Another CNMI economic catastrophe

Like many others who had prepared for the arrival of the Queen Mary 2 and its thousands of visitors, I had taken off work and prepared my “Trikes for 2 Tours of Saipan” for passengers. Needless to say, the Queen Mary 2 could not unload its passengers because our government failed again, making the entire event a complete economic catastrophe.

I can only imagine the frustration of the business sector and the individuals that were up late at night and up early in the morning for nothing. Businesses and individuals had prepared for this event, spending money on products, preparing local dishes, having advertisements printed specifically for the Queen Mary 2 and a host of other investments that all went down the drain. But that is just for openers. There was literally tens of thousands of dollars sitting offshore waiting to be spent on Saipan and we couldn’t get one penny of it. More importantly, if you insert the multiplier-effect of the spending from the Queen Mary 2 I’m sure it would have easily amounted to over a hundred thousand dollars that could have been injected directly into our economy.

And then there’s the backlash that the CNMI might experience in the future as I’m sure this was also a big disappointment to the shipping line and the passengers. The damage to our reputation as a port-of-call may be irreparable anytime soon and we won’t see any more cruise lines until we can prove that we are reliable and worthy of being a port-of-call for their passengers. The cruise line has also taken a hit from our government’s failure and it is obvious we messed up big time!

I am holding the government accountable and the Executive Office in particular, which is responsible for making sure the support systems and infrastructure for these types of economic activities are successful. The people in charge of this operation were all appointed or subject to the governor’s leadership but I’m not blaming the people at the bottom, as there were too many involved and it seems that no one was actually in charge of everything, but the buck stops at the Governor’s Office. There were all kinds of Indians doing the work to prepare for the arrival but there was no chief—so it was destined for some kind of screw-up. Being an educator and using basic observation skills it was easy for me to see that it is the same old problem: poor leadership and someone did not do their home work!

All contingencies for the arrival of the Queen Mary 2 should have been covered—it was too important and valuable to our economy—no excuse. The only reason that the ship should not have been able to dock would have been a serious act of nature such as a storm or typhoon. The government’s failure to have the sufficient number of tugboats available is not acceptable, especially when we have the boats that could have been fixed and we could have hired private tugs to be on standby because we have known far in advance that the ship was coming. My goodness, the CNMI is supposed to be a tourist destination but they can’t even get off the ship! But just think, the majority voted for this, which is an excellent example of why we are suffering, poor, and with no leadership.