Dear Editor,
In the past week the much talked about and heralded screening is again in the news. And our foreign provided justice system is used to promoting a system that at the end of the day won’t stand up to the test of a true democratic society. We have seen with quite some consternation that our election was set aside by instructions from the Dutch deciding who can form part of the council of ministers, in effect disregarding the vote of those with the right to elect their own representatives whether we agree or not.
After eight years at the PJIA, the director was removed because she had to be subjected to a screening after serving without any complaints. In some ways so designed because they know that with the unjust court case resulting from a prejudiced investigation launched eight years ago at the tourist office it would be impossible to pass the screening.
Then we learn of the director of the central bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten who held the position for almost thirty years and now must do a screening which of course he won’t pass for he too is being investigated. A respected inspector Thode has also felt the ferocity of the unfair and biased system after serving years at the coast guard and the government, and the court will have us believe that heading a high department in fraud and blue collar crime doesn’t afford one any consideration from screening.
We can only ask or reason what country secrets these good persons could learn of or divulge now that they couldn’t in the past eight or twenty years. And, if it is government’s intention to remove people from any office why they just don’t make them an offer to resign instead of creating all this negative press and destroying people’s character and professional identity.
Our government in its attempt to be truly transparent has yet to let us know what this screening entails for we hear of people failing without the possibility of facing their accuser(s) in court. Something isn’t kosher when a minister one time fails and passes the same screening afterwards. It goes to show that if people are allowed to defend themselves the madness will cease. We are left puzzled when we see what happened at Cadastre INS and even the National Detective department where one or more were disqualified for alleged irregularities and after 10-10-10- were again put at the same department.
And a question that figures highly is: Who is this person at VDSM, where is he from, and what does he know about St. Maarten, its customs and people? We are left to conclude that in an effort to be acceptable to what the European colonial master wants we are willing to criminalize and victimize our people as is clear in the recently implemented Afpak team of which we are so proud while arguing that the integrity chamber that proposed the same thing denying citizens their right to an impartial court is inhumane.
As we have tried to illustrate in previous articles we can’t build a country solely on the backs of outside input and impositions while exiling and excluding our own at all cause. The screening is too secretive, the conditions or prerequisites and who sets them are not clear and people should be offered an opportunity to challenge it. No one should get the impression that because we are a young country certain institutions like the prosecutor’s office and the VDSM among others are above the law.
Elton Jones
