Dear Editor,
From 2014 up to recently, I have been asking some of my fellow St. Maarteners the question about independence for St. Maarten. I really wanted to know if they, like some politicians and activists, believed that now is the time for us to step out of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Some St. Maarten nationalists have said, “Yeah, let’s get out, we can’t lose, we will survive. The colonial masters have been meddling in our affairs for much too long.” But there have been quite a lot of St. Maarten people who spoke to me with a great deal of apprehension about independence.
Oops! I almost forgot this one. One St. Maarten nationalist said that he believed that it was (is) high time that we stop nursing like little pups on the nipples of Europe. In other words, stop being lackeys of the colonial masters.
But that anti-colonial spirit seems to be at a low ebb, comrades. If we rush like sunlight on morning, we will end up like dead fish in a ravine. To leave the Kingdom of the Netherlands now to become an independent dependency would be pseudo-independence. Or maybe some would like us to embrace American or Chinese hegemony. But I believe that we, St. Maarten people, should be the architects of our destiny. And we should not allow devious people (native or non-native) to push us kicking and screaming into independence.
I believe that the “aboriginal soualigans” (the indigenous St. Maarten people) and the St. Maarten diaspora will speak with one voice at the appropriate time, not before.
Comrades, we should be the architects of our destiny, because we have a rendezvous with destiny. And we will speak with one voice at the appropriate time. My fellow St. Maarteners, keep your eyes open.
Julien R. Petty
