Editorial: No gag orders! The public has a right to know in the corruption investigation

There is something suspicious about Rep. Marissa Flores’s push today for a gag order at the first meeting of the legislative corruption committee. Never in the history of the American republic has there been a positive outcome from a call to limit public access to public information. But, that’s exactly what Ms. Flores pushed at the organizing meeting of the CNMI House Special Committee on Federal Assistance and Disaster-Related Funding (we’re just calling it the legislative corruption committee, because that’s what they’re investigating – corruption during the Ralph Torres administration).

“Call it a gag order, call it whatever you want,” Ms. Flores cried out, pushing for the committee to silence its members against speaking out publicly on the committee’s findings. She also criticized now-Sen. Celina Roberto Babauta and now-Sen. Donald Manglona’s handling of last year’s BOOST corruption hearings in the House, when the media published public documents brought into evidence during the hearings. Ms. Flores called the release of those documents “leaks,” and argued the release of those public documents to the media and the public constituted breach of duty.

“A few of us have done this before, this is not our first rodeo,” Committee vice chairman Rep. Ed Propst shot back. Mr. Propst was a member of the Babauta-Manglona investigative committee, and has been pushing the current House to continue from where Ms. Babauta and Mr. Manglona left off, when they became senators.

Defending Ms. Babauta, Mr. Propst went on to say, “We’ve been through this before. It was the chairwoman at the time, Celina Roberto Babauta, who would decide whether to disseminate [the information] or not, and generally she would, because she felt the public had a right to know.”

Ms. Flores’s criticism of the well-organized and effective Babauta-Manglona investigative hearings is rich. Ms. Babauta was the chairwoman of the House Judiciary and Governmental Operations Committee at the time. The House JGO is precisely the committee through which these corruption hearings should be occurring. Ms. Flores succeeded her, when Saipan voters ascended Ms. Babauta to the Senate, and now runs the House JGO committee. The reason the Flores JGO is not holding these hearings, is because Ms. Flores said she didn’t want to hold these hearings. And, now, she is a member of this committee advocating against the release of public information, and criticizing her predecessor who had the courage to hold hearings Flores didn’t want to have!

And then there was her manifestation of her understanding of the purpose of legislature itself.

“If it’s not the consensus of the entire committee, then why should one of us move to the left and one of us move to the right?” Ms. Flores asked, exasperated that Mr. Propst would defend a legislator’s democratic right to free speech and, God forbid, to have an opinion.

This Commonwealth Legislature – in fact, every legislature in the country – is not the Communist Party of China. It isn’t the politburo, which demands and requires absolute loyalty to only one point of view, conjured by “the consensus of the entire committee.” The very purpose of a democratically-elected legislature is its representation of the varied viewpoints of the vast and diverse public. Its discourse should never be limited by the whims of majority, but proliferated by argument that probes toward the truth. And it must be publicly argued toward the truth. The arguing legislators must engage the public they represent. Their opinions matter.

The public’s right to know, and to see this all unfold, matters. Why Ms. Flores would argue against this right is suspicious, and reeks of either hubris, or a conflict of interest.