the coming changes by hiring someone like Jack Abramoff. Their actions directly motivated the feds to take over! Instead of fighting the feds, they could have used that money for projects in the CNMI. The time spent fighting could have been used to find solutions to the impending economic crisis that everyone saw coming with the garment factories fleeing the CNMI like rats on a sinking ship. This is the style of government in the CNMI—no proactive policy making or solutions.

The behavior of Froilan and Fitial’s administrations reminds me of the story about when JFK first started the Peace Corps. He initially created the Peace Corps to go into Appalachia and help the poor folks in that region to get control of their lives and to facilitate educating the people living there. What happened? They were dismayed to discover that there was an incredibly strong resistance to learning or to being educated. Folks wanted things to stay the way they had been for over a hundred years. That’s the mentality going on in the CNMI government. Never mind that the CNMI is America and that the things going on with the contract workers are totally against everything our Founding Fathers wanted when they created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I think all the folks on Capital Hill need to sit down and actually read both of those documents. The feds were right to come in once they realized, that after being warned many, many times, the government of the CNMI wasn’t going to do anything to fix the problems; just waste money fighting to keep the status quo. The feds had to act like a disappointed parent and step in to fix their unruly child’s mess for them, as they did not have the tools nor the desire to do so on their own.

Is anyone in the CNMI surprised by the comments of Froilan about taking money from a criminal as quoted in Abramoff’s book? Or Fitial saying that a convicted felon is a “good friend.” These are the type of folks that the people of the CNMI elect time and time again. They don’t have the character or the desire to fix anything that is wrong in the CNMI. To the voters of the CNMI: It’s time to be brave and smart and elect with your conscience and not along family ties. It is time to elect people you admire for their character, intelligence, and their drive to make the Commonwealth a better place. It won’t be easy. But you all know this is the time to change the government in the CNMI. No one is asking you to change your way of life, just change the way you choose to be governed and change the quality of those you choose to govern. One person, one vote. I can’t say it often enough: Instead of complaining to your co-workers and family about how bad it is in the CNMI, use your vote to make a change in the Commonwealth and its government.