Dear Editor,

Many of us will have been impressed by the manner in which our Prime Minister, Ms. Silveria Jacobs, handled the management of borders and infection threat of the COVID-19 epidemic. I certainly was. She indicated in some of her press conferences that she had been following the science-based advice of professionals in the epidemiology field. That was the correct approach and those that ignored the science have caused great damage.

Besides medical science, there is also economic science and this letter is to recommend to our prime minister to follow economic science in the same manner as she has the medical science. Like the medical science, there are large numbers of opinions and views, but in the middle of it all there are strong consensus positions that should be the basis for policy to advance St. Maarten.

In the case of developing countries, a core economic consensus says that an excessive percentage of tax revenues spent on public sector non-investment costs result in restrictions that limit policy-makers in respect of investment that could be used for growth or restructuring of the economy.

In the case of St. Maarten our small scale and our choice of a heavy overhead of Dutch modeled governmental apparatus heightens the risk.

In the case of St. Maarten it has become obvious that political will to restrain this public sector expenditure is not there and that investment always takes a back seat to public sector employment.

The consensus also says that if the developing country tries to escape the high public sector non-investment costs by borrowing new funds then there is a high risk of the country falling into a debt trap as so many Caribbean jurisdictions have. Ironically, this is what the Prime Minister was calling for when she exited the recent Kingdom Ministers Council Meeting attended by the three Caribbean Prime Ministers of the Kingdom.

Efforts to advance long-term policies for St. Maarten that are based on a more sustainable model are often refuted on the basis of them coming from a biased business sector or an autonomy-reducing Kingdom partner, the Netherlands. When it comes to the core science of economic development these are political arguments, not economic science ones. Let’s follow the science in economics as well as medicine.

Robbie Ferron

During the recent press conference, you accused the Dutch Government of applying practices that are typical of the behavior of the West India Company during the colonial period. Indeed, a great deal of commotion has arisen on our islands due to the hurricane behavior of the Dutch government in enforcing reform measures as a condition for financial and economic support.

  Everyone can have an opinion, one will believe that the Netherlands has crossed the line, the other will judge that the Netherlands has not gone far enough and should have taken over again long ago.

  You yourself drew a comparison with the behavior of the WIC, with which you apparently once again, for the umpteenth time, have tapped out of the colonial keg, a by now cleverly truncated tactic that you apply every time when you are at odds with the motherland.

  What you do not realize is that this apparently brutal attitude of Dutch politicians is largely due to their boundless annoyance at the kind of wrong politicians which you are a textbook example of, the kind that plush only aspires to take advantage of and use the obtained state power for their own gain or to favor companions.

  Your reign is brimming with scandals, all of which involve scheming shady business models for you and/or your closed ones. I can vividly imagine that the Netherlands has had enough by now and therefore wants to do everything to structurally change that.

  Far more reprehensible than the colonizer are the colonizers who take over the colonizer’s misconduct and use their acquired state power for the same opportunism they accuse the colonizer of. You are the archetype of the local politician who once came to power, exhibits the same greedy behavior as the ex-colonizer, a phenomenon so aptly described by writer/psychiatrist/philosopher/freedom fighter/revolutionary Frantz Fanon in his famous oeuvre “The outcasts of the earth”.

  You take the place of the WIC, you take over its role because you try to derive the maximum personal advantage from your position of power because you think you have the right to do so. Curaçao, just like the WIC at the time, is also just a playing field for your personal interests. You imagine yourself to be the savior of the people, a delusion that is absolutely incompatible with all those practices that bear your signature, a signature characterized by pushing others forward to conceal your involvement in matters that you know cannot see the daylight.

  Our friendly national character, combined with your talented flux de bouche, means that all your deviant behavior is tolerated, to the great frustration of Dutch politicians who have to watch that and are unable to deal with the improper handling of autonomous administrative structures from their Dutch seats to stop politicians like you.

  No wonder then that feelings of powerlessness turn into overreactions. Regardless of the outcome of the mission that the Prime Ministers from Aruba and Curaçao have undertaken to the Netherlands, our island will have no solution as long as WIC-like administrators like you are not replaced by sincere and knowledgeable ministers who have people’s interests in mind.

  The call for a business cabinet is getting louder and more rightly, because your narrow-minded attitude shows that no improvement can be expected to upscale the administrative thinking of this government.

George Lichtveld

Curaçao

Dear Editor,

It was just a matter of time before PM Mark Rutte’s government presented a “secret entity” for the countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. A proposal that given our Kingdom’s constitutional history spanning 400 years should not be a surprise to anyone. The 57-page document was not written out of the blue!

A document rightfully rejected by our Parliament.

Let’s be brutally honest with each other. Yes, we have failed our people miserably in too many ways. We have failed our people for far too long in terms of providing a quality of life and services necessary in a modern civic society. We barely managed our public affairs in relatively prosperous economic times. During less affluent periods or following natural disasters we muddled through. Our government’s liquidity position and financial future have been severely compromised by our completely irresponsible actions in the past.

It doesn’t have to be bleak, but our continuing approach to governance all but ensures a repeat of past mistakes. One of the textbook definitions of madness is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting a different outcome. We have been stuck in this reel for far too long.

