Pacific Magazine > Magazine > November 1, 2002

The State of the Federated States

Time For A Revolution

Will Compact Two Just Be More Of The Same?

By Giff Johnson

Former FSM President John Haglelgam

Former Federated States of Micronesia President John Haglelgam is blunt in his assessment of the first Compact of Free Association. “We failed economically,” he says. The initial 15-year term was too short. “But maybe that was a blessing in disguise,” he adds. “Now we can look back and ask, ‘Where did we go wrong?’”

It worries Haglelgam, however, that people are not asking that question. “Expectations of money spending are the same in Compact Two as in Compact One,” he says.

Haglelgam was the FSM’s second president, from 1987 to 1991, following the two-term presidency of Tosiwo Nakayama of Chuuk. The first and only Yapese to serve as FSM president, Haglelgam has been a professor at the FSM’s College of Micronesia main campus in Pohnpei since he retired from office.

The attitudes of many Micronesians were fixed in the latter stages of the U.S.-administered Trust Territory, in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the availability of federally funded U.S. programs multiplied. “When we took over the government, the mindset was already there: money comes in when it’s needed,” Haglelgam says. He calls it a “cargo-cult mentality” that believes money will just keep appearing from across the horizon.

What about the younger generation? Haglelgam says flatly that Micronesian college students aren’t interested in politics. “Their expectation is to graduate from the College of Micronesia and go to the United States,” he says.

In contrast to the 1970s, when political status debate fueled a burgeoning independence movement from Palau to Pohnpei to Majuro, there’s little debate or even discussion of “Compact Two” in the community or among college students.

Looking ahead, Haglelgam is not optimistic about change in the Compact Two period. “I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t hold much hope for Compact Two,” he says, adding that without a revolution in thinking, it’s likely to be more of the same.

“What we need is a revolution from the bottom up,” he says about the current attitudes in the FSM toward government service and public spending. He pauses, and then adds: “We need a mental revolution as well as a social one.”

The former FSM president believes that more highly educated Micronesians will begin to foster the change needed to redirect the government. He also thinks that all state legislators, and even the FSM Congress, should be part-time. “It would reduce costs dramatically,” he remarks.

“We need new thinking, a new mission for the government,” he says. But every failure and omission can’t be heaped on the back of the government. The evident lack of participation by the people in much of the decision making in the FSM allows government officials—well meaning or otherwise—to have free reign.

The results in Compact One speak for themselves. “Economic development doesn’t begin with the government,” Haglelgam says. “It begins in the community. We may begin to see some progress if we begin this way.”