When egos get in the way of goals, confusion appears and ultimately egos will win.
With this in mind St. Maarten has had 3 elections in the past 5 years and on average governments don’t last more than 1.5 years.
This political game of musical chairs has thus far been a roadshow to nowhere and caused more harm than good.
The upcoming intended elections are likely to be even more destructive and painful than the previous. This time St. Maarten would face an election in extreme social despair and severe economic downfall. It will make the already hesitant international and national investors more nervous than before.
The magnitude of the current crisis, sparked off by Hurricane Irma, will now actually depend how long it will take before we can play the game again. This unfolding situation makes the future look dark and hopeless and will not change the status quo.
As a matter of fact it will cause even more stress to the already devastating economy and it will fuel a confidence crisis. The so-needed recovery will inevitably be postponed to next year. The Dutch won’t bring in the funds to a government that received motions of no confidence.
On top of that, other opportunities will be lost because investors don’t gamble with their money in unstable governments or unpredictable one-pillar economies.
Even international development agencies would rather wait to see how and when the political games will unfold before committing new funds to programs.
Economic recovery after a hurricane like Irma is already a challenge. Add the cost of the elections caused by the political fallout and the major setbacks to quick recovery. Top that off with a remaining status quo and St. Maarten is guaranteed to be hurt even more as it will deepen the impact of the adverse social and economic factors prevailing after Irma.
Dear political leaders could you please turn of this agonizing music, push all chairs and egos aside and step into the real world to make it work? Elections are not the solution! We all are the solution.
St. Maarten Development Movement (SDM)
Dear Editor,
“Evil takes root when good men fail to act.” This is one of the many quotes from the legendary freedom fighter Mr. Nelson Mandela and it’s with this burden that I have chosen to speak up about our current issues.
My question to the people of this young country named St. Maarten is, what have DP and UP party done for St. Maarten and its people for the last 50 years?
There is no reason why the former coalition government should fall, because the DP leader has always been updated on the developments when it comes to financial aid from the Netherlands to St. Maarten. So, there are no grounds for the DP leader to want to form a new government with the opposition, for DP and UP to go back to their old practices by filling their pockets by cutting deals and keep St. Maarten people suffering.
Why should DP split with its coalition partner when in 2015 it was the DP and UP government that went to Holland and signed for the Integrity Chamber to come to St. Maarten, but NA was never part of that coalition. Furthermore, why should DP want to form a new government with UP when the main two vote-getters of UP cannot pass the screening to be ministers? This says it all.
DP and UP have been fooling the people of St. Maarten for many years and never supported the middle class or poor people of this island.
The people of this country have to realize that the UP leader doesn’t have this island at heart, it’s all about enriching himself, his family and friends.
And the DP leader always speaks of “Country First” when, under DP and UP, St. Maarten never had an approved budget.
The only party that got things done for St. Maarten is NA, which brought home separate status to St. Maarten, finished the new government building and approved budget for the last two years and more to mention.
I fully agree that Parliament should be dissolved and new elections called, or the island would be placed under higher supervision by the Netherlands before end of the year.
Concerned citizen
Name withheld at author’s request.
Another government fall
But thats not all
For another one shall rise
Though a thousand shall fall
At our right hand
And ten thousands
On our left hand
That will not stop us
From rising again
For St. Martin shall rise
Again, and again
So let us all rise up
And wise up
For the time of no return
Has now come
And no man goin’ follow
Uncle Willy to his grave
For if Uncle Willy fail to rise
To the occasion
Then let the dead bury
The dead
For we can always go
Back to the sister
We Nation Mother
None other than Sister Sarah
That can and will take we out
of this mierda
So let us all pray that this eight
Can stand up straight
For Saint Martin north and south
are standing behind them
So stand tall without any doubt
and more border closing
For Saint Martin must rise up
United as one again
Together forever
Raymond Helligar aka Big Ray
WILLEMSTAD -- “The Minister of Economic Development Steven Martina wants to tackle illegal trade over the Internet, especially on social media.”
Yes, Minister, it is unfair to all those who do apply for permits and pay taxes, but aren’t you a little late? You want to create a level playing field and equal opportunity in an economy that has long been hijacked by subversion.
The genie is out of the flask, or the lamp, how do you get him back in? Right, no way! Or with another cultural metaphor, aren’t you opening a can of worms? Once the creepy crawlers are out of the can, it is nearly impossible to get them back in.
