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Citizenship as People’s Power
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Posted on Nov 02 2006
Citizenship has been a function of governance. It is the act of subservience to constituted authority. In the CNMI, Citizenship Day marked the unilateral U.S. presidential declaration that the NMI was no longer under U.N. Trusteeship, and henceforth, was to be regarded as citizens of the United States of America under the provisions of a signed Covenant.
The four Cs of CNMI holidays—Citizenship, Commonwealth, Covenant and Constitution—all point to our joining a 240-year old political experiment, pointedly referred to by the constitutional phrase, “We the People,” and poetically expressed by President Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
In the dichotomy of the private and public sectors, where private interest is fueled by the allure of profits, and public service weighted heavily to the formal requirements of power and the whimsical winds of authority, emerges a powerful third force in our time—the civil society. This is the People coming to its own.
Through the years, we always had philanthropic volunteerism, religious charity, and recently, councils of stakeholders as a prerequisite to participatory program implementation in government-funded initiatives. In our time, we have seen the emergence of groups that combine the dynamics of philanthropy, charity and participation in pursuing specific tasks as well as promoting comprehensive programs.
Today’s Beautify CNMI! efforts lean in this new demonstration of enlightened citizenry. Taking advantage of its dynamic spurts, it seeks a formula to ensure sustainability. The same holds true of the Power and the Mover, the Rotary and the Karidat, the Ayuda net and the MINA set, the Lions and the Masons, the PTAs and the promos of the MVA, and the myriad of activities that citizens have come to create as an expression of their identity and vocation.
We celebrate this new face of citizenship. A people without a vision dies. When the dream of the earth is seen, hope in the future beckons, life’s mission is empowered, and citizenship takes on new meaning.
