Staying constitutional

A certain report says that for every dollar the CNMI collects it owes two dollars. It boggles the mind then how could there be surplus funds. Have we factually retired old debts and current deficit mandated under the Constitution? When was this done and how much did we pay? What’s the balance of payment?

If you do due diligence, you’d find out that the cumulative deficit may be well over a billion dollars. Therefore, the surplus must be a new vocabulary among the “comprehension-challenged” cabal on the hill. It breeds uncertainty and feeds intuition of financial trouble ahead.

Meanwhile, Sen. Paul Manglona turned a recent Senate session into comedy central. He quizzed his colleagues serious budgetary queries. As the confused bunch groped for answers, he reminded them to “stay constitutional” by giving PSS its $11 million budget per the Constitution.

One asked: What’s constitutional? It’s when you use dead brain cells that aren’t helping your already confused, fragmented and adolescent view! Ill-prepared, most were scurrying for cover. At least they tried looking intelligent but even that failed too. People, it begins with reading your materials!

Health: Healthcare delivery has gone south not because of management incompetency but politicians have failed funding the department sufficiently. They expect overstretched doctors and nurses to perform miracles. No! It begins with sufficiency of funds. CHC has basically turned into a medical referral agency because of your failure!

Celebration: Culture is a way of life of a group of people, e.g., language, religion, music, arts and dances, traditional healing, and other local customs. It shifts as people intermix and engage in useful adaptations.

Our journey was founded and anchored in oral history—orature—where culture is perpetuated via time-honored and memorable stories from our elders since ancestral days. This oral language is also found throughout Pacific Island countries.

History is replete with decisions by every colonial power to annihilate both the language and culture of the indigenous people. In quiet resilience, though, our elders held on to what’s rightly indigenous.

Thus, the political agenda to kill both our lingo and culture failed! But it also didn’t leave room for the writing of our journey through time. Thus the orature that was and still is a part of the indigenous culture.

Pale Luis de San Vitores established the first educational system in Guahan in 1668. But most materials then pertain to Catholicism; it must have been the foundation in the formulation of simple teaching materials in both oral and written Chamorro.

The collective aspiration to revive local culture rides on the single most powerful vehicle known as the indigenous language. Unless you’re conversant in either Chamorro or Carolinian (oral and written), you’re flouting the essence of indigenous prism. Enough of this so-called well intended idea that results in historical misrepresentation.

PSS has done superbly well teaching both oral and written Chamorro and Carolinian throughout our schools. It’s a way to decolonizing colonial lingo by strengthening our indigenous tongue among our children.

This has started Pacific-wide in recent past, pushed and encouraged by island professors who understand the essence of culture via the use of indigenous lingo throughout the school system. It’s the sole most powerful vehicle we have in perpetuating our cultural traditions.

It is their findings that island kids who could write a complete sentence in their native tongue would never forget their roots. An outstanding collective decision!

Salute: I’d tip my hat off to folks who excel managing large institutions dealing with the future of our children. One such person deserving such accolade is Carmen Fernandez, president of the Northern Marianas College.

Her focus is on the welfare of students going to class daily. And she’s assembled a high caliber and motivated staff to help her get the job done. Yes, as she carries the torch of leadership in secondary education, she’d pause and ponder how sometime it gets very lonely at the top.

Don’t be discouraged for it is also said that leaders never fly with the flock. Like eagles, they fly alone! We’re here with you and thank you for your sense of dedication and commitment to spreading the wealth of formal education among our young people, in preparation to meet the challenges of the future.

Sewer: Sewer backflow has hit IPI’s hotel construction in recent days, where employees had to deal with the filth. For all we know the NMI could have forced temporary delay of construction until the old sewer system is upgraded. But the genius on the hill had to do his fire and rain dance, then returned and asked, as though dumbfounded, what happens to the needs of the community for water, power and sewer? Now, Garapan stinks!

Eh, braddah, the sucken thing backflows so you should get your Senate crew and honey wagon to clean it up whenever it dirties up the floor of your favorite company. Eh, it happens when you fail due diligence, forcing the issue with ignorance and arrogance. Seesuzzzz!

Currency: Read an account of funding for the Settlement Fund which currency is uncertainty. Bad tidings! But then I heard declarations of a surplus somewhere. It makes it imperative that we find out the fiscal posture of the NMI before we drown in the filthy swamp of bankruptcy. We’re now atop a boat yelling at the iceberg to move! Some advancing to the rear!

Bond: When a government floats a bond it boils down to a loan. It’s a quick way to retire certain obligations. It is equally the fastest road to driving the government into bankruptcy. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are perfect examples of governments that owe billions of dollars and can’t afford to pay due accounts on time.