A September Swan song

In discussions around the table when I was still attending meetings of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce at the turn of the century/millennium, was of the demise of the garment industry and who would have the privilege to be the last to turn the lights off. The assumption then, as evidently it still is in some quarters, or more accurately, the foisted threat then was that the island economy would slide into the Marianas Trench if the garment industry were not protected and sustained. Measures proposed to protect and sustain the industry included the continuing exemptions of the islands from provisions of the Minimum Wage Law, the non-application of some of the nation’s laws on immigration, and the full control and management of the administration of labor and immigration laws to the local government. All three has since become moot with the third measure, the local administration of labor and immigration laws, soon to be under Federal guidance by June of next year.

I had previously characterized the island’s economy as a three-legged stool, with tourism, government subsidies, and the garment industry as the legs. With the fast ebbing garment industry finally hitting the dust at dusk, we now have an unstable two-legged stool. With the local government’s machismo-driven animosity towards Uncle Sam, we may write off the second remaining leg as potential resource underutilized with benign negligence. Bruce Bateman sourly says as much when he pictures a one-legged stool of tourism wearily hopping about and around one of the world’s divers’ paradises.

We will say no more about the high crimes committed in the name of the garment industry. We have already commented extensively on and about the depraved exploitation of contract workers both inside and outside the legitimate perimeters of the industry, and both by the indigenes and the victims co-nationals, and the consequent corruption that emerged from the bureaucracies that regulated their commerce as workers and residents.

I remain in good terms with many of the professional staff of the CNMI Labor and Immigration offices but I can recite from professional and personal incidences a litany of the department’s “deficiencies” (one of their favorite terms) as fast as I could recite my Hail Mary’s. In spite of brave efforts so far, the administrative stable in San Antonio awaits some massive tidying up.

Uncle Ben’s stance towards Uncle Sam is baffling. With the Willens-Siemer duo as volunteer advisers to his administration, one would think that actions like threatening to sue the federal government would be an act of desperation devoid of reason and rhyme. In their excellent account of the United States Policy in Micronesia from 1961-72, the couple wrote of the late Palauan lawmaker Lazarus Salii and his rhetoric in the Congress of Micronesia: “The anti-United States rhetoric in the Congress of Micronesia debate about the U.S. proposal for a commonwealth alarmed Marianas voters. Accustomed to politically sophisticated calculations, Marianas residents readily understood that it was one thing to criticize the Trust Territory administration but quite another to ridicule the United States itself.”

Much is being claimed these days about provisions in the Covenant and how that might be the basis of defining self-determination as a Commonwealth. “National Security and Self-Determination” was how Howard Willens and Deanne Siemers titled their account. While it clearly shows how the leaders gathered in the Congress of Micronesia viewed self-determination more as an act of autonomy from political union with Uncle Sam, the Northern Marianas took a different turn. The NMI expressed self-determination through a declaration of interdependence with Uncle Sam, toward political union rather than away from it, as the rest of Micronesia ultimately decided to do.

Tina Sablan, Ed Probst, Pete A., et al, in their attempt to rally NMI residents to clamor for their rightful claim to assets under Uncle Sam’s purview are not acts of mendicancy sneered at from some quarters but legitimate acts of those who properly comprehend how sovereign power and citizens’ responsibility applies in the Commonwealth.

Wednesday’s prayer rally, which may properly begin with gratitude for the other day’s uninterrupted power supply calls the attention of the local and federal authorities, most particularly the application of the Stafford Act in enabling the U.S. President to extend emergency assistance to a political entity within its wings that has already officially declared a state of emergency. It also calls our leaders to realize that false pride and misguided testicular fortitude is not the responsible reaction to the current situation.

To be sure, the rally is also a reminder to the Horiguchi building residents that they can feel at home, and that we expect their offices to represent us well within the nation’s federation of States, not as an inconvenient extension, but as a full member of the family. For instance, in many Internet vendors’ address systems, the State initial for the CNMI is not listed while those of the rest of the U.S. territories are. Even our USPS treats mail to and from U.S. entities as foreign mail. We are listed in many address systems as separate from the United States, and categorized like we were an independent country. I do not think that the political sophistication alleged by Willens-Siemer of the Micronesians of the decade of the ’60s extended in the consciousness of political autonomy now being claimed by John Del Rosario, Greg, Cruz, Jr., et al, or the desire to be treated as a foreign country as being done by many institutions of trade and commerce.

More importantly, this Wednesday’s rally should be a reminder to all U.S. citizens that there is something rotten in the lagoon when legitimate residents who have lived with us for a decade or more, are not afforded the opportunity to become permanent residents. That is simply just un-American! Nor should we be bashful in banishing the reality as well as the image of being simply a third world country with a U.S. zip code.

Professionally, September still finds my relationship to my employer in limbo. I have been paid for two years now without benefit of contract, and although there is something liberating about the thought of being able to walk out of any commitment without the constraints of legally binding instruments, this do not bode well in establishing a workable partnership, nor does it claim my loyalty and covenant to a shared enterprise.

Personally, my September song may be a bit more discordant than Robert Goulet’s booming baritone trying to remember. But it is the month of my mother’s birthday and that of my ta lao po (primal spouse), and those are celebrations. This month also ends my self-imposed yearlong period of mourning over my xiao lao po (beloved) who left a year ago. But as one of my colleagues in school said recently about an inadvertent sharing of personals by another colleague: “that’s more than what we really want to know.”

Swan song has become an idiom in common English usage as referring to a final theatrical or dramatic appearance, or any final work or accomplishment. It evolved from the belief in ancient mythology that the swan emits a melodious sound before it dies. While I am not getting ready to expire yet, there is definitely something dramatic and theatrical about our lives this September. Some of it will be at the Fisherman’s wharf this Wednesday. So, in this September day, let’s prayerfully party and sing out our September songs!