Bad government needs fixing bad!

The first thing I read after getting back from Portland is more bad government news. You would think our governor’s administration would at least use common sense and decent business practices in dealing with Mariana Resort, who should clearly have the first claim to lease the property but here we go again with another CNMI investor being pushed to the side for Best Sunshine, who was supposed to build, not take from someone else. Giving the Mariana Resort away without cause will surely give us a bad reputation among investors. To make it worse, Best Sunshine has already cornered the exclusive gaming market, putting the Dynasty in a very difficult position to find a way to survive and now they want to take hotels from existing investors. They will give citizens $10 million to help with CUC bills, hoping we will look the other way while they literally steal the Mariana Resort worth dozens of millions.

Now we are starting to see the true colors of the financial monster that has literally purchased a big part of our economic future for a measly $30 million. I knew it was going to be some mess when it was exposed that after 10 years this administration didn’t even have a site for the casino, so now it starts and Mariana Resort is going to be the second to lose behind the Dynasty and guess who is next—yes, Mr. & Mrs. John and Johnny Mae Public is next (that’s us folks). We have to start building infrastructure in the form of roads, power, water, sewer, and the whole lists of infrastructure support at our cost, not Best Sunshine!

The government needs to leave Mariana Resort alone as they built the darn place and lived up to their agreement. This is why unconditional leasing does nothing to attract investors as they can lose everything to the owner when the lease is up. We also saw this form of leasing adversely affect the continued development of the Hyatt as they refused to invest until their lease was renewed. Leasing to businesses that have to build need to be more leaser friendly, with some form of rights to renew with a guaranteed arbitration clause. Both parties have to be honest and fair and this time it’s our own government flirting with unfair business practices by taking away the already built Mariana Resort and giving it to another investor. Elementary students can tell you this is not right. How soon they forget the message the people sent in the last election to do the right thing and they still don’t get it.

Our bad government’s bad business practice of defaulting and changing the requirement for Best Sunshine to build must stop! Make Best Sunshine do what they agreed they would do—that’s the business I’m sure most voters want to see done, not a goblin giveaway to Best Sunshine even if Halloween is around the corner! Taking the Mariana Resort and giving it to someone else does not do one thing to build our economy; it just shifts the wealth from the Mariana Resort to Best Sunshine. Voters are not stupid, governor, so hopefully this letter will encourage you to do the right thing even though I doubt you will.

One person has already written about how we need to be careful in how we deal with investors, especially when it is Chinese taking from the Japanese. FYI, the Chinese and the Japanese are not the best of friends and we are already starting to lose some of the Japanese market because of the large increase in Chinese. We need to watch this balancing act very closely and make extremely cautious decisions with investors from these two countries or we could end up chasing the Japanese away.

Ambrose M. Bennett
Kagman, Saipan