Information is power!

From the first break of dawn I’d surf the Internet rummaging through information of events unfolding in Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries. Sounds boring but trust me these events have ripple effects here—positively or negatively—throughout the course of the year.

The term “globalization” used among ASEAN countries is one strange word most folks here don’t care about either. It’s a vehicle, though, that allows for healthy competition in the export of local manufactured, harvested or grown produce from apparel, fish, coconuts, and others. Here, the dust of manufacturing settled fatally silently when the $2.1 billion apparel industry forcibly put on shutters.

It’s a term though that matters to this scribe in that whatever happens nearby eventually washes up on our shores. For instance, if the Japanese economy slides south it almost automatically means far less visitors to the NMI over the course of the year. The same is true when the Chinese economy is derailed for one reason or another. It also reduces the number of visitors and investments to the islands.

Furthermore, we have a single-legged fickle economy like tourism. It makes it imperative that we watch events nearby closely if only to prepare for events that would adversely impact tourism. It affects money in the local treasury. If it goes south or decreases it compresses negatively our ability to pay for such public services as health, education and safety in the community.

Interesting how our Pinoy brothers and sisters have benefited from this concept while it flies over our nimble minds. They’ve demonstrated resiliency and assimilative ability into the shifting sands of globalization. Nothing stops as they muddle through propping up their manufacturing and other sectors. The republic has over three million skilled workers working all over the global village whose fully honed skills are in demand everywhere. I don’t know if we could say the same of our people whose aspirations is the most coveted seat in the NMI.

It makes it imperative that we foster literacy on issues of significance. Why have I kept abreast of the golden coconut industry in the Philippines? It’s a $9 million sector annually where coconut oil and other by-products from coconut have been manufactured and sold worldwide. Here where everybody wants to be governor we’ve trashed it altogether! It’s money, friends, from an endemic plant we have in abundance.

I’m interested in your considered views. No one has been appointed the general manager of the universe nor is one’s view etched in stone. Thus, let’s converge and trump out our cards. And it begins by learning separating people from issues. Steer clear hurling aspersions. Meanwhile, keep reading whatever you could grab for the sake of staying informed. I get my inspiration rummaging through major national and international newspaper editions, studies and materials of interest, daily.

The 2015 Challenge
In quiet spiritual contemplation of what’s before him I know the governor has the welfare of his people uppermost in his mind. Such mood reminds me of what President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1933, in his First Inaugural Address: “These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered to but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

It’s one tough task untangling the annihilation of the local economy triggered by the federal takeover of immigration and the persistent push in additional policies to ensure complete destruction. Lumped with failures of previous governors, no wonder the NMI is in such fiscal disarray. But with meticulous and resolute planning Gov. Inos could slowly but surely lead the NMI to economic prosperity once more. Though guardedly optimistic I’m still hopeful it could be done.

Foreign investment paradigm
For nearly four decades now, we’ve seen the use of the foreign investment approach to spur economic development and growth. Most of what we’ve seen is in the form of hotels and golf resorts.

The only manufacturing we had was literally killed by the feds’ takeover of immigration. It’s a grand policy of destruction that annihilated the local economy. Nothing else has happened since recent past. Is there vision and leadership here at all?

We were left to fend for ourselves despite a commitment under the Covenant Agreement that the US develops the NMI so we attain a “progressively higher standard of living.” So far we’ve made progress with food stamps and Medicaid.

But we must not quickly point an accusatory finger at Uncle Sam for what may have gone wrong. It’s time that we begin owning up to our end of responsibility instituting a “government of the people, for the people and by the people”. It means buckling down to defining and exercising the real essence of self-government. Or have we started wholesaling our future to the highest bidder?

This is a truly humiliating reflection upon the NMI in the eyes of our benefactors in Washington. I’m sure DC has placed us on its radar screen to see how else do we wish to screw things up. It’s a bad transition uprooting the foundation of “we the people” to “depravity” doubled down by “fiat” or whimsical dictatorial calls spun by the “we few” powerful boys on the hill. It’s dangerous at every speed.

You see the foreign investment policy definitely requires critical review and revision. In other words, let’s dissect it to see if it has worked in lasting fashion embracing the needs of the indigenous people beyond conventional approach to land valuation of public land. How much land is opened for developmental purposes or leases? Isn’t land use for whatever purpose expansive? In other words, the size remains the same while its future use balloons!

There’s a certain matrix that could be made a part of the land valuation concept. This and a sense of partnership are issues that we must worked on given our limited land size.