Yaqui Into

I was at the CUC office in Dandan arranging to connect power and water to a new dwelling and moseyed over to see how my Finance officer friend was doing. He reportedly showed up at the office Monday morning only to be turned away as his card to enter the hallway where his office was located had already been invalidated. Someone made sure that Matthew Yaquinto was fired, and stayed fired.

The papers carried the news that he was dismissed without cause effective June 25 by the executive officer on instructions of the board. The lawyer of the board says that there remains legal issues on the matter, but that the CUC board acted properly. We will be forgiven if we see the shadows of a sleigh of hands on this matter.

In 2011, former Saipan Tribune publisher and a regular Saipan Tribune opinion writer declared that the CNMI government was broke, and could not afford to run CHC anymore. That he reported an objective data is incontrovertible; that CHC responded by getting deeper in debt as a “creative” response, is a matter of record. The Saipan Tribune publisher was not censured

In 2016, the CUC financial officer, before elected officials of the government, was asked about the financial state of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. As that was the area of his expertise and responsibility, he told the truth. He could have been “political” and avoided the question, or gave an evasive answer, as the CUC legal officer seem to be doing with the Press, but Matthew had the temerity to tell the truth.

Telling the truth is always a dangerous thing. That is probably why ancient wisdom told of the emperor not wearing clothes, to tell the truth, and make the telling humorous so the truth can easily be digestible.

CUC’s board has been politicized for a long while, that is, it has a habit of butting into operational matters rather than simply be a policy body. We use “politicized” in this context, as the process of decision-making rather than the common use of the word for partisan political stance. Matthew is hardly political in the partisan sense, but the board, not surprisingly, seemed to have read him that way.

Of course, the “political” way is common in the CNMI. By that, we mean the common “power play” that takes matters personally in order to determine position and status. Social standing is a big deal in Marianas life, a leftover from the Hispanic method of arriving at any decision by the powers-that-be, different from the way we understand corporate life with a clear division of the policy side and operational procedures.

A friend at my last school avoids going to the school office as it is ripe “with power plays,” he says. Where offices that have a primary supervisor and a secondary deputy one, the division between policy and operation is clear in role designation and functions, but in practice, it is a game of one-upmanship where the status position is of absolute importance. In staff gatherings, the head honcho has to make clear who is “in charge” and his/her reputation is established on how a role is played. No one is naughty; it is just the way the game is played.

Power is the common denominator, and there is no mistaking who takes the blame and who is holding the unripe mango. The federal government as a funding agency insisted on having a financial officer at CUC, accountable to a defined role and function, not whether politically he speaks out of turn. Matthew did the unexpected. Asked a question, he told the truth. That’s a banana peeling that can easily cause one to slip on the floor.

Matthew is not the issue here, nor the wrangling in the board, a fact known since the inception of the body, so we do not wish to paint pictures of friends and foes. But we need to untangle procedures and the continuing relationship between the federal government and the CNMI.

I have stated elsewhere that the “Covenant” the bodies entered into, it is perceived, at least, by the two parties differently. The U.S. seems to look at it as a set of laws that has to be followed while the CNMI sees it as an occasion to converse around a table with trustthat the welfare of the other is going to be considered.

A good example is the military’s relationship to Pagan. Some read the covenant as specifically stating the U.S. military can conduct maneuvers on the island, and bombing includes the military’s definition of “maneuvers.” Not so, says a film on Pagan Watch that Cinta Kaipat is assisting to produce and scheduled to be publicly shown in September. Is anyone mistaken in their definition? Not by the Pentagon’s understanding of what it entered into when the CNMI “joined” the Union!

The same applies to the situation at CUC. The board acted like they wanted to dictate how a hired financial officer was to behave, and “Yaqui into” the truth crossed the line. Members of the board took exception. Power play is a dangerous game. Is the creative response going further in debt? Matthew might have suggested that GovCNMI pays up or be disconnected. H-m-m-m.