(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
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”
Dear Editor,
As a long-time timeshare owner (R.I. - 1985) on this beautiful island I have long been aware of the troubles that many of us have had with their ownership teams exceeding the terms of the contracts that owners have agreed to (Not mine!). These usually result in excessive fees tacked on to the annual maintenance fees payable by owners to resorts that have clearly not used the monies received in the proper way.
With timeshare resorts going through ownership changes in order to stay in business, and at the same time failing to perform ‘promised’ maintenance with the fees that owners are contractually obligated to pay, it is the corporate ownership of these businesses that needs to be monitored and controlled with proper ‘timeshare’ legislation. Perhaps the bill(s) pending before the Government right now need to be re-titled as the ‘Contract Authority’ to manage these companies’ failures to abide by the agreements that they enter into with their unsuspecting clients.
To put the burden of the cost of government enforcement upon the people who have chosen to purchase a ‘piece of paradise’ with their timeshare investment is a warped view of what needs to be done. We ‘owners’ have bought into the timeshare experience and have faithfully paid our agreed-upon fees and thus have the right to expect all terms to be followed by the corporations that have taken our monies. This is the problem with timeshare-living in SXM now. The task for the government is to manage the outrageous behaviour of the resort owners, not the thousands of tourist-owners who have lived up to their part without costing the government anything. Incidentally, timeshare owners have also paid their government taxes each year and perhaps this should be seen as having already paid for the upcoming legislation many times over.
I urge the elected officials who will be enacting this legislation to think about what the ‘timeshare legislation’ needs to accomplish. Is it to impose further insult to the past and future guaranteed tourist visitors that the timeshare industry brings to the island, or is it to monitor and ensure that those same tourists are not taken advantage of when they make their investments in St. Maarten?
Jim Giner
Voorheesville, New York
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
Dear Editor,
Parliament’s role is to supervise government which includes pointing out failures and offering suggestions, but also applauding when government takes the right decision. In fact, psychology tells us that reinforcing good performance has a more powerful and lasting effect than negative criticism.
Hence, it is important that parliamentarians also look at the positive things that government has done or is doing and commend them for this. In our society we tend to only focus on the mistakes, failures and on the bad or negative. My pastor, the late Rev. Alwyn Lake, would always say: “there is always some good in the worst of us and some bad in the best of us.” So when the executive branch does things right, parliamentarians should also commend the government or a minister for such.
In this regard, I would like to suggest to our parliamentarians that they should commend the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Silveria Jacobs, for the stand and the decision that she took to have the Youth Extravaganza Show stopped due to the sexually explicit and vulgar content of the programme. As I was not at the show my knowledge of the event is based solely on what I have read, heard and seen of Minister Jacobs’ passionate plea to restore a level of morality in our society. I couldn’t agree more with the honorable Minister. We have reached a point in our society where respect for God, authority, women, people’s property and even life is in a rapid downward spiral. Unfortunately, we are quick to blame the youth about their disrespect and negative behaviour. But the first people to blame are the adults, the parents and the authority figures in our society who should be leading, not only by talking but also by example!
I believe that our parliamentarians should publicly support the stand and decision of the Honourable Minister. It would send a strong message, to our society, that the highest supervisory body in the country embraces and promotes certain moral standards in our society. According to Minister Jacobs an investigation into all that transpired on the night of the Youth Extravaganza is being conducted. I propose that when the report is ready, the Minister should send it to Parliament who in turn should invite the Minister to present the findings as to what went wrong and offer solutions to avoid such a disrespectful display by our youth at such shows in the future. After the Minister’s presentation, parliamentarians should continue to promote an awareness of what is acceptable behaviour as they carry on the conversation via the media and with groups and individual members of our society.
I also believe that the church as well as social organisations in St. Maarten should also come out publicly and support the Minister on this issue. To effect change, it is going to take a concerted effort by all concerned, to raise awareness in our society regarding the decline in respect, ethics, standards and morality and to try to restore these virtues in our society.
I also strongly suggest that parliament request our Minister of Justice to investigate and report to parliament, as soon as possible, on the incident that transpired, where one of our youth lost her life during carnival. The St. Maarten Christian Party would hereby like to extend condolences to the family and friends of Rachelle Thomas whose life was snatched away from us so prematurely. We are all shocked that something like this could have happened to one of our youth. Parliament should press upon the Minister of Justice to leave no stone unturned until this case is solved. Sadly, the solving of this case will not bring back Rachelle, but it can surely help to prevent such an incident from happening again.
During this tragic incident it was admirable to see some of our youth take on the responsibility to reach out to their peers, the community and even the world via Facebook, as they called on people everywhere to pray for Rachelle. Spearheading this movement was one of Rachelle’s close friends, Theodore de Weever who must be commended for the tremendous role that he played in reaching out to the community and requesting prayers for his friend. Theodore and friends, you have given the adults in this community hope that all is not lost among our youth.
Another area where our parliament and government can show positive support is when groups in our community come together for a positive cause. This past weekend, some fifteen to twenty evangelical churches came together for the annual Believers’ Connection Convention. The governments of both sides of the island were invited. The government of the French side sent a representative who addressed the congregations on behalf of the Collectivité. Regrettably, not one representative from the government on the Dutch side took the time or made an effort to attend the opening ceremony or one of the other services. I know that several of our public officials attended or participated in Carnival. Yet, not one official from the Dutch side showed the churches any form of respect. I am pretty sure that if elections were imminent many of these politicians would have attended the Convention.
Wycliffe Smith
Leader of the Sint Maarten Christian Party
