Dear Editor,

  The Second China International Import Expo will be held in Shanghai from November 5 to 10. The CIIE is the world’s first import expo held at the national level, and an innovation in the history of global trade. By holding the import fair, China is building a platform that connects China’s demand with the world supply. It not only satisfies China’s domestic consumption and its upgrade, but also provides huge business opportunities for global enterprises. Given the intensified trade protectionism and increased downside risk for the world economy, the Chinese government is actively promoting high-level opening-up, which demonstrates China’s consistent position of supporting free trade and economic globalization.

  The number of participants as well as the exhibition area of the second CIIE will be larger than that of the first expo. Covering an area of 30,000 square metres, the country exhibitions will host 64 nations and three international organizations. Among them are 15 guest countries of honor, including some EU member states, France, Italy, Greece and Czech Republic. The uniquely designed pavilions will showcase each country's development achievements, business environment and special industries. While the business exhibitions cover more than 300,000m2 and are divided into 7 areas, and have attracted more than 3,000 companies from over 150 countries and regions.

  China has achieved tremendous development since the reform and opening-up. It has greatly improved people’s living standards and has formed the world’s largest middle-income group. Consequently, the demand for high-quality imported goods has been increasing. Consumption has contributed more than 70 per cent of China’s economic growth and is now the primary engine of domestic economic development. The “global market” of China has drawn the attention of the whole world.

  While stimulating the high-quality development of its own economy, China has taken a series of measures to promote a higher level of opening-up, including expanding market access, enhancing international cooperation in intellectual property protection, increasing the import of goods and services, and strengthening macro policy coordination with other major economies, etc. According to the Doing Business 2020 study by the World Bank, China ranks 31^st globally on business environment and joined the ranks of the world’s top 10 most improved economies for ease of doing business for the second year. The rankings of a number of indicators, such as contract enforcement are among the highest in the world.

  Foreign investment is thriving with the promotion of quality and expansion of capacity of the Chinese market, as well as the continuous improvement of business environment in China. The World Investment Report 2019 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reveals that the foreign direct investment (FDI) in China increased by 4 per cent in 2018 to an all-time high of $139 billion, accounting 10 per cent of world total. China is now the second largest FDI inflow host economy and has become an appealing destination for foreign investment.

  China is also the world's second largest source of outward FDI. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed to jointly build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^st Century Maritime Silk Road, namely the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the past 6 years, more than 160 countries and international organizations have signed agreements on Belt and Road cooperation with China. A large number of cooperation projects have been launched, benefiting economic development of participating countries.

  The BRI highlights the Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, and is guided by the principle of consultation, contribution and shared benefits. It follows market rules and suits to national conditions of relevant countries. That’s why the BRI has received greater recognition from more and more country leaders and local people, and it has become the most welcomed global public product.

  China and the Netherlands are important trading partners, with bilateral trade volume over 85 billion US dollars in 2018. The Netherlands is where the land and maritime Silk Roads meet, and we two countries have achieved fruitful results in pragmatic cooperation under the Belt and Road framework. Besides, 19 countries from Latin America and Caribbean region have signed documents on Belt and Road cooperation with China. The Dutch Caribbean region has its unique advantages, China would like to strengthen the people-to-people exchange, promote pragmatic cooperation between two sides, and achieve common development.

  China will open its door wider to the world, and will lend new impetus to the open world economy.

Xue Shan

Acting Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in Willemstad

Dear Editor,

  According to Ms. Hanson; “It make you feel as if you a beggar…” - as she shared her experience with the Ombudsman and her team, seen in their illuminating short film ‘Home Repair’: A Revelation of a Social Crisis.’ She, like many other St. Maarteners, currently living in the direst of situations, deserve so much more than our collective pity and empathy. They deserve compassion; action!

  Everyone who calls St. Maarten ‘home’ deserves to live in a country where gainful employment is afforded to all, in addition to equitable access to quality healthcare and education. Yet, we find ourselves existing on the brink of national self-destruction.

