Defining the NMI’s future

For many years, I’ve researched, read, and analyzed the success of nations and what led to their attaining global economic success. It’s fascinating how leadership steps in and moved mountains in phenomenal ways. I’m saying if they can do it, so could the NMI.

Indeed, we could engage in contentious debate why it can or can’t be done here too. The success rate, albeit difficult, is stunning and has worked in outstanding ways for countries like Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia. None is endowed with natural resources. Neither is the NMI! Japan eventually became the second global economic power!

Visionary leadership stepped in and was determined to make a difference to grant their people opportunities to move forward. Herein lies the difference: equipped with due diligence and energy to fearlessly move the needle of growth forward by taking the plunge!

It’s the central idea of being part of the “emerging” nations in the Asia/Pacific rather than settling as a submerged entity drowning helplessly in the turbulent sea of fiscal crisis.

After WWII Japan embraced science and technology as its foundational vehicle to move forward. Two decades later, she reinvaded the entire global village with her products that became brand names everywhere. Hell, how do I miss Toyota? She emerged an island nation while the rest of us took a quick dip into submerged territory! This is where we are for being loose in the way we view progress, coupled with the fear of putting forward our best foot.

Singapore basically did the same in the subsequent education of her people. Entrepreneurship, with aid from the government, was allowed to thrive and blossom. There was the placement of its best people in three layers of leadership all the way down to the community level. Singapore was the envy of the world, though critics weren’t too forgiving at the autocratic fashion that it brought herself at par with the global community. How do you dispute grand success?

Work in disorientation: Perhaps my expectations of proactive orderly progress have been a bit too forward as to inadvertently overlook the obvious that not everybody’s on the same page. But how long must we absorb indecisions from the “do-nothing” troops?

It’s a day wasted in sleepwalk land, half the time hypnogogic, meaning, still sleepy as you stagger out of bed in the morning. Shouldn’t our conversations be focused on the logic of getting things done, embracing the right issues by doing them right? Do we even have at least some faint resolve to do it if only to test our creative abilities? Isn’t the future of our children sufficient a motivation to unite and prepare the way for them?

If I may illustrate a point: We’ve been long on rhetoric on indigenous rights but woefully short on programs that address issues requiring realistic definition of the needs of the very people we wish to assist. We have so many departments and offices established for indigenous purposes. Nothing has happened since 1978 to help our people in an organized fashion. It’s all hip shots!

I say let’s address the future of our people by defining their role up ahead using education as our main vehicle. Let’s show them how to move from point “A” to point “B”. Sometime a dog and pony show is a necessity.

You may be a part of the system today but you’re completely off the mark on the very essence of education in its relations to the future of our people. Please employ humility and step aside when your time has basically gone ahead of your less than useful contribution. You’d be doing our people a favor letting others with greater disposition handle matters in which they are professionally conversant and poised.

Hillside failure: Some 62 percent of people polled across the country say Washington has failed to do its fiduciary duties guarding the public interest.

The same could be said of Imperial Capital Hill here (I Deni`) where it has taken a disinterested posture on most everything it has undertaken. This includes both the administration and the Legislature. It listens to its dissonant and disoriented self rather than the simple and collected expressions of its people.

Saipan voters shot down casino twice. Legislators came around and unilaterally changed it saying casino is IT! Tinian and Rota chimed in because each is getting $1 million apiece from the Saipan casino. No wonder the Rota casino never took off and the one on Tinian has been derailed in bureaucratic land. But someone from Rota said casino is a “lucrative global industry.” Really? So whatever happened to your casino? Has it reached its embryonic stage?

Ever read shifts in Reno, Nevada, and Macau? Or let’s just keep here: did your Rota casino ever make it to the starting line? So it’s cool to suck some more of Saipan generated revenues to scaffold their inability to move things forward? How much longer must you suck our rib cage for your needs as leeches? Isn’t it time to replace your blurry-eyed so-called leadership with realistic people with visions?

For once in the 37-year developmental history of the NMI each senatorial district must forcibly limit municipal government expenses to what it could generate locally. This should push politicians to do better than make empty promises time and again at the expense of Saipan taxpayers. For now, please sever the umbilical cord. Enough Is Enough!

We also need our hard-earned taxes, especially these days when “solutions driven” has been driven off elsewhere! Please, no more pretentious hypocrisy, sayu?