Wednesday, March 18, 2009

341. Some Refreshing Perspectives

Senator Frica Pangelinan has a good commentary in today's papers. She discusses the incongruity of the Governor's statements (first blaming fiscal problems on the lack of a budget and now on the passage of a budget), his willingness to use deficit spending, and her view of the importance of looking to the future and embracing needed changes.

My favorite part of her opinion:

So, do we continue to desperately scramble to preserve the two-tiered system that crowds our government offices with personnel, and our private sector with guest workers? Do we keep fighting minimum wage increases? Do we continue to resist a “federalization” that can open up jobs for locals in the private sector?

I say no.


There's also another good letter in the Tribune, from Jim Rayphand (and at present no link available to it). He makes the point that age is not the yardstick for measuring who has beneficial attitudes for government service, that the young as well as the old can be wedded to a system of perks and privilege, and that other people of all ages can embrace transparency in government.

There is growing talk about the younger generation of upstarts causing the tremor that is to be a cleaner, more open government. The fact is, age has nothing to do with the movement in that direction--there are just as many, if not more, young knuckleheads as there are old ones. Since ever since, numerous people in the government have been beating their heads against the same guarded walls of territorialiasm and other hollow-blocks of self-inflated egos. The endeavor is not new, but if the younger generations are to make any significant headway in the quest for better governance, they will need to connect with and build on existing foundations from the inside out...


He votes for transparency and shares a bit about the recent problems of the CNMI Council on Developmental Disabilities.

And so, kudos to both Frica and Jim. Although there is much work to be done, there is also some progress, some bits of sanity and good governance cropping up in our CNMI local government terrain.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LOVEd jims letter too. he is an excellent writer.

Anonymous said...

On Frica's letter, it was correct, it is too bad that only now she comes out at the end of her term, instead of trying to have done something over her time in office. She says she is not going to be running for reelection, but this sure looks like political maneuvering.
It would have been better had she taken a stand and fought for the changes early on, now there is no time left and nothing will get done until after the elections (maybe)
I believe if she had taken a stand early on she would have been running again.

One can only assume that she gave up early on because of the many incompetent self serving individuals there on the hill that have their own agenda.
Probably this may have influenced her decision not to run again.