Dear Editor,
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” ~ Proverb.
With that being said, I find the news coming out of my country of Anguilla very distressing. It appears that this government thinks so little of us that on Anguilla Day, this year, a day when we celebrate our liberation from the claws of one Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw, our government has seen it fit to show us how far we’ve come, by distributing food baskets.
On the surface it may look all well and good, but my good people, don’t for a second think that this government cares one iota about us. While this may look like the right thing to do, it does not pass the smell test and from where I stand, it stinks to high heaven. This sort of thing is totally unacceptable to have us lined up waiting for a food basket and on the very day that our forefathers fought to insure that something like this would never happen.
Where does this government get off treating the people of Anguilla like paupers? It is inconceivable that those in power would even contemplate something as low as this. Food baskets being handed out in Anguilla, are you serious? Is there nothing that is sacred to this government?
When our chief minister talks about “it’s all about you” who is he really referring to? Is it the “you” whom he thinks deserve to live as second class citizens? Who is he really referring to?
The fact that he chooses Anguilla Day, the 50th one, to do this goes to punch up the fact that his government has been an abject failure. Had he kept his promises to get Anguilla back on its feet, none of this food line stuff would be necessary. People don’t want to lower themselves standing in bread lines waiting for government hand-outs, they’d rather be working at a full time job earning a decent salary from which they can pay their mortgages and still have something left.
The fact that this government is willing to give out cash prizes on the nameless Ronald Webster Park, on our most reverent of holidays, is an embarrassment and this government ought to be ashamed of themselves to even contemplate such an idea. That is not who we are. Our people are a proud people who would rather earn a pay check than accept a handout from a government who clearly has ulterior motives for their actions.
At a time when our island is falling apart because of incompetent and weak leadership, our priorities are totally out of whack. This government seems to have taken a page out of the Donald Trump playbook in that every time a firestorm breaks out, you start a new fire. We have moved from one catastrophe to the next. We started out with the banks, then we quickly moved on to the stabilization Levy, and then we quickly moved on to something else. There are so many things happening concurrently that one needs a scorecard to keep track.
I ask again for the hundredth time, how did we get to this place and how do we get out?
I am angry when I see what has and continues to happen, for this is not what Atlin Harrigan, Walter Hodge, John Webster, Elliot Webster, Ronald Webster, Collins Hodge, Bob Rogers, Peter Adams, Jeremiah Gumbs, Mildred Vanterpool, Olive Hodge, Bevan, Cardie and a host of others too numerous to mention, fought for.
That on this day when we look back and remember those no longer with us for what they did, that almost 50 years to the day, that we are having to line up for a lousy $250 food basket is a damn disgrace and those whose brilliant idea that was ought to be flogged with many stripes.
I honestly believe that this gesture on the part of this government is nothing more than an attempt to curry favour with the people leading up to the next election. What this government should have done instead was to not pay out over $250,000 to every Tom, Dick and Harry, for services rendered during the celebration. The actions of this government, I say once again, do not pass the smell test. For example, why is one church getting $15,000
for putting on a programme? Isn’t that what churches do? The disbursement of those funds is highly questionable.
At a time when people can’t pay their bills and are losing their homes because of an ill-advised banking bill signed into law by this government, they are spending an exorbitant amount of cash to celebrate what? What are you celebrating? Who are you celebrating? It appears that this government is so illiterate when it comes to Anguilla and its history, that they would even attempt to celebrate Anguilla Day, astounds me.
None of this makes sense. Cash prizes given away at the park, seriously. What will this be an Easter-type cash hunt? Will they hide the envelopes around the park in the bushes and then have an all-out race to find the cash? Again, this does not pass the smell test. I would like to tell my fellow Anguillians not to stoop so low as to stand in line waiting for a food basket. We are better than that. This is not who we are. We have always had hard times and we’re still here, so what does that tell you about our resilience?
My brothers and sisters, I was raised by a very proud woman named Millicent Harrigan, and the one thing that she taught me was to always keep my head held high. She always did and though she’s getting on in years, not one day goes by that I don’t remember something that she told me. We are taking a beating from all sides right now, but we can’t give in to this ploy that our government has come up with.
