Yo! We the People

The billboards along the roadways calling for our attention testify to a biennial ritual to select public officials from citizens vying for leadership positions in our government. It highlights the civic responsibility of voting, and the citizens’ duty to serve. The right to vote in elections and referendum is critical in a democracy, something we take for granted. The fact that a high percentage of voters in the CNMI exercise suffrage more than their counterparts elsewhere is often cited with much pride. So, Yo! We the People, prepare to vote!

The election campaign is heating up. Many people are discovering new relatives. Kinship after all is the overriding and all-consuming criteria for many choices. The season is a great time to remember one’s middle name, and those of one’s father and mother. Ties to cousins to the fourth degree of consanguinity suddenly get clearer and stronger. For a few, competing relatives present a familial dilemma. Members of huge extended family structures learn to dance delicate steps of avoidance and gracious non-concomitance. But the challenge to exercise one’s right to vote on Election Day remains.

We are highly conscious as a political unit of the nature of our governance and citizenship, if the four C holidays—Citizenship, Constitution, Commonwealth and Covenant Day—are any indication. The cynic, of course, points out that these holidays are nothing but beach barbecue days. For sure, the widespread experience of self-governance is patently lacking. It appears that being a responsible citizen takes a back seat to the search of a government job once one’s relation has been elected to public office.

There is vague ownership of government even by those employed in public offices. The majority of CNMI residents are not citizens. They are treated as visiting or transient aliens, even if they have been residents for more than 10 years. The economic processes are not approached from the view of long-term development but from the opportunity of short-term gains. The alienation of private property and the utilization of public lands are sensitive and pressing issues that may very well justify the convening of a constitutional convention. The oft-quoted American Indian saying: “We did not inherit our land from our ancestors, we are borrowing it from our children,” is worth recalling as we struggle to define our political and economic future beyond the provisions of our Covenant relationship with the USA, and the Constitution of the Commonwealth.

The CNMI Constitution begins with the Citizens’ Bill of Rights. However, the USA-NMI Covenant and the CNMI Constitution are not widely known, nor is there evident enthusiasm among educators to teach them. For the notion of social contract, which undergirds a constitutional government is foreign to these shores. Kinship ties has long been the determining factor that defines and regulates social relationships, with the well-off saying to the obeisant, “Give me your loyalty and I will secure your living.” That, of course, is collapsing as the incidences of parceling individual and family claims to property have settled into judges’ salas. The communal consensus of the Utt and the Taga house that once amicably settled property disputes, and adjudicated differences, have vanished with the memories of a clean and seafood-abundant Saipan lagoon.

A select group of PSS teachers from various grade levels statewide were oriented to a Civics’ curriculum called “We the People, the Citizen and the Constitution” over the last four days. Offered to 6-12 grades, the course acquaints students to the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, its historical development, its impact on how we regulate social relationships among citizens, and political accountability among government units.

The dynamic quartet of Bob Leming, the national program director; Drew Horvath, a passionate Indiana high school instructor; Matt Gutwein, a distinguished Indiana lawyer, prominent business CEO and law professor; and PSS Federal Programs officer Tim Thornburgh facilitated the Institute.

Bottom line, the course explores the development and expansion of citizens’ rights and how the government acts in order to promote and protect, on the one hand, and refrain from interfering, on the other, with those rights.

George Mason of Virginia refused to sign the U.S. Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights. Now bearing 27 amendments, the document withstood more than 200 years of frequent roller coaster rides. There is within the experiment in U.S. republican democracy a lingering mistrust of the concentration of power in the hands of a few, coupled with ceaseless passion for individual freedom to pursue the blessings of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” by many. The CNMI Constitution put the Bill of Rights up front.

The Constitution expresses the framers’ aspirations, their vision and mission. But it is organic. It is alive. It grows. The structure of governance it spawns lives off the interaction between efficient delivery and effective management of public services by the executive offices, the comprehensive discourses of the legislative bodies, and the extensive cogitation of the judicial benches. Citizens’ responsibility holds the creative tension between obedience to the law, and the exercise of individual freedom and civic responsibility.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the common good is served best when the citizens’ rights are exercised most; the exercise of citizens’ rights is meaningful most when the promotion of the commonweal is served best.

In the past, the Hegelian dialectic guided social analysis through contradictional dualism. Opposing forces clashed to create a synthesis, we theorized, resulting in compromise in the political arena. A paradigm shift into complementary dualism has occurred, where the seemingly conflicting forces paradoxically feed on each other. The strength of one empowers the stamina of the other. Such is the emergent view on the dichotomy between the public good and individual rights, long posed as if it were an “either/or” opposition. Experience indicates that the matter can best be treated as an “and/both” proposition.

Those who see the significant expansion of individual rights in the last 75 years often view the empowered judicial review process with alarm. Fear has never been a productive ingredient in democratic governance. It only encourages a politics of anger leading toward a counterproductive course. The causes pursued by the doctrinaire political and religious right and left that delve on limits without the counterbalance of possibilities have often resulted in the regression of progress previously gained. A vigilant citizenry must not shy away from activist governance. Failure to participate in civic responsibilities is what allows for corruption of power in the hands of the few. It has been an American trait to trust in the practice that when in doubt, do.

This coming election, it will be well to choose those who have demonstrated their capacity to make decisions, even unpopular ones, over those who keep analyzing what is wrong with any given situation, and conveniently pointing to others for blame. “Action resolves the doubt that theory cannot solve.” Those who insist on absolute certitude of thought, on the comfort of elaborate plans, and on the safety of verifiable knowledge are most often stuck in the paralysis of analysis. Activist citizens and activist governance that ordains and establishes, who just do, are preferred. Be active, or get out of the way. Choose active. Talk up the issues surrounding your choices. Stay engaged. Vote this coming election!