  Hurricane Irma simply exacerbated what was already a crisis; massive vulnerability, the decline of the middle class, and a failing bureaucracy. How easy is it now, for families to move in and out of poverty as compared to 20 years ago? We live on the front lines of climate change, enduring natural hazards that continue to risk our livelihoods, but how often do we see policy solutions to these problems?

  Innovative economic and social policy will create a sustainable development trajectory necessary to tackle vulnerability and poverty. Caribbean Development Bank provides a multidimensional vulnerability index for small states. We need to ensure that resilience is worked into the fabric of our society, especially over the long term. We need to recognize where we are weak and create strategies to tackle those weaknesses…pronto!

  And yes, we do need to establish a poverty line. We need to reduce the overall cost of living, and create policies that focus on our people’s assets and capacities. Forget looking at what we do not have, and start looking at what we do! Let’s build programs that empower rather than promote dependency.

  You see, I believe the young, single mom of two in Cul de Sac, who works two jobs to keep the lights on, but is really good at styling hair and has 1,000 followers on Instagram, would be better served through a free program that assists her in setting up her own home-based hair salon than a few hundred guilders of social assistance. This is focused development of our gig economy, which may hold the key to promoting greater levels of entrepreneurship; pride, flexibility and financial success. Don’t we all want these things?

  And at the end of the day, as terrible as things may seem in our political environment, there are many of us walking around who possess the commitment, expertise, competence and love for St. Maarten necessary to get us back on the right track. It is up to you, however, to recognize who those persons are and afford them the opportunity to change the game.

Ludmila Duncan

The silence from politicians in The Hague on the complete acquittal of former central bank president Emsley Tromp and his successful countersuit for damages says a lot about their inability to come to terms with some of their aggressive policies towards these islands. Tromp’s case perfectly demonstrates what happens when words like integrity are weaponized.

  It is a textbook example of malicious prosecution and the overzealous use of state power for political rather than purely judicial purposes. They targeted him first and then searched for the crime with which to charge him. That’s deeply troubling for a supposedly liberal democratic state such as the Dutch kingdom.

  Nevertheless, despite his legal success, the damage is done once the dogs of war are let loose and blood demanded. It wasn’t only the man’s life and reputation which were recklessly harmed, but also the reputation of one of the country’s important institutions, all without consequences for those who’ve done the harm. 

  Of course, there will be no formal apologies for the years of smears and outright lies. That’s just how it goes. But we begin to see the pattern of how the machine works.

  First, there is an uproar by obsessed fanatics such as Bosman and Van Raak in the Dutch Second Chamber based on, they claim, damning information that the general public in these islands are neither aware of nor will ever see. Then they demand answers from their government in The Hague and, as if part of a pre-orchestrated dance, their government obliges and twists the arms of local authorities into cooperating.

  Off go the expensive dogs of investigative war and the islands brace themselves for the inevitable destruction of someone’s life. All in the name of justice, apparently.

  Equally telling is the silence from certain quarters of the local media and our usual chattering class. Not surprisingly, there was nothing in Dutch media at all about Tromp’s acquittal, nor did they attempt any serious reflection on the matter.

  And some of our media here are not much more than barely disguised propaganda outlets pumping out a certain narrative, either to settle a score or rewrite history. They blur the lines between factual reporting and activist opinion-mongering so badly that it becomes hard for the general public to sort out the truth from old-fashioned smears.

  The bottomless bags of money spent going after innocent men like Tromp merely to remove them from positions of influence could have been more productively used. And it wasn’t the Dutch taxpayer who ended up footing the bill for this expensive farce either.

  No, conveniently the invoice for the wreckage was passed on to someone else.

  An already cash-strapped Curaçao must now foot the bill for the dubious sacking and persecution of one of its own sons by foreign faces.

  But men like Bosman and Van Raak, who mask their contempt for these islands as concern, pay no price for being wrong. They suffer no consequences for the destruction and harm they cause to innocent people in their self-righteous crusade.

