Dear Editor,
So many conversations about the condition of country Sint Maarten are based on comparisons with other “territories” or “countries”. Hardly ever does one see reference to the role that scale (size) plays in this comparison.
Every government has to collect revenues and has costs in executing its programmes. Developing country governments have relatively higher costs due to a less-developed civil service, less capitalization and inherited infrastructure. Developing countries must spend more in capital projects to make growth and higher standards of living possible. Sint Maarten suffers from all the above, but even more because of its small scale.
Let’s take the example of Parliament. Holland has a parliament of 150 seats. The population is 17.02 million. This means that the cost of one parliamentarian is borne by 113,300 of the residents. Here in Sint Maarten we have 15 Parliamentarians for 45,000 persons so the cost of one parliamentarian is borne by 3,000 people.
Now to be fair, we only have one level of government (no municipalities) so there is an extra cost for provincial and municipal government in Holland. But it will not correct the fact that each resident in Sint Maarten has to pay for the parliament function 38 times as much as the resident in Holland. It is also exacerbated by the fact that the Sint Maarten parliamentarian earns more than the Holland parliamentarian.
The parliament example is only one that stands out. If one takes many of the government bodies and allocates their cost on a per resident basis, you are likely to find their cost per beneficiary to be extremely high. This applies to entities whose services are of a general nature like the Council of Advice, the Audit Chamber, law writing costs, etc.
With other government services that address specific matters, the cost per resident should be more comparable but not the overhead cost. Whilst the cost of roads or social services should not vary much, the cost of supervision, R and D, systems upgrading, etc will be disproportionally high in a small political entity.
This is all not to say that small political entities are not viable. The example of Singapore is the obvious one. But small political entities need to be focused on how they can beat the economies of scale that large entities enjoy. The likelihood of failure is going to be high if there is the assumption that models can be imported without question from larger entities (like Holland) without regard for the financial and developmental consequences.
Robbie Ferron
Dear Editor,
Overall, I support the action of the police officer who shot the robber. When he made his stand, he made himself “the target” and his life was surely in greater jeopardy than anyone else present. So, I’m not going to arm chair judge.
As hurricane season rolls in, many are consciously or unconsciously reliving the trauma of the natural but also the deliberate man-made disaster of the looting that followed.
I consider that, had the protective services shot one or two of the looters in the act, it would have stopped much of the looting, and this season we would feel a whole lot safer.
Instead, law-abiding citizens were left to cringe at the prospects of hoards invading their property, destroying cars to steal gas, possibly injuring and/or raping homeowners, as their wanton destruction seemed to know no bounds. The looters enriched themselves at the expense of others; left our economy in shambles and the consequences of their actions were in comparison a joke.
So, I’m going to save my tears for those members of our protective services who don’t shirk their obligations and get injured in the line of duty. From the general reaction to this latest incident, I think most of us feel the same way. Since the hurricane, the police have been doing a great job, although I am a little concerned there might be unnecessary wailing of sirens to get through traffic, which is not good for our tourist product. But their increased visibility has been immensely reassuring.
Name withheld at author's request.
The Chinese consul, in a rage of charity, decided to give the population of Curaçao a valuable and educational gift. Of course, we must take the Chinese culture into account because they are very sensitive when it comes to etiquette.
She decided to give our National Library 500 books, including the necessary racks.
The library now has a problem, because they don't know if the books are in Mandarin, Cantonese or if they are instruction books on how to make Dim Sum, or how to kill our King Willem Alexander with chopsticks!
Maybe they're Chinese porn stories or how to repair the start engine of a Ford Pinto.
Those books need to be registered by title, name of the author, and a short synopsis of the content on its cover so that somebody knows what the book is all about. The knowledge of the bookworms in the library does not get any further than "Saté ku batata" (Kebab and fries) and “Nasigoreng,” so that does not help much either.
To return the books would be an offense and somewhere we are supposed to do something like that as a counter gesture, sending 500 books (in Papiamento) to Hong Kong and sending a wanderlust union leader or politician along to help them set it up and help with the translation of the books and to set up the catalogue so that we can get rid of that one.
Very often I find situations like that on this rock and they make my day and again and again; they make me laugh my butt off!
Arthur Donker
Dear Editor,
Not only Papiamentu, but also the Dutch language has many words that have been copied from other languages. Most of these words originate from French and German. After the Second World War, English became the dominant language. However, I think all these English terms we use don’t improve the language. Turn on the radio and you hear English songs, turn on the TV and you see programmes in English.
The Dutch government wanted to make a statement against the overuse of the English language and therefore made a law to change the Constitution and give the Dutch language a place in it. This law proposal was submitted to the Second Chamber, the House of Representatives in September 2010, but since then we have heard little about it.
Until recently we received a note from Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Kajsa Ollongren that the law proposal had been withdrawn. The reason this constitutional revision is not going ahead is interesting and is related to the remarkable relationships within the Kingdom.
English against English?
Dutch is not the only official language in our country, Frisian is also an official national language. I already said back then that if we were to anchor the Dutch language in the Constitution, we would also have to include Frisian. But a month after the law to record the use of Dutch in the Constitution was submitted, new constitutional relations went into effect in the Kingdom: on October 10, 2010, Curaçao and St. Maarten became – Aruba was already a country – autonomous countries within the Kingdom. Bonaire became part of the Netherlands as a public entity. This island is also bilingual and has Papiamentu in addition to Dutch.
In addition to Dutch and Frisian we should now also record Papiamentu in the Constitution. However, Saba and Statia also became part of the Netherlands and these islands also have two languages: in addition to Dutch, that is English. That language should now also be included in the Constitution.
Our Kingdom is strange
The government was clearly wrestling with this situation. To create a barrier in the Constitution against the overuse of English in the Dutch language, the new state-based relations would now also require English to be recorded as the official language.
Successive ministers like Piet-Hein Donner, Liesbeth Spies and Ronald Plasterk wrestled with this law proposal, until Ollongren finally made the decision to withdraw it. It is a small but interesting example that shows how strange our Kingdom really is. Thanks to Saba and Statia, Dutch is not included in the Constitution.
I obviously do not blame the people on these beautiful islands, and they have their own language and culture. It is also way more helpful to improve language education in the Netherlands or to play more Dutch music on the radio, for example. Having a law to improve Dutch in the Constitution will not change the way we speak.
Ronald van Raak
Member of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament for the Socialist Party (SP)
Dear Editor,
I would like to address the issue of the vast number of unmarked vehicles using the roads – vehicles with no number plates, some with W and some have no road tax stickers. If by chance any of the above vehicles are involved in an accident, and most of the time the driver drives or runs away, there is no identification so that they can be prosecuted, especially if they are in the wrong.
I am calling on the authorities to do something to stop this trend a.s.a.p. Law-abiding citizens are paying their road tax, etc. (insurance) and it is unfair for them to suffer loss as a result of such occurrence.
Concerned resident
Name withheld at author's request.
