Dear Editor,

I wish to bring to the attention of the Police (Traffic Department) through your medium that there are continuous traffic jams with long lines from morning to evening up to 8:00 on Bush Road, Illidge Road and near Afoo Supermarket at Philipsburg. The bottlenecks are at Bush Road Auto Depot, Illidge Road roundabout by Fargo NV and Afoo Supermarket near Super Plaza, Philipsburg.

We are in Christmas and New Year shopping seasons and motorists are not happy with the Police not monitoring the situation. It simply needs one Officer at each place to monitor and guide the motorists.

The taxpayers are being punished by waiting for hours in traffic and this is the time of the year that Police are supposed to show their gratitude towards taxpayers by making their life easier and shopping around pleasant.

The roads are already in horrible conditions and nothing is being done and it is too late for the authorities to do anything. At least Police can do something to make life easier. Business people and civil servants toil and work hard during the day and when returning home have to wait for hours in traffic, causing frustration, anger and waste of fuel and time.

This is a small island and tourists come here to have a nice, pleasant holiday and are wondering how the authorities and Police are unable to manage the simple traffic situation.

I trust that by this letter Police will wake up and do the needed.

Robert Weaver

Dear Editor,

After carefully weighing the decision by members of the 2nd chamber in support of Minister of Interior Affairs and Kingdom relations Mr. Ronald Plasterk to replace the Acting Governor Mr. Julian Woodley I would like to react as follows:

I am in total disagreement with the general statement made that St. Eustatius does not possess sufficient capable individuals to occupy the position of interim Governor to ensure the correct governance of the island. I am intrigued by the thought process that led the minister and his supporters to this conclusion.

According to the press release, the leading factor in this decision is mainly attributed to the consistent unacceptable behaviour of the PLP leader and his supporters. It must be clear to the minister that the behaviour of the current Government should [not – Ed.] be the determining factor in his decisions, but rather remain objective and be diligent in identifying the capability of the cross section majority of this community.

The anticipation of this decision was foreseen due to the reckless behaviour of the current Government. On several occasions the Government was warned and strongly advised against this style of governing and approach. If those in the coalition fail the people by misgoverning, they should do the right thing and relieve themselves of duty and allow others to govern in a manner that is in the best interest of the people.

As a politician I’m not against the Dutch, however, as an ambassador for St. Eustatius it cannot be expected that I will stand and accept the humiliation of the Dutch Government due to the inability of the current local Government to properly manage the island.

We often hear that rules are meant to be broken, however, the people of St. Eustatius have witnessed first-hand the consequences of not adhering to the rules. I am requesting the minister to reconsider the decision made. There are sufficient local, capable, serious and committed individuals that held positions in the executive and island council. The appointment of a Dutch Acting Governor, does not, by no means, guarantee communicative improvement between the local and Dutch Governments.

I acknowledge the absence of the law that mandates any island council member to be removed from office, for that reason I feel if these persons really place country above self, they will renounce their positions and allow a much needed and welcome change to commence the rebuilding of our beloved Statia.

The minister has stated the appointment will last 1 to 2 years; however, I am intrigued to know what the process of appointing a permanent Government will entail. The island’s future should not be gauged by one individual who no longer is able to bear the tolerance of the Dutch Government which resulted in such drastic action by the Dutch Government.

Our Golden Rock deserves better than this; Mr. Plasterk, would the situation’s dynamics be mirrored if the tables were turned? To the Coalition PLP/Merkman we are at a serious crossroads, what is it going to be? new council members? Or a Dutch Acting Governor? The country is watching you, the time is now. You have failed the purpose. Step aside, let’s move on. Accept the fact that the promises made to your supporters as I have mentioned before can’t be kept and can’t come at the cost of misgoverning the territory.

Mr. Plasterk as deputy leader of the United People’s Coalition I’m pleading to you to reconsider your drastic decision. While at the same time, I continue to plead to the ruling coalition to throw in the white flag because you have failed. The end of the year is swiftly approaching and no budget for 2017 has been mentioned. The plethora of court cases that await us isn’t making any significance towards our already tense situations. It is time for the coalition to pull its conclusion and save the island from further suffering and embarrassment. Two months prior, payment of salaries were an issue, debtors not being paid and because of that are refusing to give anymore products to Government which makes the working environment very unpleasant for the civil servants.

