Where Have All Guam's Leaders Gone?

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JESSE’S CORNER
by Guam Senator Jesse Anderson Lujan
from the Marianas Variety
http://www.mvariety.com

"Okinawa move requires strong leadership, not meek stewardship"

In the past few weeks discussions concerning the Okinawa based Marines move to Guam has heated up as the fact of the move and its speed has become a foregone conclusion. Some of the highlights have been a visit by Mr. Richard Lawless, Undersecretary for Defense. There have also been visits by Japanese legislators interested in discussions with the Governor concerning the move. Then, we had the Governor’s announcement that, according to his master plan, Guam needs only 945 million dollars for all the required infrastructure improvements to make this move not only feasible but beneficial to the whole community.

In the face of all this activity one clear pattern has emerged. The Camacho administration has shown a singular lack of leadership in presenting and representing our interests in this move. This move will have an unprecedented historical and irreversible impact on our community.

After it is completed, we and our island home will never be the same again. In many ways, with the right leadership, we should be better off. Conversely, with a lack of strong leadership, we could find ourselves in a real mess, with our quality of life completely destroyed and with local military relations in tatters. We therefore need real active leadership here and not meek passive stewardship as we apparently have been witnessing.

Exhibit A supporting my charge is the Camacho’s woefully inadequate infrastructure improvement request of 945 million dollars. This sum is supposed to be adequate for our entire community but is less then just the one billion dollars the military will spend on a single necessary north south road. I could go on forever in describing the deficiencies in Camacho’s request. It seems Camacho’s meek stewardship has brought us the minimum request his administration could devise when he should have strongly led us to an optimal request. This meek and humble approach does neither our community nor the military any good. We need enough infrastructure investments to do the job and do it well. We need a leader with the guts to make a fair demand not a meek steward making a polite request.

Take for instance the request for improvements to our power system. For years we have been told by CCU Chairman Simon Sanchez that it will cost us in excess of 500 million dollars to put our power lines underground. What was the request in the Governor’s so called master plan? – 60 million dollars, about ten percent of the sum previously quoted by Sanchez. Meanwhile, the serial killer power poles continue to disproportionately maim and kill our young people on our roadways. With such a huge increase in our population, estimated at up to 50,000 total additional people, this carnage will only increase to epidemic proportions. Our roads are already overcrowded and these menacing poles must be dealt with throughout the island comprehensively and as quickly as possible and not in a haphazard and piecemeal fashion as GPA has been doing. This is not only a military readiness issue but one of health and safety for our people.

Exhibit B supporting my charge that stewardship is inadequate in the circumstances we are now faced with, is the Governor’s indecision in meeting Japanese legislators interested in meeting with him to discuss the move. After setting several meetings which were postponed, the Governor eventually insultingly cancelled the meetings outright. This indecision and rebuke of important Japanese legislators has had a huge negative impact on our credibility in Japan – the source of most of our private investment and our tourists, not to mention the cash that will be spent to accomplish the move. The Governor’s meek excuse was that he did not want to interfere in Japanese politics even though we are already indirectly involved in Japanese politics just by being involved in this move. But more likely the Governor was attempting to be unnecessarily meek and polite to our military, deferring to them all access to information and coordination, even though we were not even offered the courtesy of an observer on the Okinawa negotiating team.

Exhibit C is the simple fact that the Camacho administration nor Delegate Madeline Bordallo have made absolutely no effort to settle once and for all our long neglected and much needed war reparations request as part of this move.

The Governor’s hat in hand, eyes bent down looking at his toes approach to the US military, reminds me of the nossirs and yasssirs of a good house slave. The Governor should remember that we are not taking orders from an occupying power, so he need not ask how high he should jump even before he is asked to jump. We are equal Americans and he should assume that our military will treat us and him with respect and he need not degrade himself and us.

Since we have no representation on the Okinawa negotiating team, and we have no elected representatives who have any influence with the US negotiating team, it is incumbent on the Governor to meet with all interested parties to find out the most and best information he can, and then, for the Governor to directly relay that information to his constituents – the residents of Guam. We have seen no such effort from the Governor and find ourselves instead in a practically meaningless meeting with Mr. Lawless who came here not to tell us how the US Government intends to help us adjust to this move but how little they intend to do for us.

While I find it hard to criticize my fellow Republican Governor I find it even harder to allow us to be led down the primrose path essentially leaderless during this huge historical event that will impact us for generations. So Governor, its time for less weak stewardship and more strong leadership. There is not a moment to lose.