  If the price for their fanatical purge includes the unnecessary trampling on some people’s civil liberties and basic dignity, then it is time to reassess that price, because it is the people here who must bear the personal and material costs when it goes terribly wrong, not those in The Hague.

Adrian Lista

Dear Editor,

  It’s sad to see the sense of direction St. Maarten is heading into right now. We need to “Get Back to Basics” and get back on track. We need to refocus, recalculate and move forward from two years of just processing, procedures, and go back to the vision of starting to put our people first by creating hope and connecting back to the people who we represent.

  Mr. Editor, the master plans are there written over the years and sitting in desk drawers. We need to move forward and dust off and update our already established master plan on affordable social housing (including senior homes), social care, health care (senior care), education, economic and labor reform and amend the electoral ordinance where the seat stays with the political party.

  This is the time for us to think “outside the box” and show maturity of working together in the general interest of our people. We have a lot of people having a hard time making ends meet to provide for their family and we have to start showing political maturity and leadership through intelligence of putting our people first.

  Always remember intelligence plus character is the goal of a true education. We also need to upgrade customer service within our public sector institutions. St. Maarten was known for our service and friendliness in which we are slowly losing because of not caring for people.

  Our beautiful island would never move forward without vision. As Nelson Mandela once said, “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, and vision with action can change the world.” The only way St. Maarten will move forward is for us to change our mentality of everyone for themselves and fighting each other for power with no sense of direction. We need to start moving forward by putting the right professionals with intelligence and new ideas in the right positions instead of putting the same desk generals with no realistic plan of action of making things happen for our people.

  Its high time we work along with our local private sector, high councils of state, NGOs [non-governmental organisation – Ed.], unions, local consultants, Anti-Poverty Platform, community councils and listen to the people’s issues, grievances and concerns with a realistic smart plan of action that can make our island a better place.

  We must stop the internal fighting and slander on social media which is just bringing our people down. We must start believing in our local professionals instead of putting others over our own local experts or businesses who present the same idea or plan but with a different cover page and we accept and pay them crazy consultancy fees such as the World Bank.

  Mr. Editor, I think a lot of our representatives are afraid of the Dutch and that’s why not much decisions are being made to move our island forward. You cannot govern an island in fear and not doing your research and homework. We need leaders who know how to communicate through intelligence with the Dutch.

  I was amazed by Minister Knops’ article in The Daily Herald of September 30, 2019, in which he give an update of the various reconstruction projects, including repairs to almost 1,000 homes and pending repairs to 500 more and re-training/financial support for more than 1,300 people and no one within our Government questioned him of where he got those figures from.

  If you read the Ombudsman report “Home Repair A Revelation of a Social Crisis” and their small film which is based on facts, it is nowhere close to the 1,000 home repairs Minister Knops mentioned in his presentation to the Second Chamber. 

  Mr. Editor, what really caught my attention in the Ombudsman Report is the slow pace of the projected numbers vs the actual numbers of roof repairs done in the report.  Based on these facts, Government should re-evaluate the entire process and criteria to move forward 2 years after [Hurricane] Irma. We should have been finished with the first tranche of recovery and home repairs and already starting our master plan of building affordable housing which should be a high priority at this time.

  Mr. Editor, I have to commend the Ombudsman and her team for presenting the facts to the people. These types of factual reports and evaluation of the slow process, I expect to get from our Government and Recovery Bureau who are representing our people and overseeing these recovery projects.

  As representatives, we need to get away from the sugar coating, job security, picture op, secrecy, self-interest, fear and group cliques and start being transparent and open by presenting the facts and truth to our people.

  In closing, I pray that our representatives of the people raise the bar, show political maturity, stop the fighting and lead our people through intelligence with a plan of action of putting people first and making things happened for our island.  Let’s get back to basics and move forward through intelligence and prayer of truly speaking truth of getting our beautiful island back on track.

Maurice Lake