His hair has grayed and his temperament changed. But Douglas Moylan appears to be the same principled, uncompromising man he was 20 years ago, when he became Guam’s first elected attorney general.
On Monday, January 2, he will be sworn in by Chief Justice F. Philip Carbullido as the sixth elected attorney general of Guam. It’s a Churchill-type encore. Crime in November 2002, when he was first elected, was nothing like it is today. Very much like his first stint, Mr. Moylan is coming back onto the job to replace an attorney general who did absolutely nothing about allegations of corruption in the government of Guam. And he very likely will.
He was known as the anti-corruption crusader in his first term. He sought and secured scores of indictments against former public officials, ushering in a new era of accountability and transparency. Everyone was scared of Doug; he was rabidly determined to root out corruption and prosecute violent criminals. And just like Winston Churchill, by the time those four years were done, the voters no longer were concerned about corruption, there was law and order, and they found no need for Mr. Moylan.
Or so we thought.
The interlude between his first and second terms resembles a sick man with a 10-day prescription of antibiotics, who decides on the fourth day to stop taking them because he feels fine. The sickness comes back with a vengeance.
Crime and corruption on Guam are hitting a tipping point. We need Mr. Moylan back in office to fight for us just like Britons needed Mr. Churchill to fight an aggressive Hitler.
Mr. Moylan, during this last campaign, reasoned with voters who remembered his often-brash style at the turn of the century that he has matured over the years. But who cares about style, when what we sorely need is substance? We need the same zeal to fight crime and corruption he brought in his first term, to this new four-year tenure.
Kandit will be both live streaming and recording Mr. Moylan’s Monday inauguration. Eric the Eagle is flying back into town, and we don’t want to miss the action.
