Dear Editor,

  Being “captured” in a mandatory quarantine period for the last 12 days on Statia, I was relieved by my negative PCR swab-test.

  As socialite, this whole time of forced isolation was challenging but also an unexpected opportunity for reflection.

  I have to admit that being in COVID-riddled Holland was no fun at all especially if you frequently sip a coffee or have a bite outdoors on one of my numerous bicycle trips through autumn leaves landscapes. Every eatery or food joint was closed, except for some lousy lukewarm coffee outside in the wind and rain. Not funny, chilled to the bones.

  This all could not be in more contrast with the sustained “zero” COVID status here on warm Statia. Being a health care professional myself I have – over time – watched the progress in implementation of truly effective COVID containment measurements by all professionals involved.

  Maintaining a COVID-free Island is the biggest gift Government officials, doctors, nurses, lab-technicians, administrators, drivers and watchful guards can give to their community. While providing near-normal living conditions, they make life safer for all of us. After all, non-COVID societies are NOT the norm these days. Their work is precious and at the end priceless.

  But to reach this high level of COVID containment, BES [the BES Islands Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius – Ed.] may not forget the abundant hands-on and ongoing support from Holland. However, in contrast to the financial gesture The Hague Government made to her Holland front line COVID prevention professionals, that same financial appreciation is not granted to her BES counterparts. One of the arguments heard to support this position was: there is hardly any COVID on the BES Islands. Would it not be wise to overcome this erroneous mindset by weighing in the fact that BES professionals – despite limited resources – are able to keep their islands virtually COVID-free whilst a raging COVID epidemic in their hemisphere.

  One more issue is worth mentioning. The root-cause of the recent 4-6 false positive PCR-tests on Statia has to be understood and dealt with 100 per cent . Not for blaming purposes but to secure flawless testing operations. When a positive COVID case pops-up, the shiver of fear is hurting our vulnerable fellow Statians too much. I am confident that this process will be addressed effectively and prevent procedural mistakes. (Statistically seen, a 4-false-positive batch is not a one-time failure but almost surely a systemic failure.)

  So, Statia COVID professionals, thank you all for your fine work.

Dr. Cornelis Bouwman

St. Eustatius

Why has the Curaçao government cleared only residents from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut (Tri-State area), and Florida for entry from the US? The Tri-State region has seen a rise in COVID cases of late, as has Florida. Furthermore, Florida residents already live in a balmy climate and don’t need to escape winter with a visit to the Caribbean.

  While it’s true airline service to Curaçao from the US operates out of New York, New Jersey, and Florida, allowing only residents from these areas is no safer or riskier than permitting people from other regions to transit through these airports en-route to Curaçao. If the government is worried about a massive influx of viral tourists arriving, don’t be. People are not traveling in large numbers this year and likely won’t into the new year as well. Those that do want to visit Curacao, however, should be allowed to do so under the same entry requirements now in place – but for everyone, not just a few.

  Ideally the criteria for entry should be based on healthy people that can prove a negative COVID test irrespective of the region they live in. The current restrictions to certain US residents only is the wrong approach.

Gunsor Buther

Curaçao

Dear Editor,

  On several occasions while I was working as a police officer I was approached by, members of political parties wanting to know if I was interested in becoming a member of the party. My initial response was always, “Being a police officer is part of my calling, I enjoy serving and protecting the people.” I would also let them know that even though I may not say everything, whatever I say is the truth. Once I speak the truth I can forget what I said but when I am reminded of it I will repeat the same thing because it is the truth.

  My father used to tell us that people get an upset stomach, even ulcers because of not being able to speak their mind by telling the truth. He would say a whole lot of people turn to liquor because it loosens their tongue. When we asked him what he meant he would explain. Over the years people have found out that when they were drunk they would say things and the next day are surprised when others tell them what they said the night before. So as time went by people would use liquor as an excuse to say what they did not dare say while they were sober.

  He told me one time that his mother and his aunt would say things to my grandfather and great uncle which he didn’t understand until years later when he came across “A drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts” in the book The philosophy of life. He would tell us that there are always two sides to a story, because both parties would tell you things which favor them and oftentimes both parties would also lie. That is why you should always try to find out what is the truth.

