Key agencies had competent PIO’s — CPA’s Frank Rosario and CUC’s Pam Mathis among them — who actually provided information to the media which included two cable TV stations, two radio stations and at least six newspapers. It was an election year and it was also the last time that a gubernatorial debate — not a “forum” — was held with reporters as panelists.
The governor did not get a second term but the first law his successor, Lang Tenorio, signed was Senator Paul’s Open Government Act. Not a lot of people remember this now, but Lang’s administration was the most transparent in CNMI history. His weekly media conferences were held on Thursday morning to accommodate the deadlines of the, by then nine, yes nine, newspapers, most of which came out on Friday only. KMCV aired the press conferences in their entirety. The people of the CNMI could watch their governor spar with a dozen or so reporters asking tough questions, for an hour or so.
Soon the weekly media conferences became daily interviews, mostly in the parking lot outside the administration building. Lang never declined interviews. He answered our questions, all of them, even as his PIO provided daily bulletins to the media outlets.
Lang spoke his mind (which politicians are not supposed to do, at least in public). He never got upset over negative editorials or the media coverage that depicted him as impulsive and hot-headed. He joked about them. Unlike other politicians, Lang could dish it out and take it. Posted on a wall in his office was this quotation from Abe Lincoln: “If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
Unfortunately, what the other politicians learned from Lang’s example was that they should not talk too much — that they, in fact, should not talk at all.
During Lang’s four years as governor, tourist arrivals reached their peak and the local economy boomed. Everyone who could vote was hired by the CNMI government. Lang also installed experts and technocrats at key departments and offices to ensure that they would function well even though they were headed by political hires. He appointed an independent and courageous public auditor who so effectively and consistently disclosed the excesses and abuses of the CNMI government that Lang’s successor “prudently” decided not to re-appoint him.
Lang presided over the best of times and yet over 70 percent of the voters chose not to re-elect him. Why? His fellow politicians believed it was because he was too transparent.
Soon, the regular gubernatorial press conferences became a thing of the past. Governor Fitial, to his credit, met with reporters each week during his first year in office, but that was five years ago. DPS no longer provides reporters with the daily blotter. There are still government PIO’s, but they seldom say anything to the public. Trying to get information from these public information officers is like attempting to, well, milk the bull.
When Tina Sablan and other community members tried to re-apply the Open Government Act to the Legislature (which had amended the law so lawmakers could be exempted from it), some legislators predicted her initiative would lead to “problems,” describing it as “naïve and untenable on its face.” The initiative was passed by 68.6 percent of the ballots cast in Nov. 2009. The Open Government Act, once again, applies to the Legislature. The initiative opponents’ “doomsday prediction” never materialized.
But now they have a new target. Your online comments. You can’t speak out without risking your government job or contract. You have already been silenced by your own elected officials. Right now, the only way you can comment about the burning issues of the day is through the Variety’s online edition. But that is still unacceptable to some of your lawmakers, one of whom has introduced a bill criminalizing libel. Its primary targets are “e-groups, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, and other forums where people share facts, views and opinions.” In other words, this newspaper’s online comments.
There is already a law imposing civil penalties on libel and the Variety is in the process of announcing new rules that will make our online edition an even better forum for members of the community. To threaten critics, in any case, with imprisonment is simply too crude even for this current group of elected officials. As a British law professor once noted, “the use of criminal law as a response to libel at any level involves a most serious threat to rights to free expression precisely because it invokes public condemnation, deterrence and punishment.” Speech about the powerful should be encouraged rather than threatened with punishment. Indeed, “even false and ludicrous speech can assist a society’s political and social debates by challenging orthodoxies and sharpening arguments and understandings.”
Elected officials should recognize that their critics are their “best friends.” They, we, help you keep your feet on the ground and in touch with reality. You have nothing to learn from your sycophants whose livelihood depends on how often they smooch your daggans. They will tell you what you want to hear. Your critics, however nasty they are, will always tell you what you ought to know.
Moreover, the best response to critics is to prove them wrong. Be a more competent official. Do good. You should also realize that any attempt to protect yourselves from the consequences of your ineptitude and inanity will never work anywhere.
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