Over a period of about 20 to 30 years, the economy searched and found a way around the corrupt, non-functional and expensive governmental authority structure of permits and taxes. Today, at least 30 per cent of the economy of the Caribbean islands functions in the shadow. Why does the Minister think he will be able to get them under regulation and control again?
The Minister may be the scion of a well-established family with great political influence, but is he showing realism?
I doubt it. A very large part of the shadow economy has no option to join the regular economy since it is financed by narco industry capital. Römer, former Minister of Infrastructure, reported that at least 10,000 buildings were constructed on Curaçao without a permit. The money laundered concerned with illegal construction can be estimated at 1-2 billion NA guilders.
The Minister does not have at his disposal the legal or administrative apparatus and a team of reliable executives to fight this economic bulwark of subversion. Navarro, the former Minister of Justice, put it so succinctly: “Every branch of government is infiltrated by organized crime.”
So, the Minister of Economic Development’s call is no more than a paper tiger. The only option he has for creating equal opportunity and a level playing field is by doing away with governmental permits and taxes altogether, for everyone.
A new VAT tax would be far more effective to guarantee the government sufficient income.
Jacob Gelt Dekker
Dear Chairman Broekers-Knol and members of the 1st Chamber and Ex-Minister Plasterk,
I hereby object to your senate proposal to request votes to finalize the second reading on October31, to definitively annex and anchor Bonaire (and St Eustatius) in your constitution.
As a result, your senate and your senate-members without their humanitarian feelings will deprive their kingdom-partners, the Bonerians who live on Bonaire (and the same counts for Saint Eustatius), of their right to their primary human rights for freedom and equality.
Your supposedly accepting the law proposal and then constitutionally anchoring our island in your state order without the consent of our people is undemocratic and unilateral against the democratic voice of our people in violation of our fundamental rights.
Your position and task as a co-legislator who is independent and taking into account legal aspects and in particular the soundness and consistency with other laws, and certainly not to violate higher legislation, it is your responsibility to definitively ensure the rule of law and democracy.
The arguments put forward by the ex-Minister Plasterk and all members during the last debate, as alibi to formalize the annexation, are characteristic and all can be grouped together under abuse of power and a typically persistent inexhaustible VOC mentality of Dutch political governance culture.
You are showing that you are misled and manipulated educationally and you do not realize or are not aware that your Kingdom-partners, Bonaire (and St. Eustatius) are not public bodies or special municipalities, but full-fledged nations.
The right as a people to international law in accordance with decolonization, co-signed by the Netherlands as a co-founder of United Nations, has the right to aspire our own emancipation and development and our own future while maintaining our own language, culture, traditions, norms and values, identity and self-governance.
That is the basis that definitely needs to be known to the Dutch politicians. Or do Dutch politicians know nothing about their colonial past, why they have obligations to their colonized peoples?
Do the Dutch politicians not know where all Dutch wealth comes from? That the Netherlands from an insignificant fishing village through piracy, smuggling and slave trade, all by law, legally, have become one of the world's richest countries, with the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors, your colonized peoples? Or do your senate-members not know that the VOC is the world's largest company of the world’s history, about 10 times bigger than Apple and Microsoft together?
So, you'll be celebrating, just like Plasterk, a potential new Dutch hero, worded, the record-breaking, the first time in history. Celebrating that you humiliated all three Caribbean nations by giving them the right to vote, while all three nations together do not have a tenth seat and vote in your senate, which has 75 members is as a mockery of democracy.
Of course, taking into account that your kids, generations, will never know that their current politicians are no less than your historical heroes such as Piet Heijn and other criminals, robbers who on October 31, 2017, now without any remorse unleash and systematically eradicate their humble human kingdom-partners.
Finally, our human framework and emotional ability give us no other option than trying to understand that with all of you, you as Dutch politicians have missed humanitarian values being nurtured and educated, and this law is in the same category of racism where our common colonial history began.
Where you did not with your peers, your own companions, but to the different, dark-colored people declared them as "non-human" by law and then made them slaves and traded them, and never wanted to stop with that terrible human-trading. And it is almost impossible to add more that your racist indoctrination has finally rooted in the constitutional embedding of racism, your exclusive contribution to humanity, institutionalized apartheid, in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
James Finies
Nos Kier Boneiru Bek
