Editorials
Friday, August 7, 1998

Cayetano's no-layoff
pledge could backfire

GOVERNOR Cayetano says he is through with laying off government employees and in the future will use other means to deal with budget shortfalls. That message was welcomed by his union audience the other day but it could be bad news for everybody else in Hawaii.

If Hawaii's economy continues to flounder, state and county government revenues will surely be affected, making it difficult to find funds to maintain programs. If public worker layoffs are ruled out, the state may be forced to raise taxes to meet expenses and balance the budget.

But this may make the economy even weaker. Private firms may be forced to make layoffs. The governor surely isn't saying that the jobs of workers in the private sector are less important than those of government employees, but they might be lost in the attempt to protect public workers.

In his first term, Cayetano claims to have eliminated thousands of government jobs, but most of them were vacant. Far fewer people were actually laid off, a few hundred - an insignificant number compared to the thousands of jobs lost in private business in the islands in recent years. Even so, his willingness to face the need to act to deal with budget shortfalls was laudable.

Firing people is never pleasant, and we understand the governor's distaste for the task. But sometimes it is necessary, in government as in private business. To rule out further layoffs may win Cayetano votes in his bid for re-election - like other Democratic politicians he relies heavily on the support of public employee unions.

However, with the state economy still mired in minimal growth and threatened with further adverse effects from Asia's problems, this is no time for the state to go back to business as usual with a "no warm bodies" policy. Balancing the budget may require more layoffs if conditions don't improve. Moreover, to make Hawaii more attractive to investors and thereby strengthen the economy, government must become more efficient - which may also entail layoffs.

Protecting the jobs of government workers is fine, but only if it doesn't come at the expense of the rest of Hawaii's people.

Air strikes in Kosovo

INCREASED violence against civilians in the southern Serbian region of Kosovo has brought new warnings by the Clinton administration of NATO intervention. The risk is that the warnings will go unheeded because of previous unfulfilled threats, although not quite as strong, over a period of several months. Washington may feel obliged to carry through with the threat to restore credibility, but that would be a poor reason by itself to take military action.

Unrest in Kosovo increased sharply in June, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic authorized a crackdown on demonstrations by ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of the region's population and are fighting for independence. NATO sent 85 fighter jets and reconnaissance planes over the bordering countries of Albania and Macedonia as a warning to Milosevic, but their presence had no effect.

Meanwhile, the campaign of terror has displaced an estimated 180,000 of Kosovo's 2.2 million people in the last five months, including 70,000 in the past week. The recent increase in violence prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to warn Milosevic that NATO and the Pentagon are completing plans for limited air strikes that could take place within a week to 10 days.

The West is reluctant to intervene - and should be - for fear of being construed as siding with the ethnic Albanians, who want an independent Kosovo. NATO members would prefer that Bosnia be granted a measure of autonomy but remain part of Serbia, which is one of two remaining states of Yugoslavia. An independent Kosovo could undermine the concept of a multiethnic Bosnia that was integral to the Dayton accord.

The threat provides a short time for the West to persuade Milosevic and the Kosovars to accept the idea of Kosovo as a quasi-autonomous region within Serbia. The Clinton administration should do all it can to avoid direct involvement in this civil war.

Nuclear protest

THE most noteworthy aspect of this year's observances of the anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima was the huge demonstration in Calcutta. In that city, 250,000 people turned out for a three-mile march to protest India's decision to make nuclear weapons. Smaller crowds turned out in Bombay and New Delhi.

It was proof that Indians have had sober second thoughts after their initial euphoria when their Hindu nationalist government conducted nuclear tests last May. Since then the United States has imposed economic sanctions on India and tensions with Pakistan, which followed with nuclear tests of its own, have worsened.

Last week efforts to revive India-Pakistan peace talks collapsed. Artillery barrages along the disputed border in Kashmir in recent days have killed 120 people.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the last 50 years, two of them over Kashmir. But now the conflict continues in what a Pakistani diplomat called "a nuclear context," which makes it especially worrisome.

Fortunately some Indians are now expressing their concern over the danger of nuclear war, which may be greater in their region than anywhere else. They don't want the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima to be repeated in South Asia. It's a message that must get through to the leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad before they make a dreadful decision.

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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor