Dear Editor,
St. Maarten’s Day, November 11, was nice. Lt’s a new beginning for all of us, especially the Parliamentarians of St. Maarten; they must stop the fighting and jealousy, and put a blind eye towards Article 33. We are fed up with parliament segregation.
Since 10/10/10, the writing is on the wall for St. Maarten and Curaçao; new parties, new political leaders and new government to lead both islands and their people in St. Maarten and Curaçao, but the old parties and old leaders giving the new parties a fight, whereas mostly most of the older political party leaders should leave the leadership to their party.
We all now Theo Heyliger is a good candidate and a good politician to get the project done; he is already mastering his political field. So are those other politicians, who do just how Cornelius de Weever is doing; mastering his portfolios, something just as Theo Heyliger is doing in government.
It will be good if all politicians on this island would take the style of Theo Heyliger and Cornelius. Maurice Lake seems to be catching on to Theo’s and Cornelius’s style. People said he was trained by Theo.
Building low-income housing is not only what we want. We need the bank managers and government to meet every month continually to get a solution so that loan officers on St. Maarten can give St. Maarteners better rate on loans for our civil servants to own their own homes and property. If banks are in a rush to give loans for transportation, they should help St. Maarteners own their homes.
Our beautiful secretaries in public offices, our police officers, our nurses, our teachers, our detectives and many more citizens need to own their own home and property on this island of St. Maarten.
Now we need two or three parliamentarians and/or ministers to take a stand on this situation with the banks to help the citizens own their own home. The people cannot survive paying high house rent with a low minimum wage. Yes, the minimum wage has gone up, but government must not stop monitoring the prices of items. Citizens of Commonwealth of Dominica, St Kitts and Grenada are very proud of the smaller islands in the Caribbean; these three nations stood up for the smaller territories in the Caribbean region and are very proud of St. Maarten’s development and her people.
The world is watching this nation, and remember, history will be written. My people, stay united and strife to make St. Maarten a better place.
Cuthbert Bannis
