Bai Ra Medideriik (House of Empty)

By Santy Asanuma

An impressive ancient Bai once stood in the north of Palau but it was screamingly clear that it was not being used at all. Nobody showed up at the bai and no activity really took place inside this particular bai to earn the obvious name and its widespread reputation of being empty. Even primitive Palauans had some sense on the return of resources being invested in relation to the frequency of its usage. This expectation is still the same in Wall Street world of investment today. In this thinking, people whether in the ancient past or modern finance centers of the world today are held responsible to take care of resources (money, materials, food).

In comes fiduciary. Fiduciary is hot that we are spending so much money for it but do not seem to get enough of it nowadays. Plus it has to be from outside. Even the latest fiduciary conference in Philippines hordes of national and state officials dropped other priorities and spent money on travel to get it. So what is fiduciary? American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “involving confidence or trust; held or holding in trust for another.”

Please allow me to use a big word here for I cannot find better word to describe this insanity that is becoming harder to understand. Our hospital is clearly having endless problems because we do not have money to buy equipments, repair old ones, or buy medicines and supplies for the sick. And government officials are spending money flying to Manila in all the places in the world to buy confidence and trust. The late Fr. Felix once related to me a reality that only in Philippines you have a promoter selling pictures of the Holy Mother Mary and Stripe tease Jane with no sense of wrong. Oxymoron is the word for this insanity.

The President issued a sensible no travel ultimatum in light of our decreasing resources, namely money, to stop our country from sinking deeper into debt. Yet government officials and employees, who are taking care of our resources, do not seem to care if our government goes broke. While these people who take care of national and state government offices and agencies that have contributed or have done nothing to stop the misuse of public resources, are now spending the little money left so that we can have confidence in them. The government is breaking apart because these people have been in it for a long time. And now am I supposed to trust them because they went to some fiduciary conference in PI?

The President and Vice-President have my full vote of confidence to impound money from OEK, national and state agencies that spent resources without clear public benefit or gain for the Palauan people. These government officials and employees must be stopped before they clean out our resources. The Administration regardless who is the President should pull the plug on this oxymoronic reality that will soon put our nation into a tailspin down the sewer drain.

I have heard complaints from government employees that this administration is cracking down on small things which are a waste of time and resources. I applaud this administration for doing it right this time because this is the reason why our government has become “bai ra medideriik.”