Stanley and Howard sitting in darkness?

What happens daily to today’s typical CNMI resident has now reached the upper echelons of this society. A power outage stopped Thursday’s meeting of the perhaps finest minds of our Commonwealth. Perhaps this outage demonstrates that even the CNMI’s rich and powerful and as well as its 1970s architect of this government, Howard Willens (midwifed and birthed by the man himself), can be reached and touched by our collapsing government appendages.

Given the myriad voices of dissent and dissatisfaction with government executive, judicial and legislative operations and operatives through the media and at drinking holes, I am reminded of Jean Renoir’s film Grand Illusion, which depicted the collapse of the 19th century European political and social institutions with the onset of World War I and its major forces for change. In Kassel Wintersborn, Commandant Rauffenstein (Eric Stronheim) tries to run the redoubt POW camp as a country club for POW gentlemen of his class and POW foreign commoners. He fails to recognize the new conditions, the new world order being born, and continues his living the illusion of the old order. And the structure, of course, is plagued with escape, dissent, death and chaos.

And, as I imagine, here we have Howard Willens, midwife of the Commonwealth so to speak, standing at the Legislature in the dark, flashlights on and someone looking for the main power panel, in the midst of the collapsing major money generator institutions (CUC/CPA/CDA/NMRIF, etc.), mumbling something like, “This will pass,” I’m sure. It is just a matter of time and some more money. Isn’t it?

Our upper classes (those in government earning over $70,000 per annum) who control the Legislature, Executive, Judicial branches and control the government hiring and board appointees have finally been touched by the collapse of the keystone institution CUC and all its history of mismanagement and politics. They can no longer stand above or apart from the economic plunge and the moral decay of our political institutions.

The current CNMI government structures might appear to be made of concrete and immutable but it is an illusion if we think the conditions of the 1970s that formed them have not changed. As the notions of chivalry and friendship of Commandant Rauffenstein proved unworkable in the new world order of the 1900s the notions of the politics of enrichment for family and self in CNMI, the old-style politicians and their notions about how to get votes for access to office and into the public treasury, will die. A government staffed with one employee for every two voters, a bicameral Legislature with 19 representatives or one for every 650 voters, there are no government operations budgets and the island lights are off with growing frequency and duration.

There is, however, a growing sense of change in the air. Not just from the grumbling older residents but from the younger generation who are saying, “no mas.” It can and should be the end of the old order, the structures and attitudes, whose roots lie in the Trust Territory institutions.

The collapsing CNMI government structures and their appendages must change or be deliberately changed to fit this new era. The question is whether the Stanleys and the Howards now caught in a blackout can contribute to the step into a 21st century Commonwealth.