We have entered into a bizarre and disturbing reality over the past two weeks.
Gov. David Ige has all but failed to hold true to the oath of office he took to support and defend Hawaii’s Constitution and laws and he has delegated, more like pawned off, the state’s authority to enforce such laws to well-meaning Mayor Harry Kim of Hawaii Island.
Whether through inadequate planning, even after having years to prepare, or by simple incompetence, Mr. Ige and his administration has effectively lost control of the situation and narrative on the mountain since day one, allowing a small and strident minority to fall back on tried and tested tales of grievance, blame and victimization when the reality on the Maunakea Access Road is crystal clear from a law perspective.
Consider what’s going on up there from this illustrative example: You and your friends decide to bring your lawn chairs and tents to a major intersection of Hilo (or Kona or Honolulu or Kahului), camp down there in that intersection and proclaim that you’re not going to move because vehicular traffic desecrates the aina.
Of course, police would be called in because blocking a public roadway in such a fashion is against state law.
Can one imagine that the police are going to spend day after day negotiating with you and your friends to get you to move? Highly unlikely. If, after being instructed to remove yourselves, you continued to obstruct the street you’d be arrested and taken away and traffic would continue as normal.
What’s the difference, from the rule of law perspective, when it comes to blocking the mountain’s only access road? There isn’t one. Yes, there are more people there. Yes, there are cameras recording day and night. Yes, we need to honor and respect our kupuna. Yes, they’re entitled to put out their message far and wide. But they have no entitlement to block a public right of way for hours, let alone days or weeks.
Once duly elected public officials decide to set aside upholding and enforcing the rule of law because of political or cultural or historical grievance considerations, we embark down a scary slippery slope where a vocal and media-savvy minority can dictate terms to the rest of us.
Can we afford to allow this vocal group to effectively overthrow years’ worth of proper legal and procedural efforts on the part of the many parties who have played by the rules to get to the starting line of starting construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope?
Even putting aside all the time and millions spent over the past 10 years. Even putting aside the inevitable reinforcement that Hawaii is an inhospitable, if not risky, place to try and do business. Do we as the nation’s best example of a healthy multicultural and inclusive state want to set a precedent that procedures, rules and laws don’t really matter? That it’s possible to do things honorably and by the book and still get torpedoed by protesters and flaccid political leaders who, even when they don’t face re-election, can’t bring themselves to uphold their oaths?
Please tell me that that’s not where we’re heading.
Pierre Davet is a resident of Hilo