Dear Editor,
I read Mr. Ferrier's letter to you concerning the homeless and immediately Statia came to mind. The first time I visited St. Eustatius, was in 1976 to assist our colleagues with the celebration of the Bicentennial. Since then after hurricane LUIS in 1995 I went to replace the post Commandant yearly when he went on vacation. The lay of the land intrigued me and I wondered why were we not getting any more Statia Yams. Then the thought came to me that this could be a solution to get the illegal drug addicts off the road and make them also productive at the same time.
As the Dutchman would say: "twee vliegen in een klap." I am not a professional social worker and do not know exactly how it should be done, but my idea at that time was to gather those illegal drug addicts and have them plant food on a designated piece of land on Statia and house them and treat them there until they recovered. Yes, I am aware that 10-10-'10 is usually used as a scapegoat when we try to cross borders, but then why are we a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands?
Why is Mark Rutte the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and not only of Holland? If that is so, should not William Marlin use the title Chief Minister like is done in Anguilla which is also part of the (United Kingdom) Great Britain? And should we not stress on the word reciprocity?
So yes I agree with Mr. Ferrier that we should have that conversation and with everybody who is willing to help. If there is a will there should be a way and that should be much cheaper than sending our sick to Columbia and Santo Domingo. I hope also that we reach much further than we have reached with our air traffic. I do not understand why, if there is an airline which belongs to the Kingdom (KLM) why we would have so much trouble travelling between the islands of the Kingdom? Not to mention the airfare. If we are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and we have ships which travel all over the world (KNSM) why can't we have at least one ship travelling between the islands of the Kingdom?
The Dutch are stressing on us about integrity, can I ask Mr. Bosman who always knows the answers when it comes to Kingdom relations, especially between Holland and the other islands, if this kind of behaviour of Holland falls under the heading of “lack of integrity?” Are we really willing to solve problems?
Russell A. Simmons