The Dutch government knows and can predict our behaviour. We come unprepared to the negotiation table with their representatives and we repeat the same mistakes.

The “CFT” structure established and accepted without a counterproposal in 2007 proved ineffective as an instrument to “guarantee” a sound financial management for St. Maarten and Curaçao, post 10/10/10.

The manner in which the Dutch government seizes the moment under the world COVID-19 pandemic to strategically impose more conditions in return for yet another financial shot in the arm is nothing short of a renewed attempt to bring the former Netherlands Antilles back under one administrative rule in The Hague. We must reject that.

Future generations of public administrators acting in good faith and with integrity who are educated, able and capable, should never be robbed of their future right to govern this island.

Are we destined to choose from two choices as recently suggested by one of our own, drinking champagne or a soda? We must reject the notion that our only choices are between steak and chicken leg. How can the current Dutch government “impose” a reduction of 12.5 per cent on the total package of employment benefits until further notice? By unconditionally accepting all of the above and more, we as a people give up our right to have aspirations, to do better and to lead by example.

If indeed we have “fallen” before and failed 10 times, don’t we have a right to succeed after the 11^th or the 12^th or umpteenth time and rise to the occasion as many nations have done before us? We firmly believe that there is a great future ahead of us. Many political leaders around the globe made terrible, horrific transgressions against their own citizens. In modern times, these transgressors are held accountable for their actions. We should hold our leaders accountable as well. Their administrations, however, were not taken over directly or indirectly, neither were they annexed nor have they accepted an outside entity to be imposed over their democratically elected Parliament.

The narrative by some local and Dutch entities of the past 10 years states we are incapable of governing ourselves. This story-line culminated in the current stalemate between the “countries” of the former Netherlands Antilles that are again in dire need of financial assistance. While there’s a great deal of truth to that story, it gives the Dutch administration no right to blanket us all as being incapable under the guise of stepping in for the poor people and resort via a backdoor policy of substitution of our representatives. Our democratic institutions including the High Councils of State, our General Audit Chamber, the Ombudsman office will be relegated to substations for the entities in the Hague.

These institutions have proven in the past 10 years that they can do the job. We have nothing more than high praise and respect for those women and men who were appointed to manage these institutions with integrity and professional aptitude since 10/10/10. It is time our citizens demand the same of our elected and appointed representatives. Give us that breathing space.

We can rise to the occasion by taking a more professional approach especially in the case of bilateral meetings with the Dutch government. Bear in mind that PM Mark Rutte faced 6 St. Maarten governments and 3 Parliaments in 10 years. He has been a constant and consistent factor as PM in the ongoing constitutional-financial deliberations facing our local governments.

In the meantime, St. Maarten continues to be under-prepared or unprepared for these important meetings.

For instance, one of our ministers recently lamented he was party to a testy video conference between our PM and State Secretary Knops and it was not recorded! Furthermore, when both our Prime Minister and President of Parliament travelled to The Hague to look Rutte squarely in the eyes in the aftermath of receiving the new and controversial proposal, they allegedly arrived in The Hague and went straight into these critical meetings together with the Minister Plenipotentiary.

Having a mixed team comprising local and Dutch advisors would go a long way to assist our representatives during these difficult meetings.

The current government faces three battles simultaneously on three fronts:

1. Post-Hurricane Irma, ongoing reconstruction and allocation of the Trust Fund monies provided by the Dutch tax-payers.
2. Current COVID-19-pandemic-forced lockdown and as a result thereof social- economic fall-out.
3. Constitutional frictions between the Kingdom partners due to the Dutch government conditions for more financial aid resulting in serious social unrest for the citizens of the smaller entities Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten.

After their whirlwind trip, what is next? What is St. Maarten’s Plan B, C, or D?

A few suggestions:

1. propose and thoroughly prepare a round-table conference ( RTC) to evaluate the current constitutional structure. This was never done as agreed upon after the deliberations following the November 2006 “Agreement”.

Most bottlenecks are identified in the new Dutch proposal. Why create an entire new entity for six years, while adding Aruba to the mix? A camel with three humps remains a camel.

1. CFT was destined to fail in its objective to guide us through sound financial management and balanced budgets because St. Maarten never started with a clean financial slate as promised by our local and Dutch political establishment at the time. CFT should be dismantled and its tasks incorporated into the regular government finance administration. This bottom-up approach can be more effective and less costly to operate than the current top-down structure.
2. Appoint a junior minister of constitutional affairs to deal with the ongoing discussions since 10/10/10. The government including the PM can refocus its attention on the “going concern” – the daily management of our country. You have four years to do so. Use the Dutch proposal and execute the tasks as outlined in partnership as a legitimate government, and held accountable by the recently elected Parliament.

We have failed ourselves if we insist and continue to appoint friends, family, or persons whom we know are incompetent or incapable of doing their job paid for by the local or Dutch taxpayers. Nepotism and the like must stop at once.

The footprints of our ancestors are covered by a pile of garbage in our city center.

Parliament is still located in an expensive rented building.

