Dear Source:
In any community things that have been sleeping for a long time can suddenly come to the surface. I’m referring to the controversy over the Attorney General appointment and the short life of the first one. I have no interest in the, he said, she said, but in the larger issue of should we have an elected Attorney General or stay as we are. No one suggests that the Governor should not have legal representation. Indeed he has many lawyers on his team that are not in the A.G.’s office. These lawyers review and advise him on any number of things: as it should be. The issue is where is the People’s lawyer ?!
The citizens, like the Governor and the Senate, need representation. I have heard some worry that if we have an elected A.G. some rich person might buy him or her by paying for the campaign. The same could be said of the elected Governor or the elected Senate. I don’t buy it. The people’s election process is too sacred to a free people to discard it so casually. At this time 43 states have an elected A. G. as well as Guam. We have hundreds of years of experience, in the US, with electing people to high office and generally it works out well. If we are not satisfied with the results we do not elect them the next time. The job of the A.G. is to not only deal with common criminal cases but to oversee the operations of the government itself. It is not to give cover to any elected officials.
Dear Reader, none of this is aimed at any one who is currently in office but it is a larger twenty first century adjustment to our early twentieth century setup. The revised Organic Act is over a half century old. When it was written very few people lived here and it was a very rural place. Remember that then we did not even elect the governor, Washington controlled everything.
Things have changed. We are now a community of around a hundred thousand people who are aware of our own needs and wish to make our own decisions. Elections are the time for People decision making. The old expression of ‘Power to the People’ still counts. We should ask our Delegate to Congress to ask the Congress to amend the Organic Act to give us this fundamental freedom. We wish to be free to choose all our leaders and reduce the concentration of power, placing more of it in our hands. Let the twenty first century be the time when here we enjoy the freedoms that our fellow citizens in the States enjoy. We wish to be empowered like they are.
Bob White, St Croix