By Zaldy Dandan
Variety Editor

WHAT local political and business leaders are doing right now reminds me of the proverbial frat boy who, after staying up all night at a beer-helmet-and-bong party, finally remembers, at 3 a.m., that he has to submit a term paper, which he has yet to write, later that morning. Frat boy rushes to his dorm room, sits in front of his computer and starts wracking his semi-functioning brain to come up with something, anything — as he dozes off.
Unlike frat boy, the CNMI had these past 20 years to address federal concerns regarding local labor and immigration policies. The commonwealth could long ago have resolved these long-standing concerns locally by agreeing to real reforms at the federal level so they could be out of local politicians’ reach. This would have injected stability into local labor and immigration laws and made the creation of stable industries and long-term investments possible.
But no. CNMI officials preferred to hem and haw while enacting sleight-of-hand “reform measures” to keep alive a Third World industry that they knew would not survive the free trade rules scheduled for implementation in 2005. To “resolve” concerns first raised by the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, the CNMI government imposed a quota on the number of garment alien workers, passed a stay limit law and gradual wage hike measure, created a wage review board, hired a very expensive consultant to “look into” the local wage rate, and retained a more expensive D.C. lobbyist known for his close ties with the then-ruling party.
All these “reform” measures were eventually repealed. Later, CNMI leaders finally remembered that politics is cyclical, and that being too closely identified with one of the two national parties is not good politics for the islands, particularly when the other party finally returns to power. Which is about to happen…right now.
Today (Thursday in D.C.), the same congressional Democrats who gave the CNMI the benefit of the doubt when it was the GOP that was advocating “federal takeover,” will once again be in the majority on Capitol Hill. But this time, the Dems are no longer in the mood to hear the same old promises from CNMI leaders.
And yet local officials are apparently either afflicted with selective amnesia or are hoping that the Democrats are. How else to explain these hasty “reform proposals” like the stay limit measure, the sudden support for a gradual wage hike, the resurrection of the wage board, the willingness to “diversify” the economy, the clamor for hiring lobbyists.
While they cram, the congresswoman whom they scolded and insulted a few months ago for describing local labor and immigration policies as “criminal” is being sworn in as the nation’s third highest ranking official — even as one of her advisers, the object of ridicule and scorn of CNMI officials and their hacks over the past 10 years, is about to introduce a wage hike bill that is certain to be passed and is certain to include the commonwealth whose economy cannot even pay the current $3.05 rate.
The only hope, as I’ve said before, is that the Republican White House will remember its fundraising friends in this corner of the Pacific. But then again, one of its officials was here a few days ago and he told local leaders that “this will be a very challenging year for CNMI to deal with.” Which sounded so much like the polite version of the frat-boy-speak “You’re on your own dudes.”

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