IN 2001, the U.S. Department of Education sent me to Mexico for a month to do a “Comparison-Study between Mexico and the CNMI” as the origins of many things in the CNMI are Mexican and Spanish. Needless to say, I found many things in the CNMI that originated in Mexico, not Spain or Spanish, ranging from “foods, plants, names and even cultural practices like voting for family members and even our ALL-Souls’ Day that is celebrated on the same day in Mexico, as the Day-of-the-Dead.” But the most compelling phenomenon relating to our Political Arena was the fact that it was the “Major-families in control of Mexico’s Government through voting.” So, when I hear people, especially the elderly, are telling the younger generation to “Vote for Torres or Palacios because you have their blood in you” it reminded me of Mexico and why Mexico and the CNMI are both caught in a “Cultural-Trap” that has landed both societies in a never-ending turmoil of CORRUPT Governing. It is to be expected that WE the People in the CNMI are continuing to experience nepotism, favoritism and everything that comes with a CNMI Government driven by “personal intentions of the Governor for his family and HIS Republicans over the People’s intentions.” ‘He only gives the appearance that he cares as his deeds clearly show he is “CHEAP with Caring.” Yes, I can only talk about the Republicans who have gotten into the BILLIONS of Federal Funds as they are the ONLY ones who have been in control of our government for the past two-decades. I’m sorry but sometimes the truth just HURTS when it’s time for “the Changing-of-the-CNMI’s Guard.”
This family voting being promoted by Republicans is a HORRIFIC practice that was LEARNED, just like racism is a learned behavior and it needs to STOP! Voters on the mainland would literally run Locals back to the islands if they tried to get people to vote ONLY for certain family ties. The activists on the mainland, would indeed be so relentless that Locals would have no choice but to leave from the protests. I’m sure the Locals who live on the mainland will attest to the fact that I’m telling the TRUTH! The election is about the best qualified whom WE-the-People can Trust with our Commonwealth and protect & serve everyone with Commonwealth Blood (citizenry), not just family!
When it comes to Blood in relationship to voting, just like we are ALL the same with the exception of the hue of our skin, we are also ALL the same in the “Blood-family of our Commonwealth.” I wonder when is it going to sink in that “we will all, not just Torres & Palacios families, find prosperity together or continue to flounder in the treacherous Sea of Prejudices & Biases” that is being promoted with the family voting. I can understand immediate family doing this blind-faith family voting but certainly not extended family-members and the distant relatives in the general public.
I could never teach in school what the Senate did with their Trial without evidence & a prosecutor nor could I teach this “family-voting scheme” that is absolutely ridiculous in this day & time when children are being taught in school to vote “based on-a-persons’ merits.” Parents and all adults doing this to the Commonwealth and the young-voters, SHAME on YOU!!! We, ALL Teachers, have the responsibility of creating “INDEPENDENT Thinkers” who can make up their own minds but we have adults in the CNMI being part of the problem by committing the “academic, political and even a social SIN” of using their position as parents and elders in a family to literally PRESSURE our youth to vote the way they want, which teeters on being extortion and at the least exploitation. It’s these kinds of underhanded tactics that have kept the Republicans in power for so long getting people to circumvent the actual purpose in voting and the Governor even issued alleged-bribes to control the House after the last election. There is nothing they won’t do to stay in power — so BEWARE Voters!
Republicans have also been promoting “let-us-finish-what-we-started” for over two decades and it’s still not finished when it comes to our economy, as they can’t figure it out and don’t know “an Apple from a Bull-frog” figuratively, as my 8th grade English teacher Ms. Dixon would say. This is no time to be continuing to vote for instituting nepotism because it should be clear that is what has been one of the major contributors to the CNMI’s Democracy being turned into an Autocracy for Torres & Palacios that serves & protects their family and loyalists before even thinking about serving the People who are dead last on their list — for REAL!
To be continued: One people, One Direction.
The writer is an Economist, Political Scientist, retired teacher, former CNMI Board of Education Member, James Madison Fellow (U.S. Constitutional Scholar), a Fulbright-Hays & Humanities Scholar who resides in Kagman III.
Ambrose M. Bennett
