Election year stupidities

C.J. Craig: Everybody’s stupid in an election year.
Charlie Young: No, CJ. Everybody’s treated as if they’re stupid in an election year.
–From an episode in the second season of the television series The West Wing.

And ain’t that the unpalatable truth. Everybody gets treated as if they are stupid in an election year. It’s as if politicians become convinced that the voting population is a bigger bunch of credulous, simpleminded folks during election years than at any other times. Or is it the other way around? Probably, during election years, the hubris that most politicians claim as their birthright become even more pronounced, imbuing them with a self-indulgent belief in their powers of persuasion and capacity for razzle-dazzle.

And I’m not even talking here of the promises that candidates regularly dish out to the electorate. I mean, that’s just par for the course. A politician who doesn’t promise you paradise and a hundred houris at your beck and call is not worth his salt and has lesser chances of winning an election than me winning the Marianas lottery jackpot. No, it’s not so much the promises that make you feel as if you’re being treated like a five-year-old but the things that some politicians do and the reasons they provide that give the impression that you are such a simpleminded idiot that you will swallow any crap that they dish out.

Who actually believes the explanation that the Department of Lands and Natural Resources gave when it let the recent Bird Island Sanctuary incursion slide just like that? Based on a poll that the Saipan Tribune had last week, 221 respondents said they do not find the DLNR’s reasoning justifiable when it released the seven fishermen, as opposed to the 40 who found the DLNR’s explanation acceptable. The 221 respondents who chose “no” opted for that answer because the reasoning given was so obviously lame and far-fetched that it gave the impression of someone who’s over-reaching, a fine example of how a simple explanation can turn into a contortionist act in an instant when one messes around with the rules of logic and common sense. This incident, however, has far more insidious underpinnings when one takes into account the rumors that a politician or his office was largely the one responsible for sweeping the matter under the rug. Whatever the case may be, the most notable thing about this incident was the speed with which it was disposed of, the lack of details about what really happened, and the pregnant silence that has ensued. It has become the elephant in the middle of that room that everyone is trying to ignore.

Then there was the inexplicable decision by the central government to require the members of a Chinese government delegation to post a $20,000 bond during a recent visit to Rota. This delegation, composed of ranking government and business officials from the city of Liuzhou in the Guangxi province of China, visited the CNMI to sign a sister-city accord with the government of Rota. The visit had the potential of establishing business and tourism ties with a major market that the CNMI has been wooing for the last couple of years. Yet, when they actually came here, the central government chose to treat them like riffraff by making it very difficult for this group to obtain visitor entry permits and then requiring them to post a bond as if they will disappear once they set foot on the islands. For Pete’s sake, this was a government delegation, not a package tour group. We went to great lengths to obtain an Approved Destination Status from the Chinese government and this is how we treat them when they actually come here to visit? Of course, the fact that the group came here at the invitation of Rota Mayor Benjamin Manglona may have had something to do with that. It would not do for Manglona, a Covenant Party supporter and a critic of the administration, to have the credit for this visit. Various explanations were made to explain this slap in the face but what has become clear is that, as in everything else in the islands, politics always trumps good economic sense and sensibility.

A word of advice to our dear politicians: Don’t presume that the electorate is stupid. Voters these days are an intelligent bunch and can see through the smoke and mirrors razzmatazz. They know when they are being taken for a ride and have learned to take every politician’s word with an extra large block of salt. As for your political promises, sorry to burst your bubble but nobody really believes in them anymore. People these days automatically assume political promises to hold as much substance as cotton candy fluff—easy to whip up but ultimately insubstantial, full of empty calories, and recipe for a stomachache.

(The views expressed are strictly that of the author. Vallejera is the editor of the Saipan Tribune.)