IT IS common, in most places and under most circumstances, for the Chief Legal Officer – in our case, the Guam Attorney General – to be publicly elected rather than selected through political appointment. We’re all well aware of the corruption that occurred under past administrations when the AG served at the pleasure of the governor.

However, as with most situations and issues there’s a potential downside. Though we always hope that we made the right choice at election time, once the polls close the elected AG is accountable to nobody for the next four years. If he or she doesn’t do the job – perhaps plays favorites, punishes critics, decides not to always act in the best interest of the public that elected him – there’s absolutely nobody to whom to complain or any recourse for those injured until the next election rolls around.

Some question whether our current AG is satisfactorily doing the job for which he was elected. Nobody really knows the true extent of the gap between what he should have done, or be doing, and things that should have been aggressively pursued but were left undone. There are flags and indicators, however.

Just last week we learned that he is withdrawing from the Rodriguez tax case involving a reported $2.7 million – apparently abandoning his obligation to protect the public from administration action that he himself described as “antithetical to the public interest.” I think most of us would prefer an attorney general who doesn’t go belly-up when the going gets a bit politically rocky. If recent media reports are true, Guam taxpayers are about to be screwed to the tune of more than $2 million.

Though in possession of more than ample evidence that justice was not fully served in the Blue House prostitution and human trafficking case – specifically, that GPD involvement and cover-up is somewhat more than likely – our AG elected not to pursue it. Contrary to his earlier position, the chief of police now says he will reopen the investigation under GPD supervision, something that few will view with any real degree of confidence. Most believe that it will most likely lead to another whitewash and information vacuum as the usual GPD protectionism kicks in. Will the AG finally be a player or simply a bystander, unwilling to participate in a long overdue house cleaning at GPD?

Again, despite ample evidence of government wrongdoing, the AG refused to act on valid, well-founded complaints of racial discrimination in voting and government land lease allocations, though fully empowered to do so. He has now been upstaged by a private voting rights lawsuit in the first instance, and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the CLTC in the second.

Corruption can take many forms. As noted above, failure to act in the public interest can be equally as bad as actively subverting it. Employing petty retaliatory tactics to punish those who complain about incompetence and dereliction of duty falls within that category.

A few months ago I wrote a column critical of the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Unit. In it I described a well-researched, comprehensive complaint I submitted in April of this year and detailed delays and failures to act by an entity that has been mostly moribund or completely dormant for several years. In full knowledge of the way things are done in GovGuam I noted that it would probably disappear forever because I’d had the temerity to criticize the AG.

That’s exactly what happened. Nothing further has happened with my consumer complaint since the critical column was published. Queries about status bring terse “It’s under review” comments, though I have an email on file stating that review was completed several months ago.

What we have here is a rather straight-forward example of the use of political office and authority to covertly punish a whistle-blower. It was a simple matter to relegate my consumer complaint to political limbo. It could be worse, I suppose. Though I owe nothing to GovGuam and am not beholden to it in any way, the AG might find some way to actively punish me if he tried hard enough.

As noted, I have no recourse other than to make it public in this forum. If it happens to you, you won’t have any either.