  I remember at one time my father told a politician calling him by his name, “Wah lies you was telling the people out there last night.” And spontaneously that politician answered my father, “Exactly what they want to hear.” That remained with me ever since. It might not have been a lie or reality, but it is what the people wanted to hear. Whether it is attainable or not does not matter. But I would think, “He does not even care whether he can produce or not?” That was my awakening to what politics is about and I did not think that that was fair.

  I wrote all of this to ask, “Why is it taking so long?” This is my take on this. These kinds of politicians never liked anyone looking over their shoulders. Because formerly a police report had to go along with almost every kind of permit issued. A negative advice was not well accepted by politicians because they would not be able to fool the people that it is they, the politicians who give them what they petitioned, as opposed to what they were entitled to once it complied with the requirements stipulated by law.

  And even though the police are no longer directly involved in the controls or issuing of permits, the police are still involved in the general control of almost everything. This sometimes sheds light on some things which actually should not come out in the light.

  My question has always been, “Why are you mad at me for doing the right thing?” Would it be fair for me to think that because making deals by people in government (alleged) along with the above, and because there are no deals to be made in getting things done for the police, there is no interest in fixing things for the police?

  What I do not understand is why we have not heard from the side of the Prosecutor’s Office, which is supposed to be the defender of the people, urging the government on, to regulate things for the police in order to be able to secure public order? On the contrary, those who are always preaching about responsibility showed their real colors by repatriating all their police people to Holland, irrespective of the consequences of the police in St. Maarten being understaffed. The pattern continues. There is no interest in the well-being of the people.

  Every dictator would tell you that he pays his soldiers well.

  So, I am still asking myself if government continues, no matter the toppling of governments, is it arbitrariness or incompetence of the personnel of the justice department who were there over those years, not to regulate things for the police?

  Because of this I asked who is actually advising the Minister of Justice? They told me all of this is because of a falling out. I could not put two and two together and I am not into speculating … .

Russell A. Simmons

Dear Editor,

  Edward B. Foley’s article, “Preparing for a Disputed Presidential Election: An Exercise in Election Risk Assessment and Management” was published almost a year and a half ago, on August 31, 2019 (51 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 309). It may have inspired the strategy and narratives of the Democrats to a considerable degree in the 2020 presidential election, an election that was called for V.P. Biden by the Associated Press and the US media in general, but an election that is still ongoing and bitterly contested.

  This “Exercise in Election Risk Assessment and Management” is a day-by-day narrated account along with much scholarly legal commentary of events of the crisis, the imbroglio following the night of the election. The article/scenario is much too long to summarize here, but (in 2019) the author theorized that on election night (2020) Republicans would appear to be the winners until later on in the count (he didn’t say how much later) when mail-in votes would favor Democrats.

  Professor of Law at Ohio State University Edward Foley studied literature at Yale and Law at Columbia before clerking for two Democrat judges. He is a staunch Democrat who believes that President Trump is a dishonest and dangerous individual to say the least: a President who, as represented in this scenario, seeks to remain in office even though he fairly loses the 2020 presidential election. The author/screenwriter also presumed that there was a shift in the allegiance of voters taking place from Republican to Democrat, specifically in the so-called “battleground” and “swing states,” that he assumed would be disputed during the presidential election of 2020.

  In the conclusion of his scenario/exercise, Prof. Foley writes: “The key premise of this article is that it would not take an extraordinary calamity, like a foreign cyberattack, for there to be conditions enabling partisans to dispute the result. Instead, a dispute engulfing Congress could arise from a situation as routine as the kind of ‘blue shift’ described at the outset.” That is to say a situation that involves an overwhelming number of mail-in ballots that are counted “later,” following the night of the election. Interestingly, he does not refer to the election being called for anyone during the night.  

  There is no other mention of the media except for the author explaining that the Associated Press (AP) and other media are reluctant to call the election for Senator Warren because there was a miscalling of an election in the past and Trump had ridiculed the media for doing so. We know, now (of course) that Fox News – the only News outlet where there was some support for the Republicans – was the first to call the state of Arizona for V.P. Biden. CNN and the others refrained from following Fox News in calling Arizona for V.P. Biden until long after Fox News had done so. Did Prof. Foley’s published scenario play any role in influencing Fox’s truly strange, unexpected calling of the state of Arizona for V.P. Biden when it did?

