Performance evaluation

This year’s election season follows the same processes as the performance appraisal strategies and the selection interview practices of employers in ordinary public and private employment situations. For active employees, the employer evaluates the employees’ work performance during the review period. For new employees, the hiring decision involves serious evaluation of each candidate in which the results would ensure that the employer is selecting the best person to perform the work of the organization.

As future employers of all candidates seeking selection for public offices, we have the right to know how your prospective employees for public elected offices will perform on the job. Your questions, evaluations, and determinations are all protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

With this in mind, the indigenous people of the NMI should seriously and critically examine the incumbent and the job of the office of the CNMI Delegate to the U.S. Congress. The job of the office of the CNMI Delegate to the U.S. Congress is to bring and draw the more pressing public issues, desirable interests and needs of the indigenous people of the NMI to the U.S. Congress. Hence, the primary job of Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan is no less than representing the indigenous people on social, political, and economic issues that affect the future of the indigenous people of the NMI. Omission or commission by legislative actions engaged by Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan should be the subject of close evaluations and detailed reviews and scrutiny by the indigenous people.

Hence, there is no sense in retaining this person to continue employment as the representative of the indigenous people of the NMI for overt actions committed that would result in a people who are not asking to be wiped out from their own islands. We as the indigenous people of the NMI could not comprehend why Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan selected the indigenous people as his prey for his game. It is hard to digest and satisfy to our satisfaction the consequences of his deeds, but it seems that Mr. Sablan is careless as long as his future track is on target and preying on the indigenous people has been his desired game plan. It is true that “an empty stomach has no ears.” This is the lesson here and the indigenous people should voice out their concerns and decide whether in fact Gregorio C. Sablan is good for their future and by dislocating his existence as a representative of the indigenous people.

A question for which there is no answer is still a question, but an answer for which there is no question is no answer. This factor applies to what Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan has always borne in his mind. The indigenous people of the NMI must understand what this statement means and why their future is imperiled under the tutelage of Gregorio C. Sablan’s performance as their pseudo-representative in the halls of Congress. The failure of Gregorio C. Sablan bringing this serious issue to its priority level within all competing issues to a public discussion so we can ask and articulate his responses would never come. Hence, we can intelligently and conscientiously understand what his real motive is. And, by this we can conclude that “he who is not for me is against me.” We can take this to the bank in our dealings with the incumbent.

This is appalling and deserves an adverse action verdict by the indigenous people of the NMI this election day. This is the only punitive action that an employer could impose on an employee who is performing way out of line from his usual and expected line of work. We, as the indigenous people of the NMI, are not asking to be the subject of a political ploy by paying the price of the design engineering engaged by the incumbent delegate. What Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan is doing would change the course of the ancestral domain of these islands and its people. He must be stopped and discharged from his employment.

Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan should be put on notice that food stamps and federal grants are not the only benefits that matters for the indigenous people. These federal payments would come to the CNMI regardless of who is selected as the delegate for the indigenous people. Grandstanding by listing in PowerPoint presentation all federal grants and food stamps coming to the CNMI next to his name and preaching his role in all these is obviously understandable. Arnold H. Glasow pointed out, “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” But Mr. Sablan wants all the credit as his own private undertaking. That is not good and no near being truthful. A sign of a liar by his own lies, and ironically he has no shame saying so.

The indigenous people of the NMI must give Gregorio C. Sablan this lasting message, “Nothing can be created out of nothing.” We as a people are not asking to be displaced and taken out of existence from our own islands. He did and moving that we do. It would have been good if he had elected to take the alternative, and that is to stray as far a possible from his brand ideology. But Gregorio C. Sablan has figured it out—his future is not with the indigenous people of the Northern Mariana Islands. With this in mind, it is worth the chance to invest in a new person than gambling in an incumbent that we already know is out to have an irreversible impact on the social fabric of our future generations of the NMI.

Francisco R. Agulto
Kannat Tabla, Saipan