Newsflash! Islanders don’t plan

About 55 years ago the TT produced a master plan for every district. It outlined every aspect of how each island should be developed. I’ve lived on many islands and islanders just do not plan. Saying “I’m going fishing tomorrow” is not planning. Planning is preparing for 25,000 outer islanders moving to the main island in the next five years. The British mandates, in the South Pacific after World War II, prohibited people from moving from any island they were born on, unless natural disasters or death or adoption required it. But 99 percent of the people born on one island couldn’t relocate to any other island. It was pretty peaceful until independence came in the ’80s and the restriction was lifted. Suddenly every district center looked like Majuro or Ebeye in the Marshall Islands or Moen in Chuuk—an overcrowded slum without sanitation, power, water or other basic services.

Here in the CNMI, Fitial’s 2009-2014 CNMI master plan is just a lot of recycled stuff and doesn’t even get to the items, recommended to increase or enhance the islands, until page 29, when master plan items appear. About 35 areas of concern are listed for improvements. I see only 2, maybe 3, that are done or are being done and these are low budget items like streetlights. After page 52 there are another 250 pages or so of junk. This is a typical POS government report. What it doesn’t say is that during the boom years, had we had some leadership, most of these 35 items would have been done when money was raining from the sky, or that the real reason we are broke now is because we hardly collected taxes and those that we did collect we rebated to the rich. We are still rebating taxes to the rich so stop bitchin’ and put the blame squarely on the 50 people at the top, the ones that write all the laws. They created this and nothing will change until you get them, their kids and their relatives out of positions of power.

Sorry to all you ordinary, uninformed, uncaring voters. You are as much to blame as the self-serving 50 that control you. Doesn’t anyone think it is strange that the 50 percent of Chamorros living outside of the CNMI are working and paying taxes of 30 to 40 percent on those earnings to the feds and whatever state they live in, except Alaska, Texas and Nevada? Get rid of that stupid rebate for the rich.

Gary DuBrall
Chalan Piao, Saipan