Had they collected the money that is owed to us from the Cap Jaluca debacle, we would have money to put people to work. Had they not spent millions on an airport that is still unfinished, there would be money for infrastructure. Had they invested in our schools we would not be stuck with a system that fails most of our kids. Had they not been interested in giving themselves a 25 per cent pay raise in an attempt to get an exorbitant gratuity bonus upon retirement, there would have been money to build our college.
This government, and the one before it, has done a magnificent job of deconstructing Anguilla; 50 years later and we’re worse off than when we started. When we started, we had our own airlines; we had several schooners and one or two steel hulls which plied the waters of the Caribbean. We built our own banks and did extremely well until management got in over its head.
So, as we get ready to put on our Sunday best to hear Victor extol the virtues of patriotism, let us take every word he says with a grain of rock salt. Let us remember those whom I’ve alluded to, all of them, named and un-named. Let us ask ourselves, is this what they fought for, is this what we fought for? If it is, then let us do what the young calypsonians from the BVI admonished us to do last year, “Take your licks and shut up.” , by chance if that is not the case, then we’ve got work to do.
So until next time, take my aunt’s advice and keep your head up high. May God bless us all and may He continue to bless Anguilla despite of ourselves.
Tyrone Hodge
Dear Editor,
Neville’s sudden passing has shocked us here in Chicago, friends and musicians. A very sad day. I had lunch with Neville in St. Maarten on March 10th; we talked about recording again sometime and his new school of music.
I had a 23-year friendship with Neville. It was an honour to have collaborated with him on his two CDs, and they will always be played on my radio show, Jazz Tropicale, heard every Sunday at 10:00pm CST on WDCB 90.9 FM www.wdcb.org. Neville would often listen and occasionally call me at the station. I plan to broadcast some special segments about Neville this Sunday.
And our concerts in Chicago, plus 5 years of concerts with my band in St. Maarten and Anguilla – these will never be forgotten. Neville taught us so much about Caribbean life and culture.
And I just found out that his mother recently passed!
My sympathy to Veronica, Chester and the entire York family. It’s a very sad day here in Chicago.
Marshall Vente
In Saint Martin we forever whining
On the French side we wine n dine
For Carnival Dutch side we jump
And wine
And every other day
We whine
Not working
We whining
No money fo shopping
We whining
We ain’t voting
But we whining
And we whining whining
When we don’t wine n
dine
We jumping
And wynning
And when we done
We pick up we problems
And go back te we
Daily whining
And when we ain’t have
No wine
Tiz only then we whining
For we Saint Martiners
Are just a set ah
Whiners
We wine n
Dine
And still whining
All the time
Raymond Helligar aka “Big Ray”
(Curaçao Chronicle)
At the time of independence, in 1975, Dutch subjects living in the colony of Suriname were given the choice of Dutch or Surinamese citizenship. Amazingly, 220,000 out of a population of 450,000 left Suriname for the Netherlands – a level of migration that is staggering in size and scope. Many people didn’t have much faith in the economic future of the country.
From the former Dutch Antilles, the “mass” immigration started in 1985 when the big oil refineries on Curaçao and Aruba closed down their operations. Today, many individuals from the Dutch-speaking Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten immigrate to the Netherlands to find jobs, complete their education, and lead a better quality of life.
About 28.5 million Latin American and Caribbean people live outside the countries where they were born, 70 per cent of them in the United States, according to a new study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). People migrate to break the cycle of poverty – generational as well as situational poverty. Of all means to fight poverty, migration has proven to be the most effective.
Cultural heritage and language turn out to be of little consequence in the decision to pack up and leave. Language, held by many as the main reason for a suitable destination, has little impact. It was hilarious to attend a swearing-in ceremony for new US citizens by a Judge, whose spoken English was so bad that nobody understood her: her bailiff had to do the translation.
Cultural heritage once praised as the inalienable value of each individual, turns out to be transportable. After hundreds of years, Dutch immigrants in Pennsylvania may still cling to Sinterklaas, herring and “skutse zeilen,” but they would never consider migrating back to Holland. Hindus in London built their temples, and many never made it back to India in their lifetime. Escaping poverty and creating a better future for your children overrides all arguments of faith and philosophical ideology.
