The Rota dude

To Paul “The Rota dude” Manglona: You have played the shadow shogun of Saipan for a long time and have mastered the slippery sly art of looking busy when you’re not, keeping your personal options open at every decision you’re part of and making a cushy career out of politics. Truth be known, though, you personally have shown no vision, or ability, to create a revenue model for the CNMI. That’s the bottom line, and you’ve been part of one of the biggest economic disasters ever to befall a country or government. It is almost inconceivable to accept that you are a political leader behind one of the most embarrassing statistic in the CNMI’s history, and that being that only one of the 40 bills that became law in 2011 was aimed at revenue generating and bringing new income to the failed CNMI business model.

Only one bill to make money when your island and government are falling apart by the day and more and more kids are being addicted to ice because of no jobs, a failing education system, and unmotivated parents who have been brainwashed into a cargo culture welfare state that has made them totally unproductive as they await food stamps. This social cancer has eaten away at the future of the islands ever being able to help themselves or stop this terminal social disease.

You, Rota dude, have been at the helm while multiple governors and different legislatures have come and gone over the past decades. You, though, have remained, so are more to blame than any of them individually. And to make it even more embarrassing and proof of your total lack of leadership, the one law out of 40 that did aim to make money, Public Law 17-58, was only a pitifully desperate weak incentive to give travel agencies some little tickle of motivation to bring tourists to the CNMI. And then charge this silly little 15 bucks per person as a landing charge if you’re from non-U.S. destination. And this is supposed to aid the dead and dying MVA marketing plan to rebuild your only resource and sustainable industry? What a total failure in leadership!

Here’s a lesson in Business Operations 101, Paul, that clearly you have no understanding of. If a CEO, board member, or any senior top management official in a company sees that their core product (in the CNMI’s case, tourism) is not competitive anymore and the brand is losing relevance in the market due to failed marketing and distribution and ability to attract new customers (in the CNMI’s case, due to MVA’s ineffectiveness and low operational budget) then you take action, Rota dude. You fire, hire, retool, and increase MVA’s operational war chest so you can get the right people to do the right job and get the word out in the right way. Allowing your marketing department to squander the CNMI’s tourism brand away with stupid campaigns like Public Law 17-58 and Saipanda! Oh my God, how could anyone let them get away with that failed crappola. You’re needed as a leader to step in and stop the bleeding and carnage and act! MVA needed, and needs, direction, vision, and money. But you didn’t. You’ve sat back and played your silly little political games since the mid-’80s and are still barbecuing back on Rota as Rome burns. Forty laws and only one vague concept of how to save your economy in one whole year of politics! You would have been fired long ago if you worked for any company. No company would allow such incompetence and lack of leadership to prevail.

It’s a sad legacy you leave, Paul. You have basically failed the island people and our children’s future because of your lack of leadership. The slow moving burning lava of an economic volcano is consuming your island day by day, and there’s no stopping it. Your family political model has failed, a model you have personally benefited from for over 25 years. Your system of government cannot be fixed by a mindset like yours, Rota dude, who run it and protect it. Logic tells you that you and your cronies won’t fix it because if you fix it, then you lose the only thing that keeps you, them, and their families sucking on the government teat. So why should you fix it? Rome is burning, Rota dude, and on your watch!

Chris West
Los Angeles, Calif.