Constitutional history in our school curriculum keeps our students ignorant of current affairs. Our unfinished airport, our gateway to economic recovery is just a fistful of the proverbial rocks that are waiting to be transformed into diamonds.

Until our citizens become better informed and responsible and demand proper and accountable representation, the gap between the wealthy and those who live on the margins of society will become wider with all consequences thereof.

We cannot always point fingers at Holland for that outcome and continue to suffer fools gladly at our own expense.

Gracita Arrindell

Dear Editor,

  Professor George Lamming’s powerful little book, Sovereignty of the Imagination: Language and the Politics of Ethnicity – CONVERSATIONS III (House of Nehesi Publishers, 2009) is an antidote to the poisonous politics of ethnicity, a social-political phenomenon, a kind of corrosive social virus that has plagued humanity through the ages.

  This virus lies dormant for long periods in varying degrees and features, but it never sleeps soundly; it can easily be nudged out of its slumber, ready to engage in attack when the defense of the body politic, for whatever the reason, becomes weakened and vulnerable. There is a virulent, revengeful strain of this virus that has been summoned out of its light sleep and is active in the USA nowadays. It might become quite dangerous, even deadly contagious, if the so-called Democrats succeed in defeating the supposed Republicans in November of this year.

  George Lamming’s robust little book remains as pertinent and timely today as it was when it was published ─ in Philipsburg ─ 11 years ago. If democracy continues to flounder or to be perceived as floundering in the USA, this vile virus, the politics of ethnicity, will most likely be nudged and awakened worldwide.

  Professor Lamming’s book informs on this social-political phenomenon that has ravaged the Caribbean from the annihilation of its original people to and through the eras of colonialism and imperialism. To varying degrees, this phenomenon is ongoing in the Caribbean since independence. The politics of ethnicity is corrosive; it has been destructive whenever and wherever it has raised its angry, hateful head.

  The legendary Barbadian novelist and social critic, one of the Caribbean’s most eloquent, most experienced and well informed literary and social spokesmen, has gauged the nature and danger of the politics of ethnicity. He argues for “a way to immunize sense and sensibility against the virus of ethnic nationalism … to negotiate the cultural spaces that are the legitimate claims of the Other, and to work toward an environment that could manage stability as a state of creative conflict. … Creative conflict is the dynamic which drives the Caribbean imagination” (pages 78-79).

  Lamming, who has travelled extensively and has lived and worked abroad in Trinidad, in England and in the USA, discusses the politics of ethnicity in the context of the Caribbean in general, and specifically, as it relates to Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana. But wherever it has raised its poisonous head, in the Caribbean as elsewhere in the world, the politics of ethnicity has had the same effect of contaminating the body politic by stifling debate, blocking compromise, inciting disorder, violence, injustice, chaos and death.

  Professor Lamming reminds us that “Hegemony like Imperialism [and we may add Globalism] is the domination of one class over another or all others, and not necessarily through force but through a process of social, political, and ideological indoctrination in order to achieve the consent of the dominated class” (pages 21-22).

  He quotes Dr. Eric Williams, the imminent historian and the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago: “Education in the modern world is, more than anything else, education of the people themselves as to the necessity of viewing their own education as part of their democratic privileges and their democratic responsibilities (pages 23-24).

  Lamming explains that, in the Caribbean, “Independence has not yet won the right to sovereignty,” that “Grenada was both a heroic and tragic suicidal experience,” that “Guyana emerges as the least worthy of respect,” that “Michael Manley was the victim of external pressure in the form of national sabotage, which was the weapon the privileged classes of Jamaica used against his administration” (page 16).

  Lamming praises Dr. Walter Rodney, the Guyanese political activist and historian whose “scholarship helped to dismantle a tradition that, before and after Independence, has used the device of race to obscure and sabotage the fundamental unity that married the destinies of Indians and African workers through their common experience of labor” (pages 44-45).

  The author quotes a fellow Bajan, “the journalist Robert Goddard, a member of a very powerful white Barbadian merchant family [who] makes a charge of Afrocentrism and its debilitating effect on the project of regional coherence: Black nationalism in the region is predicated on the idea that the West Indies is actually black, and by implication, racially black as well. To be black is to be authentically Caribbean. …”

  Lamming adds that he offers this quote as “an example of the truth we are very reluctant to accept; that race and ethnicity are socially constructed categories. Mr. Goddard’s voice on the telephone is ethnically black. …”

  Lamming heralds the “novel kind of generosity, the possibility to which Derek Walcott refers in his 1992 Nobel speech: Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love that took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. … This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles.” (pages 68-75).

  It is obvious that although George Lamming is reviewing what we may refer to as Caribbean governance, Caribbean social/political realities, this well-informed witnessing, these observations can enlighten people worldwide on the politics of ethnicity, a phenomenon that is human, all too human.

  People worldwide, and in the USA particularly, may do well to consider and ponder the exceptional witnessing of this most senior and distinguished Caribbean novelist, this social-cultural critic whose long quest for freedom and a sovereignty of the imagination has been intimately linked, intrinsically connected to education, to language and politics, and to democratic privileges and responsibilities.

Gérard M. Hunt