Last year, we witnessed the migration of millions of Middle Easterners, supplemented by millions who were in the waiting rooms of refugee camps in Africa. Recent parliamentary elections in the Netherlands produced a treasure trove of data and analysis. The anti-migration party, PVV, appears to have a staunch support group amongst elderly Surinamers and Antilleans, themselves once immigrants in the ‘70s to ‘90s. Their good luck in their new homeland, Holland, and escape from poverty and tyranny, has not turned them into “selflessness” leaders, concerned for the welfare of others, but rather self-centred opportunists who wish to exclude others from such good fortune.
By Jacob Gelt Dekker
Dear Editor,
“My people, mijn volk, mi pueblo, myn minsken, I have been elected into office to protect our heritage and defend you from them”. Surely this sounds familiar. You have heard it in one or more of the four official political languages of our Kingdom of the Netherlands –English, Dutch, Papiamento, and Frisian. Like it or not, these days heritage is explicitly being wedded to formal politics. As is the case in the four corners of the globe, political elites throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands are claiming to be the guardians of heritage.
By defending our heritage, elected officials and aspirant ministers and members of parliament bellow in every public presentation that they are supposedly protecting our imperilled way of life, our honour, identity and collective survival. The protection “from whom” (the them) question needs to be preceded by the query of what exactly is our heritage?
If heritage is a name for our collective inheritance, is there such a thing as a Kingdom heritage? Or is it wiser to be precise and namely ask, for instance, what is the heritage of Sint Maarten? Or should the question be St. Martin heritage as a Caribbean expression (given that the island consists of a Northern/ French and Southern/Dutch side in the sea of isles where the Gulf Stream originates)? And extrapolating should questioning the heritage of the Netherlands not also be about Europe, since that is where that constituent state is located?
Alternatively given that all constituent states in the Kingdom are ethnically diverse – you encounter expressions and ideas you can also come across in Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Vincent, Grenada, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Morocco, Canada, the United States of America, France, Poland, Hungary, India, Israel, Lebanon, China, Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana, etc., here. And heritage is not the same thing as exclusivist nationalism, should we not also critically cherish the multiple heritages of the old- and newcomers that inhabit our trans-Atlantic federation?
Most political leaders in office will disagree. The flavour seems to be one of favouring the narrowest definition of heritage. Understandable, given that all formal politics is local. If you are elected on Sint Maarten or say the Netherlands, it is from the electorate of these specific constituent states that you receive your vote of confidence or non-confidence. It is a public secret that in all parts of the Kingdom many are hurting economically. Many are uneasy with the emerging multicultural realities, and as a result, many are weary about the future.
Can those who aspire or crave political power ignore this? The opportunist air that Trump, Orbán, Erdoğan, and Le Pen breathe is not so different from that which our main political leaders inhale and exhale.
When times are hard and austerity is the name of the game, a scapegoat needs to be found. Whether it be the political leaders of another constituent state within the Kingdom that are accused of being neo-colonial or kleptocrats, newcomers that are supposedly taking all the jobs and eroding the moral fabric of society, or fellow Dutch citizens who migrated from another part of the federation that are labelled racists or lazy, someone else is blamed for the state not fulfilling its obligation to redistribute. A “they” supposedly stealing our heritage is always assigned to blind the symbolic or demographic majority within the particular constituent states of our Kingdom.
The counter-remedy ought to be a refusal to scapegoat by radically uncoupling heritage from exclusive nationalism. The admittedly imperfect creed that markets distribute while states ideally redistribute ought to be common consciousness throughout the Kingdom. This article of faith ought to be understood as the reason for the existence of government in liberal democracies such as ours. The redistributive function of the state is to enable the working poor and their offspring to improve their economic situation, minimize inequalities between classes, and encourage public debates and programmes that hopefully lead to more acceptance of diverse ways of living.
If what you have read makes some sense to you, should we not summon our elected representatives throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands to be defenders of our socio-economic, civil, and human rights? Isn’t this the common heritage that we should cherish most in these trying times?
Dr. Francio Guadeloupe
President of University of St. Martin
