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Holding out for a better deal
The CNMI’s problem is not a lack of medical referrals, a lack of CUC power plant upgrades, or a lack of DPS officers. Those are only symptoms. Everyone knows the real problem is a lack of money.
The usual whiners complain about the lack of money for medical referrals or PSS or DPS in the same breath as they complain about the proposed casino. Do they have some other way to bring us $15 million in immediate cash? Do you have any other guaranteed, risk-free, enforcement-free method to have $15 million arrive in the government account for all the things our islands badly need? Or do they think there is some magical way to hire more doctors for CHC, more police officers for DPS, and more engineers for CUC, without needing to pay them anything?
If you oppose the casino, be prepared to tell the mother whose child needs a medical referral that she can’t have it, even though it was offered, because you want us to hold out for a better deal. Where’s that better deal? More pie-in-the-sky stories about a bridge to Tinian or pharmaceuticals?
Any of those “better” proposals require tremendous expenditure up front, of money the CNMI definitely doesn’t have, in hopes of some kind of a return many years down the road. That’s good for a government looking for a way to spend its extra cash. It’s senseless for our government, which is desperately devoid of cash.
So complain all you want. Maybe you don’t like that the investor is Chinese. Or maybe you don’t like Ralph Demapan. Or maybe you don’t fancy that gambling will be happening in a tourist-friendly casino, instead of in dingy village poker parlors. But $15 million immediately in the government coffers, followed by $30 million per year, is something we badly need—for our health, for our safety, for our infrastructure, and for our future.
Diego C. Blanco
As Lito, Saipan
