When two giants stumble!

Bad tidings of layoffs, by the thousands, is taking place across the country especially on high-tech industries.

As this phenomeon cascades down high-tech employees who have been given their pink slips, the biggest companies in the Land of the Rising Sun aren’t sure how they’d fare when the other side of the Pacific slides into a recession.

Definitely, when two giants stumble the grass gets crushed! More people will be jobless in both sides of the Pacific divide. What does it all mean for these tiny isles?

When consumers hold back spending to weather the economic bad times at home, it means apparel products from here would have difficulty moving through markets or retail stores. When this happens, it triggeers a cut in the number of orders usually placed with the apparel industry here. In the end, it means less money for the local coffers.

With respect to consumers from Japan, it means family vacations (other than corporate-sponsored vacations), would decrease. There’s a reason for this: the strength of the yen has contracted. It means, more Japanese consumers would hold back spending in the midst of economic bad times.

Yes, for years we thought that this fickle industry would never be victimized by external influences. It did and much to our surprise! Interesting though that we fueled a raging fire to our demise in grand fashion too.

It should dawn on tourism industry leaders here that competition is steep. Therefore, it needs to study what our competitors have done right. It should make it a point to rethink and renew its approaches or paradigms. Such rethinking and renewal are vital in a market that is highly competitive. There’s no more room for complacency nor quick-fixes.

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What went wrong?

Leadership was dazed by the combined negative clashes from within and without. It is dazed not that it can’t maneuver alternatives to slam the brakes on the economic downturn four years ago. But it simply never had a plan of its own to use as a guideline as it deals with new challenges. It was basically “ke sera sera” from the outset.

I have said time and again that for every of indecision, there emerges three years of delay in what is required of leadership to address and resolve qualitative issues here. If more of the indigenous people are forced into food stamps line, is this supposedly the new definition of quality of life? Without begging the point, where we are today of near total meltdown can be attributed by our coasting along when in fact we should have been proactively preparing for the worse.

It brings into focus all that we have heard from the “Promise Land”–out on the campaign trail–by political trade horses offering nothing new except perhaps regurgitated promises with new spin! Be that as it may, half the fault isn’t with candidates seeking votes as much as the voters who blindly elect on the basis of partisanship or family ties. Think about it!

Strictly a personal view. John S. DelRosario Jr. is publisher of Saipan Tribune.