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View Point
It is unfortunate that mayoral candidate and former City Council member Mufi Hannemann continues to play politics with the issue of protection for Hawaiian burial sites. Hannemann’s push
for burial panel is
self-serving
political moveIn his July 26 View Point column, Hannemann criticized Mayor Harris and the Honolulu City Council for not supporting creation of a new city commission to review the impact of construction projects on burials and other culturally significant sites.
He is completely off the mark.
The real issue is not whether we need another commission but rather how we ensure compliance with existing laws and regulations designed to protect Hawaiian burials and other culturally significant sites.
After construction crews working on a Board of Water Supply project in Waikiki unearthed human remains several months ago, the city convened a panel of experts and concerned citizens.
They included the descendants of persons buried at the site. They wanted to study the situation and come up with recommendations to ensure that such burial sites are not inadvertently disturbed in the future.
This panel is continuing its work.
Impatient with the pace of the their deliberations and decision-making process -- and apparently more interested in scoring political points against his incumbent opponent than in coming up with a meaningful solution -- Hannemann has pitched his proposal for a commission to anyone who will listen.
The problem is he doesn't seem interested in listening to anybody but himself.
Rather than waiting to see what the panel convened by the city -- and particularly the family members of persons whose remains were unearthed -- has to say, Hannemann has steadfastly pushed for a commission as a "cure-all."
His arrogance and indifference to those people most directly affected by this issue was amply illustrated when panel members shared certain confidential materials with him, including certain highly sensitive information on the location of Hawaiian burials.
Rather than treating this information as confidential, however, Hannemann sent it out for filing with the Office of the City Clerk, thus risking the dissemination of this data to the public.
As any politician can tell you, it's easy to take cheap political shots at opponents and colleagues and issue self-congratulatory press releases.
But it takes real statesmanship to sit down with representatives of various constituencies who come to the table with very different perspectives on a problem, to listen to their ideas and their criticisms, and to mediate a real solution.
Hannemann's push for a new city commission affords him the opportunity to grab a few headlines and take a few shots at Mayor Harris. However, absent community consensus and a real understanding of the problem we are trying to solve, that is all that it offers.
Then again, maybe that's all Hannemann ever wanted.
Jon Yoshimura is chairman of the Honolulu City Council.