Others prefer a special state agency with restrictions on voting and holding office. Each of these plans would give the new minority government exclusive power over some or all of Hawaii's public lands and funds. All of these plans would restrict voting and holding office to an exclusive, hereditary group. The competing factions split over how to define the group that will be treated better than everyone else. Some definitions are exclusively ethnic.
Discrimination based on ancestry is undemocratic and unfair.
No one is entitled to extra power because some of his ancestors once belonged to a ruling class. There is no valid justification for awarding any group defined by ancestry privileges or powers denied to other citizens. Hawaiians, along with the rest of us, are sovereign now. No one can fairly ask for more. The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co .