News today says that another choice of the Governor's Office for the new Attorney General has declined its offer. The news says that former AG resigned from his post in September 2008. The Governor's Office offered the post to former legal counsel of the convicted Lt. Gov. yet also turned the offer down.
For a while there was a also a debate whether the AG should be voted on or elected by the NMI people. This the Governor just shrugged on the idea.
If you were a practicing lawyer, would you give it up and serve the islands? The people?
Ok. I remember when I saw some OAG staff during the oath taking of the current governor in 2005 that they raised their eyebrows when they found out that the current governor selected the former AG, hence most of them left their posts. I still can remember the faces they made. Either they were disappointed or were shocked with the selection. I also heard these former OAG staff were also from the clout of Gov. Babauta's selected AG back then.
Politics. Don't you love it....
16 comments:
Can he pick someone who's not a lawyer? Kind of how everyone who else runs a Department has no expertise in the Department they run? Maybe he could ask Charles Reyes to be the AG?
Wow, Department heads with no expertise in the Department they run. What a novel concept!
Acting Attorney General Gregory Baka is probably as good as everyone else who wants the job.
A non-lawyer AG! Half of a great idea, made whole only by non-lawyer Superior Court judges.
gOO$e:
I heard that comment in the past. It seems anecdotal. Any names? Checking the Superior court website it appears all judges did go to law schools... even Wiesman.
What if they held an election for AG and nobody ran?
The DAG or senior AAG would succeed to the position?
Or if the Pedro P. Reyes AG bill had passed, would be appointed for barely less than 30 days — like we had in the 1980s. An “Attorney General of the Month Club.”
The argument against an Acting AG is that it shows a lack of respect for the office, that the position should have the “honor”, “dignity”, and “respect” that would be bestowed by the “imprimatur” of Senate confirmation.
However, respect cannot be mandated or imposed by law. It must be earned. If the AG and all OAG lawyers do their best to honestly serve the law to the best of their abilities within the extraordinarily limited resources and salary cap imposed by the legislature, at least some modicum of public respect will naturally follow.
On the other hand, if they work in a result-oriented fashion, flouting the plain language of the law or conducting themselves in a blatantly unfair or political manner, then no number of elections or confirmation hearings would give the people confidence in their attorneys. Why did Guam’s first elected AG not get re-elected?
The OAG attorneys are the lawyers for the people, not the Governor, and not the Legislature. Their work does not depend on politics, and contrary to the blog post above, “most” of former AG Pamela S. Brown’s AAGs did not leave their posts immediately upon her departure — only a very few. This misunderstanding of the role of OAG lawyers is very widespread in the Saipan press corps, particularly those who are more familiar with Philippine government than the American rule of law, and this conceptual error is unfortunately being spread by our media to the public and those in government.
OAG lawyers must protect every applicable confidence that allows the Commonwealth to prevail in court. The fact that they are “our attorneys” does not mean that we have the right to know every detail of their litigation tactics and strategies, or the Commonwealth would seldom prevail in court, and the people would be ill served thereby. Nowhere in the country are litigation decisions made by the legislature or the public. No federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request would ever be granted for the pending litigation timesheets or “USA-5 Reports” of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys working for the public on the third floor of the Horiguchi Building in Garapan.
The people of the CNMI deserve the exact same protections for their attorneys hard at work for them at the OAG that the federal government gives its own USAO lawyers. Transparency is a virtue, but it is not the ultimate virtue. Surely honesty and integrity rank higher.
So an appointed AG owes his allegiance to an administration or maybe a man while an elected AG owes his favors to the political party or the string pullers behind the scenes that got him elected. In the former case it is the devil we know. In the latter we may not be sure where to look for influence pedaling once the AG is in office.
The situation with the CNMI AG is similar to that of Japan Airlines and so many departing CHC doctors.
If you treat people badly enough for long enough, eventually they will decline to put up with it.
How long will it take Senate President Pete Reyes and our citizenry to figure that out? Vote to re-Pete again? "Why not?"
All of our judges went to law school, but at least one of them never passed a bar exam. Of course, in the old days several states had a “diploma privilege,” so perhaps TTPI practices were not unwarranted.
"Never passed" makes it sound like he took the exam but failed. In fact, I think he never took one, because there was none at the time.
This blog is as dead as mustbethehumidity???
i guess...but do come back from time to time....
It must be a coincidence that Lilian F. Hammerhead disappeared when Juan Pan is running for Governor.
I thought they were divorced. You mean the little arrogant prick can still control her?
http://www.mvarietynews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18310:house-oks-new-rules-for-ags-appointment&catid=1:local-news&Itemid=2
Post a Comment