Of leadership recession

The quiet and simple folks in the villages have definitely taken insightful stock dissecting the correlation (equivalence) between political leaders and progress. It fits what President Harry Truman once said: “In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still.” Unfortunately, standing still may appear as improvements over the dire reality of living in abject poverty.

Definitely, the prevailing standstill isn’t our version of what leadership should be doing; we need to move forward and should have been flexing our muscles. President Truman added, “Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” And, “Courageous and skillful leaders enable progress to happen. And many times those leaders know the courageous and skillful action is to get out of the way.”

It’s good to remind those at the helm that sometimes even the weather isn’t about them. It’s about the lack of real progressive strides to pull their people out of the dungeons of disoriented and dazed leadership. In simple terms, it translates into forcing our people to languish consistently and persistently in abject poverty.

It brings into focus the impending election next year and the subsequent gubernatorial race. It would be impossible for the incumbent or heir apparent to seek another term atop the leadership pyramid. And not when you’ve placed an indelibly powerful stench of apocalyptic poverty in the mouths of your people known as failed leadership. Governance knows its T-Sheet like the back of their hands.

If perchance governance misses the boat, then we won’t suffer from just another leadership recession but quadruple leadership recession. This transition could begin by Election Year 2012. Let’s ask people at the helm if their depth finder has found the bottom of the local treasury by cutting their insatiable unbridled spending habits or is it bottomless and bankrupt due to cronyism and nepotism, ignoring a circular issued to freeze hiring?

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[B] Ignoring classic rule on holes[/B]

A glimpse into what leadership has done over the years shows how they have apparently never learned the classic First Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. Otherwise, you’d dig your own grave. Slow down our ability to accept our wonderful time digging our own hole; it’s creeping steadily home, ready to devour our purposeful misgivings.

The local government is up to its earlobes with debts, its vision blurred by a pile of IOUs. It finds breathing room by avoiding the task at hand—all located on island—by taking long bomb trips abroad with impunity. We mull if there’s anything left to scrounge in order to salvage the future of these isles. Buddy Magoo hit me with a sarcastic remark, “Try steak and lobster!”

We’ve become the fat ostrich that never learns. He returns home to find the two-headed corn snake called deficit still growing and walking around surprisingly healthier, potbellied and padded with gargantuan fat cells. Perhaps it’s our perception or dismissive culture of reluctance that has dealt us swallowing filthy water rolling down from the side of I Deni.

We don’t complain about it given that being big and heavy is considered healthy in the local culture. Is this why the seeming apathy at home on the bankruptcy of the Fund and severe plummet in revenue generation? Fear not of reprisal and your opportunity to make a difference is looming over the horizon—2012 midterm election. We must faithfully learn from past mistakes, otherwise we’d keep repeating the same error, time and again. Now a hole that is deeper than any part of the Marianas Trench. It’s Deficit Trench fighting!

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Retirees rely on their pension for their livelihood but are faced with an imperiled Fund ready to go belly up. It is through their pension benefits upon which they pay for health insurance to take care of illnesses and medication. If they lose the first, they’d also lose the second and leave thousands without the means to live and secure medical care. To say that this would be chaotic is an understatement. But to say it would be disastrous is more accurate a description.

The parade to Bankruptcy Cliff has begun. It has left the parade ground with trumpets blaring in the air with victory-like marching songs like “Anchors Away” over “Don’t worry, be happy….” Everybody seems nervously happy! Would this joy dampen when faced with having to jump off Bankruptcy Cliff? Would we hear Banzai in Shanghai? Would we sniff steak and lobster before meeting our fate? A lot has gone wrong in paradise that has its genesis in ill-fated decisions formulated or otherwise beginning three decades ago and in recent past. So much for self-government! We can’t even run a retirement fund.

We now pant for air on the three-mile territorial sea but didn’t we place the most expensive tour guides in Washington who conveniently overlooked this and the opportunity for the NMI to claim rights to ownership of its 200-mile EEZ? Or was it a case of being completely clueless to substantive issues as to ignore them altogether? Now we’re back pedaling, di ba?

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[I] Delrosario is a regular contributor to the [/I]Saipan Tribune’[I]s Opinion Section[/I]