Dear Editor,
While my grandchildren are the ones that daily motivate me the most, they also have my deepest attention, and my biggest concern. The same goes for our seniors and pensioners.
People of St. Maarten/Saint-Martin, this is not about whether I win or lose. For those of you who know my ongoing story, my file speaks, defends, and is properly representing itself. I accept whatever Almighty God places before me, for He alone decides my journey, my future, my purpose, and my destiny. But this story is about us. It is about our children. Our grandchildren. Our seniors who built this island. Our disabled, our homeless, our forgotten who were born here having deep history, roots and heritage, yet not seen, recognised, or even given the chance to survive in our own land.
To the Minister of VROMI, I say this plainly: “It requires courageous competence and decisive leadership to stand, lead, and act in the best interest of our people.”
We cannot hide behind the excuse that one minister can determine the fate of an individual, his family, or an entire people. We cannot place personal agenda, constant excuses, or bureaucracy, above the rights of those we were appointed to serve. Importing external expertise from abroad to dictate how we direct and govern our own country is the wrong path, while of course we do understand at times that this is also necessary.
We must at all times determine through decision-making know what we want for ourselves first. No outside institution should define our future for us. A People and a Government cannot allow a small few to stagnate and hold our nation’s economic destiny hostage. Indecision is paralysing our people, crippling our administration, and suffocating our growth. This paralysis must end now.
We must make the right choices for the collective good today, because the future advancement of St. Maarten can no longer be delayed. This pattern of management in some areas cannot continue on St. Maarten, especially concerning public and affordable housing, spatial planning, as well as infrastructural expansion, overall management, beautification, and maintenance.
We must appoint individuals in positions where they possess genuine knowledge, background, skill, and proven experience, while surrounding themselves with competent, like-minded professionals found first on the island, then within the region, and thereafter other parts of the world.
It all begins with vision. Clarity of what we must accomplish, along with proper planning, sound structure, and disciplined budgeting, while ultimately being leaders who chart the course to our envisioned and defined destination. Because our goal is simple and non-negotiable: “It must be our own people leading prosperity in our own land.”
But it is also about governance with integrity, openness, fairness, and respect for a wellbeing that truly functions in the best interest of our people.
Some of us will have to sacrifice ourselves and our ambitions, in one way or another, so that those coming after us will be able to live, exist, and thrive in whatever area they belong.
It is all for our seniors, our children, our homeless, our disabled, our working class, our livelihood, our economy, our country, our nation, and our Almighty God. As well as for all of us who have worked very hard, while our children will inherit, and be deserving of an inheritance in their own soil.
Achken Roberto Richardson
