By Glen Hunter
A concerned citizen in the CNMI
IN less than six months, the voters of the CNMI will head to the polls for a pivotal gubernatorial election. The choices we make will decide the trajectory of our islands for a generation. But as the campaign season intensifies, an old, deeply familiar shadow is lengthening over our public discourse.
The primary danger facing our Commonwealth does not stem from a single election cycle, but from the potential return of a specific kind of politics — an entrenched political culture built on transactional power, patronage, and systemic survival.
For years, the true tragedy of this institutional rot was not just the financial strain or the endless cycles of public controversy; it was the aggressive, calculated co-optation of our community’s brightest minds. These were young, promising individuals — the people our community genuinely hoped would be a breath of fresh air, the very future of a brighter CNMI.
Instead, the sheer weight of an old, transactional system methodically reeled them into the fold. It is an old, predictable story, not unlike the classic tragedy of the Star Wars saga: an entrenched, powerful system clouding the vision of the most promising young talents, pulling them down to the dark side to serve as shields for its own preservation.
When that style of politics lost its grip on power in the past, the underlying machinery didn’t simply vanish. Its operations merely went dormant, waiting out the storm. Now, with the election cycle turning, those old transactional patterns are resurfacing across the political landscape. Some are tripling down on the old ways, while others are quietly hedging their bets, trying to play various sides, or attempting to slide into the camps of well-meaning candidates who should know better than to allow those old habits into their circles.
This brings our collective effort to end corruption to a critical, dangerous crossroads. How do we combat this?
Let us start with a foundational truth: we are all human. We are all flawed, and every single one of us errs — sometimes inadvertently, sometimes on purpose. No one in our community is holier-than-thou, and no one has the right to cast stones from a position of absolute moral perfection. Even the most idealistic people can be blinded by the promise of access and influence when operating within a broken system.
Our island society is built on this understanding. We are a compassionate, deeply forgiving people. When individuals truly profess their misdeeds and make an honest effort to right their wrongs, our community possesses an incredible capacity for grace. We value restoration, family, and healing over permanent condemnation. When someone genuinely repents, we are ready to lift them up and welcome them home.
But there is a huge difference between ordinary human flaws and blatant systemic public betrayal.
When “errors” actively harm your neighbors, they cross a line. When political maneuvers take food off the tables of working families, when they dismantle the social safety nets built to protect our vulnerable, and when they divert funds away from the retirement, healthcare, and dignity of our Manamko’, that is no longer a private mistake. That is a direct assault on our community. A political operation cannot pocket the public’s future for transactional personal gain and expect its participants to quietly slide back into a position of trust when the political weather changes.
Combatting this co-optation means stopping it at its source or reversing its effects through a true, rigorous pathway to redemption. Dismantling a corrupt status quo is vital, but power is fluid. History shows us it is nearly impossible to prevent old, transactional habits from trying to claw their way back into the mainstream. Worse yet, those who successfully fight to push our islands in a better direction often fall prey to a much more insidious trap: in their zeal to win at all costs, they slip, compromise their ethics, and slowly become the very monster they were fighting.
If the struggle for true change adopts the same ruthless tactics, the same absolute exclusions, and the same transactional survival mechanics as the old guard, it ceases to be progress. It simply becomes a new administration operating the same old machinery.
Allowing compromised individuals to slip into new political folds without addressing their past actions is not true redemption — it is opportunism. It creates a fair-weather alliance that will crumble the moment the old structural pressures reassert themselves.
Addressing systemic corruption is like treating drug addiction. You cannot cure the dependency by pretending it never happened, and you cannot achieve sobriety without a completely honest inventory of the damage caused.
Before anyone who participated in or enabled past institutional rot is given a seat at the table, the public must insist on absolute accountability. The toll to cross the bridge back to public trust requires two non-negotiable actions:
Radical Public Atonement: They must honestly and openly address their past missteps. Secrecy is the oxygen of corruption. A quiet exit or an unearned pivot to a new campaign is not repentance.
Exposing the Machinery: True accountability means calling out the hidden mechanics of influence and naming how things occurred. They must detail exactly how the co-optation happened, how the public trust was breached, and how the strings were pulled.
This is not about vindictive humiliation. This is a matter of community defense. When an individual openly details the mechanics of the system that trapped them, they strip that system of its most potent weapon: leverage. You cannot blackmail someone who has already spoken the truth to the public. By burning the bridge back to the dark side, they prove they are truly ready to help build a cleaner future.
To the candidates vying to lead the CNMI forward: do not be reeled in by fair-weather loyalty or the illusion of easy alignment. Protect the integrity of your platforms. Demand that anyone seeking to join the fold first clear their debt to the public.
We can no longer afford the luxury of public apathy, nor can we afford the naiveté of unearned grace. Our community stands completely ready to forgive, but that forgiveness must be earned through the truth. If our brightest minds want to find their way back to serving the people honestly, they must help us tear down the machinery that blinded them in the first place. The door to a brighter CNMI can be opened, but honesty is the only key.
