The villain in this farce

If Shakespeare is a tragedian in the sense that he could draw for us the drama of tragedy in the human frailness involving the cause committed by a villain, then Gregorio C. Sablan is a tragedian for his act and committed intention to wipe out the indigenous people from their homelands here in the Northern Mariana Islands. The irony to all these sorrowful consequences that he is being paid a hefty salary doing this, and seemingly only taking this matter as politics as usual.

However, Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan, the pseudo-representative of the indigenous people of the NMI in the U.S. Congress, has committed an irreversible consequence not by chance but by virtue of his intended position that the indigenous people of the NMI are people that could be the subject of demise in their own homeland. We have never asked for tragedy that we did not expect. Yet the mental constipation of our pseudo representative could not be explained because he avoided and refused to discuss in public the essential aspects of representation as it were. He treated the indigenous people of the NMI as nothing more than a “day’s fly.”

The indigenous people of the NMI labored for his honesty all these years, and what they got was a big problem that only he could have resolved, but he put his feet firm on the ground that the indigenous people could not say more than what he steadfastly wanted as the principle and his own thoughts over the issue. To be honest means to be direct, clear, straightforward, and at the same time continually aware of what one is doing or saying. The shadow of Gregorio C. Sablan’s explanation admittedly delineated by omission, that by itself is the villain in this man’s psychology. Hence, continually trying to make one’s intentions and feelings match one’s deeds or words is the kind of reality that he failed to tell us all these years.

It is time that the indigenous people of the NMI take the appropriate actions to be the villain to Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan by setting for him the tragedy of being discharged from his job as the representative of the indigenous people of the NMI. Grandstanding on insignificant issues like food stamps and federal grants are much too shallow performance predictors to justify the death spiral he targeted at the indigenous people. With this in mind, the level playing field for our cause as the indigenous people can be summed up by saying that we all should stay from the cheerleading brouhaha of Mr. Gregorio C. Sablan. The indigenous people do not need an actor that elected to change the script of the play however way he wants to act it out.

The script of the play we are talking here is a copyright ownership of the indigenous people, and the other one selected for the position as delegate to the U.S. Congress should play by the script—that is what representation is all about. We should welcome sending another person as our delegate to the U.S. Congress. This is the only option that we have, and we expect the new selected for this opportunity to be on script and stick to that play. It will work out and that is what would matter.

Francisco R. Agulto
Kannat Tabla, Saipan