The other day someone told me cronyism in the Marianas will never go away. I can’t accept that. If there’s any resolution for this year that would be purposeful to me aside from my Christian journey, it would be to convince more people that using the taxpayers’ resources to transact personal favors is wrong and must be removed from our collective consciousness.
Who needs convincing, if the issue is black and white right versus wrong, correct? This is my theory of society in Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan:
Pretend society is a pie. A slice of that pie represents the governing class, their families, friends, and supporters (in order of their self-described ranking). Another slice of pie equal in volume to the first represents those voters who despise the governing class, their families, friends, and supporters. Their rhetoric is noteworthy, and sometimes we applaud them. They say they hate corruption and cronyism, Their contempt for the people in power, however, has nothing to do with the powerful’s bad deeds. What the second-slice people regret is that it isn’t their turn to rob the people from the public trough.
The third slice is, by far, the smallest. These are the good citizens; the ones who live by conscience and ethics and who – even in their personal lives – are non-transactional. They do favors for people and they don’t keep score. They have a hard time asking for help because they don’t want to be in a moralistic quagmire if one day their benefactor asks for the favor to be returned. These are the people who, so long as they are paying attention and are informed, recognize what is right and understand that most public solutions are quite clear and simple albeit require tough sacrifices.
The last slice is the largest. It’s nearly half the pie. These are the people who are so fed up with the first two slices of the pie and no longer have the fortitude, idealism, and patience of the third slice that they have given up altogether. They no longer vote. They think nothing will change. Ironically, it is precisely because of their decision to render themselves voiceless that the first two slices spoil the entire pie.
Another friend of mine told me cronyism – depending on the degree of application – isn’t necessarily illegal. Unethical? Absolutely. But, lightly greasing the wheels so that your qualified friend or family member gets a government contract or job isn’t illegal on its own. “To the victor go the spoils,” Andrew Jackson famously quipped after he sacked bureaucrats aligned with the vanquished and replaced them with his supporters. He was as proud of cronyism as he was of slave ownership. The Democratic Party should probably stop naming its annual dinner after that nutcase.
And boy oh boy, do the Democrats in Guam have some explaining to do if they want 80 percent of the pie to ever believe again that Democrats here have integrity.
Cronyism flourishes in the administration. From the bank the government uses to transact close to $2 billion annually to the hundreds of millions in contracts from the pandemic era and even to the businesses chosen to cut the grass, don’t tell me that it’s just some strange coincidence that the people closest to the governor and lieutenant governor are the ones banking with our money. Don’t give me some BS about how most people hired into the government the past six years – (hell, the past 50 years) – just went to the pocket meetings and Lou & Josh fundraisers for fun.
Cronyism is fun for the croneys. It isn’t simply an unethical opportunity to reward your friends and family with contracts and jobs at the public expense. Cronyism also is a way of veiling political retribution.
Just look at Guam Visitors Bureau’s decisions related to the fireworks displays last night. I have no idea whether the vendor selected to charge off those fireworks is a croney. What I do know is that the owner of the company that had been selected since 2019 to do the drone fireworks show wasn’t selected this year by GVB to put on that very cool show. The owner of that company is Charlie Hermosa.
Charlie Hermosa is the ONLY publicly announced opponent to Lieutenant Governor Joshua Tenorio in the 2026 governor’s race.
“If this is politically driven,” Mr. Hermosa told me when I asked him whether he thought he was blacked out because of politics, “this is exactly the reason why I want to run… to end this mafioso style of running the government.”
I have zero proof that Mr. Tenorio called GVB and told its people to yank the fireworks drone contract with Mr. Hermosa’s Bella Wings Aviation. But I’m also not an idiot, and you’re not either.
We will never make a dent into corruption if we don’t change our attitude about cronyism. It should never happen. It should never be about waiting for your turn to be the victor and share in the spoils. And it will never end if the plurality remain silent.
The case against cronyism is simple: Public money and resources (jobs, contracts, equipment, supplies, etc.) do not belong to any one person in the government. And if it isn’t yours, don’t take it.
