Is there hope for brighter tomorrows?

Are there opportunities for brighter tomorrows?

Maybe.

But hope being our only bridge to the future, perhaps there’s a glimmer of it that requires a bit more focus. It begins with a critical review of the self.

With severely anemic economic conditions at home, I recall President Reagan’s inaugural address to this day when he encouraged the multitude to reclaim the future of our country. If he were addressing the CNMI today, he would have repeated the same words: “Our country needs a new set of leadership to lead us into an uncertain future fraught with both challenges and opportunities. May I remind you that ‘status quo’ is Latin for ‘the mess we are in.’ A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.” Well, if I may borrow and change his words for relevancy to say that recovery on the islands is when Covenant and Republicans here lose theirs.

Regarding resolute self-evaluation, said he, “I’m not taking your time to ask you to trust me or any leader. Instead, I ask you to trust yourself. That is what America is all about. It’s the power of millions of people like you who will determine what will make America great again.”

How true the words of wisdom from President Reagan that still ring and reverberate loudly across the country, echoing in the distant trade winds of these isles. If we want brighter tomorrows, it begins with trust in our individual self and resolute confidence to revive and ring in prosperity once more. Remember, it begins with trust and confidence in the self. We can do it beginning this midterm election.

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The music will stop or pause

By June of this year, the night music from all camps would stop as each group uses its musical chairs to eliminate candidates who have outlived their welcome in the living rooms across these isles. It’s the process of elimination to determine slates.

Pundits and strategists in spin rooms will be awash in losers’ arguments trying to appease bruised ego with the inscription “also-ran”. But then no one could cash tickets on the “also-ran” bunch out in voting booths or anywhere else. By then, we won’t have to listen to pundits or doom-crying candidates of desperation. That would be old, redundant material, only good for personal diaries or a new category, “written off.”

The mood then shifts to politics for the grown-ups. Rummaging begins in filthy baggage, endless wailing of funeral chants from all over, minions from the hill preparing for a full-blown redundancy of tired and failed promises, vicious throwback of words or dry as desert grass slogans that have hollowed out over the last five years. Governance has an indelible memory of the elected elite’s apathy that let to familial privation-vicious abject poverty.

We would meet party heads and candidates equipped and adorned with a gift for synthetic eloquence and the ability to fake sincerity. These guys would do better strumming a beaten-up ukulele-sweet, pretty, never mind originality.

Some would try to figure out how best to navigate their election or re-election. It may mean voluntarily swallowing coconut oil potion from grandma. Awful as it may taste, it is gulped without question because the old lady said, “it’s good for you.”

The pile of materials available to nail incumbents is plenty. It includes the unemployed, underemployed, victims of draconian austerity measures, specifically the 25 percent reduction of the only family income; the subsequent loss of the first family home and the displacement of families from joblessness; and the impending loss of income for over 3,000 retirees.

There’s the forced relocation of more than 2,000 families elsewhere in search of greener pasture given the loss of real opportunities at home; non-issuance of scholarship on a timely basis; high utility cost that has forced investors to think with their feet and luggage, moving elsewhere bringing with them some $5 billion to $7 billion in taxable income; restrictive labor policies and discriminatory land policy, among others. These are the core disincentives that would keep investors away for a long time.

The loss of income and jobs are hardest especially if it is the only family income. Imagine the effect when recession moves into the recovery period. The recovery period would be harder, requiring redefining the term once more to bring forth its real, not virtual meaning.

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Lessons from history

Populist elections allow non-qualified people to partake in the serious business of policymaking. We could only blame ourselves for this mess. We failed to elect the truly qualified ones. This mess was fueled by newcomers that had the gall to accept the new trophy as neophytes in a vocation they’ve acquired by circumstance. Our juvenile attitude needs major overhaul beginning this midterm election.

There are major policy issues that require thorough research and preparation. It includes putting a plan together and combining the various components into a single plan, including farming, investments, labor requirements, redefinition of the syllabus of education from high school to NMC, among others. Research materials will require lots of reading to understand with clarity the charted maps of socio-economic revival.

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We brandish persnickety snobbishness and double it up with unreasoned fear in our relationship with the feds across the sea. At home, a new culture of facelessness has emerged in the obvious disconnect between titular heads and legislators with the simple folks in the villages. Didn’t the elected elite hail from the “consent of the governed”? A’ saina!