Best Sunshine is doing the right thing in Garapan

“Pathetic” is the best word I can think of to describe the controversy over the Garapan location for the casino. After seeing the view of the jungle in the middle of Garapan, I had to say something as this entire fiasco reminds me so much of the same kind of fiasco we saw with Sugar Dock. We all now know that the protest to save Sugar Dock has proven to be a complete mistake given the dilapidated condition that now exists—a missed opportunity to develop Sugar Dock and a missed opportunity to have a ferry that would have taken people and their cars to Tinian. I guess there are those who didn’t learn the valuable lesson because they are about to delay progress again for the past when we should be preparing a better future for our children.

Attorney Viola Alepuyo is right as we all need to know what is really at the location in Garapan, especially when Best Sunshine is willing to gamble on excavating. The location is nothing more than an eyesore and no one was taking care of it, allowing a jungle to grow in the middle of our only major metropolitan area on the island. For goodness sake, Garapan is our downtown but there are those who would rather have a jungle there for tourists to see! We should be developing all of Garapan as it was once described by a historian as looking like San Francisco and there are no jungles in San Francisco! If people were taking care of the location and had plans for it as a tourist attraction I could understand the protest but that is not the case. Just like with Sugar Dock, there are no plans to improve it; just a bid to stop progress.

Best Sunshine is offering the CNMI a great win-win scenario because if they find something of significance it can become a tourist attraction and Best Sunshine will have to find another location. But if they don’t find anything of significance it will pave the way for expediting the construction of the casino as the sooner it is built the sooner we will start receiving the full benefits of the casino. If there are only a few graves, they can be moved and given a proper burial with some form of a memorial. But more importantly, we will finally know for true what is there, which should be the main concern, not stopping progress before it can even start.

I was against the casino but the people have sent a message that they want the casino by electing Gov. Inos, which I respect because we must move on. I’m a man of and for the people and I am also for progress. We the people need to do all we can to help the government in fulfilling the contract that was signed on our behalf as a contract is the closest thing mankind has to the 10 Commandments! Fighting Best Sunshine now is literally fighting ourselves and progress! Like the CEO of Best Sunshine said, we will never get someone to gamble on that property. Thanks, Best Sunshine, for being willing to take the risk. So do we continue the unwarranted protest like we did with Sugar Dock that got us nothing and a dilapidated dock that no can use anymore or did we learn from Sugar Dock that we must allow Best Sunshine do us all a favor and excavate in the name of progress?

We had better be mindful of protests that stop progress. If we don’t hurry up and start changing things and modernizing the CNMI for our children, they will continue to do what they are doing—leaving for greener pastures in the mainland. The majority of people who want to stay here are the alien workers, so guess what the future holds for the CNMI if we continue to block progress. Saving land and preserving jungles is not progress and is not going to make them stay! So do we prepare a future for our children or do we destroy the hope of progress in Garapan over a site that no one was even thinking about until Best Sunshine wanted to use it? Let’s at least find out what is there before protesting and saying no to progress. It is the wisdom of “looking before you leap.”

FYI readers: London is presently excavating 20,000 skeletons to make way for progress (a train station) and we have people protesting who don’t even know what is there and don’t want us find out—sad and pathetic. It is only reasonable that Best Sunshine be allowed to excavate to see what is there or we may never know, leaving a jungle to grow in the middle of downtown Saipan, just like we see jungles in all the villages from people leaving. It is time for the CNMI to embrace progress and stop lingering on the past as our youth are more concerned about their future than the CNMI’s past as it’s their future we are playing with, not ours. Legalization is also our next test for progress and we know our youth want that to happen so let’s start now.

Ambrose M Bennett
Kagman, Saipan