  The real (2020) ongoing election imbroglio appears to be a combination of the professor’s so-called “routine situation” and of the “extraordinary calamity” he refers to as a “cyberattack.” Indeed, President Trump and a number of other Republicans are alleging that there were cyber intrusion and interference in the voting process.

  To examine Prof. Foley’s scenario, a day-to-day accounting of events ending with the inauguration of Senator Warren as President on January 20, 2021, is to grasp the abysmal chasm that divides Democrats such as Prof. Foley and his partisans from Republicans such as President Trump and most of his supporters. To study this screenplay, published more than a year before the 2020 election, is to gauge the almost impossible prospect of reconciliation and bipartisanship that is required in order to pull that nation back from the edge of the dismal precipice on which it stands.

  The enmity of this learned man of letters and of the Law towards the President of his country is almost impossible to fathom; it is not glaring in the scenario; it emanates from the assumptions and presumptions of the author. While it is instructive in many ways, it can also muck up the mind of uncritical, uninformed readers. Hopefully, the professor does not inject his blindness and his stealthy-soft-sweet poison into the minds of his students. But judging from some of his tweets (no longer accessible online) Prof. Foley’s folly is ongoing: he does not appear to have learned much since he wrote this article.

  The author’s mistrust of his President may account for much of the blindness of his insight and the shakiness of his premises in this scenario-article that may have inspired the strategies and narratives of many of his fellow partisan Democrats at the highest level of his party. The premises of his scenario are fallacious; they are faulty: there has been no noted movement of voter allegiance from Republican to Democrat in the US during the Trump presidency to date. To the contrary, the movement has been in the other direction: from Democrat to Republican, witness all of the gains of Republicans in the 2020 election thus far.

  Prof. Foley’s uses the term “blue shift” to designate the relatively new phenomenon of an increase in mail-in ballots and their counting; this term obfuscates; it muddles the waters and may have served to (intentionally) confuse the issues while advancing a strategy, a road map in the form of a scenario that may have assisted his fellow Democrats in their efforts, their strategy to flood, choke and overwhelm the counting system (Cloward-Piven strategy) in order to defeat the Republicans. At this juncture, it seems that the efforts of the Democrats are aimed at convincing enough Republican senators (enough RINOs) to join with them on January 6, 2021, to determine who will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. But the few weeks that remain in this imbroglio is a long time; we shall see what transpires.

  Prof. Foley explains that “it is truly irresponsible that Congress has not attempted to eliminate – in advance of the 2020 election – the ambiguities that plague the Electoral Count Act … .” That may well be the case, but unfortunately for Prof. Foley and (maybe) fortunately for President Trump, that Act is precisely the legal instrument that may allow for the scuttling of the ongoing imbroglio: a real and very dangerous impasse. In his article, Prof. Foley also represents Justice Stephen Bryer in step with the Democrats and with the position taken by “Acting President Nancy Pelosi” particularly (P. 346-348).

  Cutting through the long narrative of representation and legal jargon in Prof. Foley’s scenario, it is obvious that the recent passing of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her replacement on the Court by the Trump-nominated and (now) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett are the events that throw a massive monkey wrench in the author’s plot where he presumes and writes of Chief Justice Roberts “not wanting to involve the Supreme Court” in the matter (P. 347).

  Indeed, now, it does not matter if Chief Justice Roberts wishes to involve the Supreme Court in this very real and grave constitutional matter. If the other Conservative Justices on the Court decide to hear the case, hopefully with Justice Clarence Thomas in the lead, Chief Justice Roberts will have no choice; he will have to get involved. And, hopefully, it will not matter how he votes. But chances are he may soon have to agree with President Trump and concede that judges are not apolitical.

  In the vast forest that is our life, a great old and exceptional tree of liberty is being cut down by a confederacy of dunces, plutocrats and crooks. Instead of decrying its destruction, its spoliation; instead of rallying for its protection; for its preservation; the fourth estate in the USA is either silent or cheering on its demise; encouraging the spoliators: the vile agents of its destruction. How unfortunate!

Gérard M. Hunt