Governor Has Betrayed His People

By Mabel Doge Luhan for Mabel’s Table, Kandit News & Views

How does that “Honest Profit” lechon taste, governor?

I bet the little guy you’re eating also liked to line up at the trough and stuff his face. Anything for a free meal, right?

You stood by as we were allegedly looted by our own “leaders” teaming up with Chinese “investors.” Like a good little lechon, you collected your salary and benefits — and allegedly dodgy land lease payments — and said nothing.

Now, the CNMI stands before perhaps the greatest precipice it has ever faced. It’s a fairly unique precipice, and Trump’s (or his wife’s boyfriend’s) “policies” are uniquely aimed exactly against us here in the CNMI.

We subsist mostly on federal grants. Federal funding is about to be cut for everything. Whether or not there’s an immediate freeze.

We import absolutely everything. Tariffs will raise the prices of everything.

What little non-criminal business activity we have comes from foreign tourism and foreign labor. The Cantaloupe Cuckold, aided by his Slovenian “wife” and her South African bedroom bull, is taking away America’s foreign tourists and foreign workers.

Have you seen the foreign tourism booking numbers for travel into the US since we inaugurated your friend Fat Hitler? They don’t look good.

 

There’s still plenty of lechon to go around, of course. The Chinese “investors” in Saipan allegedly aren’t “investing” their own money. They allegedly scam mom-and-pop working people back in China and pay themselves fat salaries and benefits out of that money, with plenty of lechon. They don’t care one way or the other whether any of the projects work out.

How long ago was this “Marriott” (after a few decades, the Variety finally learned to spell the word)  supposed to open? Does the MOU to consider a management contract allow Honest Profit to claim that they are building a Marriott hotel? In my totally uninformed opinion as a deranged opinion columnist with no education, I would bet my one good ovary that it doesn’t! I’m sure everything is on the up and up of course, because the company is called Honest Profit, after all.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? You get your salary, your chauffeurs and bodyguards (imagine a poor US town of 30,000 people having a leader with chauffeurs and bodyguards?), and of course lots of LECHON. Trumpworld hosts a lot of fancy meals, and so do these wonderful Chinese “investors.” Yum yum in the tum! But we’re supposed to believe you, because you said you’re restoring trust. Just as we’re supposed to believe Honest Profit, because, well, they’re Honest Profit.

And they do serve a mean lechon! It sure looks good in that photo you took with your Chinese buddies! Meanwhile, the CNMI’s regular working Chinese people, the restaurant cooks and car washers, are terrified to go out to church, school, or the grocery store, even if they have valid immigration status, thanks to Thirtyfour Felonies. Most of them skipped the Lunar New Year celebrations for fear of ICE sweeps. Most of them don’t have CCP-funded green cards, unlike your friends.

Have you seen the ads for apartments and houses emptying out and furniture and cars for quick sale? And the crowds of kababayans in tears at the airport, bidding their friends and relatives goodbye?

Maybe it’s tone deaf to be feasting on delicious lechon — and refusing to say anything to support your constituents — while those folks suffer?

Speaking of tone deaf, do you have any comments on the concerted effort to drive Jim Kingman out of the CNMI and end any semblance of anti-corruption efforts in the CNMI? It’s been two years of your supposed “restoring trust.” You don’t dare speak up to support lawful prosecution of one of the biggest alleged heists in US history.

Any plans for how you’ll protect the CNMI and its people from the upcoming cliff in front of us? How those of us who don’t have chauffeurs will get around when the taxi drivers are afraid to go out on the street (and can’t get driver’s licenses)? How those of us who don’t have a retinue of bodyguards will deal with crime when no one is spending any money, there are no workers for anything, and prices go up by double-digit percentages? What kind of twisted logic would make you fail to see that tariffs and immigration restrictions raise prices?

Maybe it’s the same twisted logic that made me believe you and your promises, that made me vote for you, and that made me repeatedly defend you in this column.

Enjoy the lechon — even if you are eating your own kind.

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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.