Forward, ever forward
THE Senate has approved the impeachment trial rules. What’s next? The rules say the Senate president may refer the articles of impeachment to the entire Senate “for hearing” — or he may refer them to a special committee “for a preliminary determination….”
Let’s get it on then.
The House took a vote to impeach the governor. The Senate will soon take a vote on whether to convict or acquit the governor. In November, it is the voters’ turn to be heard.
That’s how a democratic political process works.
Members of the public — voters and their elected officials — will always disagree on questions of public policy, among many other things. And the democratic way to “resolve” it is by taking a vote, knowing fully well that there will be other elections.
Thank God for that.
The mystery of it all
CNMI officials want to “look into” the GAO’s finding that the number of U.S. workers has decreased in the year of a global pandemic which practically shut down the local tourism-based industry. While they’re at it, they may also want to review the results of the various training/apprentice programs implemented in the NMI since the Trust Territory days.
In 2013, incidentally, a former Workforce Investment Agency director and Labor secretary told a Senate committee that the “relaxed” food-stamp policy should be changed to help reduce dependence on the program and help promote self-sufficiency — that is, getting a job. “There’s no way that we’re going to wean them off the system if we have a revolving door policy,” the future Democratic senator of Saipan said.
Can we, incidentally, force anyone to undergo workforce training? Now let’s say that an eligible U.S. individual agrees to be trained and completes a training program. Can we force him/her to work in the NMI? Can we prevent him/her from moving to another territory or state?
In 2015, the CNMI Labor secretary, who is now a senator, said the Commonwealth “does not have sufficient local workforce to populate the growing private sector pipeline…. With the growing economy, we still are going to run into a shortage of workers regardless whether we have 5,000 from those that are not looking for work right now, even if they come back into the market, it’s still going to be a huge gap.”
So there weren’t enough local U.S. workers when the economy was booming. Now, amid a declining economy, the number of U.S workers has decreased.
Baffling, really.
Dysfunctional you say
A FORMER governor says the CNMI government under the current administration is dysfunctional. In Nov. 2005, over 73% of voters who had experienced his leadership declined to “re-hire” him, so perhaps the former governor knows what he’s talking about.
To be sure, FBI raids, impeachment and senators screaming at each other in public are truly dismal events.
But a representative democracy that holds regular elections and has three separate, co-equal branches of government, as well as a bicameral legislature and four municipal governments, is not supposed to “function smoothly,” that is, without conflicts, disagreements, dissensions, controversies, scandals. (See “The Federalist Papers.”)
No. But in a functioning democracy, the highest officials can be investigated by an independent law enforcement agency. They can be relentlessly criticized and even impeached. Elected officials, moreover, can belong to opposing political groups and are free to disagree with each other even to the point of being disagreeable.
The residents of this U.S. Commonwealth enjoy rights and privileges denied to other people in less fortunate places where they can be imprisoned, tortured or murdered for claiming those same rights and privileges.
Whether we agree or disagree with the former governor, this November, CNMI voters will once again have the last word (until the next election) about their government and the people they believe should run it.
