Opinion By Mabel Doge Luhan for Mabel’s Table, Kandit News & Views
2024 is almost over! And what a year we’ve had.
The Saipan Sheraton and Towers opened, with a Tesla test-drive station. So did the Saipan Marriott (oops, “Marriot”), making an honest profit for all. Several new airlines opened, ferrying male and female individuals to and from our shores while seldom turning turtle. The alleged BOOST thieves were finally prosecuted, and the Ministry of State Security could finally stop snickering about the US government throwing money at their CNMI station chief. The CNMI government’s comically unnecessary “commissions” and “departments” were finally disbanded. The influx of tourists from Malaysia, London, and New Orleans was just topping on our cake!
CHAROT! None of that happened! Of course, you’d never hear about it from our newspapers. They don’t follow up on anything, especially not on the promises wholeheartedly touted and endorsed in their own newspapers just a few months ago.
Rabago lost his weight and also his job, while Zaldy might want to see a professional regarding his obsession with nonstop flights from China. Follow up on any other issue, though? Never ever ever ever ever, to paraphrase Outkast, a very overrated white rapper.
Speaking of topping, did we all see the advertising campaign in Korea that we’re paying for? It prominently features an airplane crashed into our blue waters! In The Aeroplane And Into The Sea! With the hit song, “My Boat Casts No Shadow.” Yet again, this elementary-school-magazine-collage ad will make us a laughingstock in tech-obsessed, perfection-obsessed, appearances-obsessed Korea. Why, this is a Photoshop (or more likely, MS Paint) graphic design job would be worth AT LEAST $10 on Fiverr. I wonder how much we paid for it — didn’t we hire a big-dollar team of VJs from Ultra Super High supposedly to run our ad campaigns in Korea? (Oops, “The Republic of South Korea,” according to MVA. Right next to Czechoslovakia.) Whether it was done in-house or in the outhouse, how did our $70K/year travel marketing czar approve this total crap job? Does he care about anything other than his travel perks and airline mileage and points balances and maybe one other thing? Speaking of which, why in the world did MVA need to travel to Korea to “launch” this campaign? I mean, I know why, but asking rhetorically.
What I’m getting at here is that not much has changed here in the CNMI. And the way things are going, not much will change.
Although put differently, a lot has changed. Because Palacios and Apatang did actually fulfill their major campaign promises. They indeed have not robbed us blind, at least not in the brazen, direct, stick-em-up manner to which we had grown so warmly accustomed. And our local government is indeed no longer controlled by Chinese gangsters. To paraphrase Yakov Sverdlov, “What a country!”
Do we laugh or cry? Both, maybe!
But even Zaldy is right about some things: we do get the government we vote for. And whatever our opinions are of our politicians and their policies, they absolutely were elected in fair, democratic elections. We voted them in. And exceedingly few of us dare to challenge them or complain.
So this Christ’s Mass, and the liturgically much more significant Feast of the Circumcision, I dare all of you to think about how we got here — and not point fingers at anyone other than ourselves.
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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.