This drastic decision is not to be overlooked and should be taken very seriously. We as a people should not just sit back and observe, we must be a proactive community in an effort to safeguard the well-being of our island and its people.

As a representative of UPC I care and as a party we are willing to talk and negotiate as an unseated opposition to find a solution for this problem.

Elvin Henriquez

Deputy Leader United People’s Coalition

Dear Editor,

One day I went to a local Muslim-owned clothing store to buy a couple of shirts. As I was leisurely browsing the shirts in the store, my eyes fell on what looked like a Bible on a small desk. What’s a Bible doing here? I thought. Muslims do not read the Bible. As I knew the merchants fairly well, and being a lover of books, I walked over to the table and picked up the book to examine it. Immediately, one of them came running out of his office towards me, “No, no, don’t touch!” I was surprised at his reaction.

He took the book, which turned out to be a Koran, from me. I used to own a Koran, I told him. It was given to me by a cousin in the USA, who had converted to Islam. (Shortly after his conversion, he went back to being a Christian) I read all spiritual books, as they all contain a measure of truth.

However, my Koran was at least three times the size of this one. “That was an English Koran, he said; we use a lot fewer words in our language. I saw that he was still visibly upset because I – a non-Muslim –­ had touched the book, so i bought my two shirts and left.

What had first attracted me to the Koran is that every sura (chapter) starts with: In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Several weeks later, as I was walking past the store, he came out and invited me in. “Let me explain what we do before we read the Koran,” he said. He led me to the store’s washroom, left the door open and told me to watch. He proceeded to wash his hands and his face, took off his shoes and socks and washed his feet, and even blew his nose to make sure it was clean. After he had done all that, he looked at me and said: “Now I can read my Koran.”

I was impressed. “Do you do that every time you pick it up to read?” “Yes, and we do that 4 times a day.” I then understood why he had been so upset when I had picked up his Koran with unwashed hands. I left the store that day with a new respect for the way Muslims – at least this one – treat their holy book.

Muslims also prostrate themselves on the floor 4 times a day when they pray. They have an awesome zeal for what they believe in. I have never seen them do that here, I guess that’s because they are greatly outnumbered by us Christians.

I don’t know any Christians – myself­ included­ – ­­­­who get on their knees every time they pray; neither do many of us read our Bible on a daily basis … much less 4 times a day.

However, for the last few months I have seen documentaries on YouTube about the far from compassionate and merciful actions of radical Muslim immigrants in the countries that have taken them in, and what I have seen is scary.

They are destroying their host countries, violently attacking non-Muslims on the streets and gang-raping women and children. They are literally and forcefully taking over their host country and demanding that Sharia law be enforced in what they now consider their country.

I assume the immense hatred comes from being indoctrinated from an early age with the contents of the Koran. I suspect the reason the host countries even allow Muslim immigrants to enter is due to the fact they don’t want to be accused by other countries of being politically incorrect.

Political correctness is no doubt an invention by American politicians. They justify their lack of political courage to say NO to whatever or whomever they can’t control by referring to political correctness.

If only Christians were as devoted to their Bible as Muslims are to their Koran, things would be very different. We wouldn’t hesitate to fearlessly defend our Bible teachings as fiercely and as boldly as Muslims defend their false teachings.

Is this ever-growing hostility between Muslims and everybody else ever going to come to an end? Absolutely not! But, the problem is that Muslims are multiplying at a much faster rate than non-Muslims. It’s a matter of only 2 or 3 decades before there are more Muslims in the world than everybody else.

Things are going to get increasingly worse as we near the end of days. God’s Word warns those of us who read it of the unavoidable persecution. “They will kill you, thinking they are doing God a favour.” We are no longer living in the last days, people, but the last hours. There are a great number of friendly, well-intentioned, intelligent people out there who, unfortunately, couldn’t care less about what the Bible says. The Bible is in fact foolishness to their “intelligence.”

There are those who believe in God, but don’t feel the need or take time out to read His word, and would likely not take it seriously if they did. There are those who do read God’s word on a regular basis and therefore know what lies ahead, but are complacently at ease, hoping “it won’t take place in my lifetime.”

There is also widespread spiritual misrepresentation, disclosed by people who should know better. As a child growing up on Aruba, a Dutch teacher once told our class, “Yes, there is a place called Hell, but added – as if he were still quoting Scripture – “God is love and love will not send people to Hell.” He was obviously unacquainted with another Scripture that reads, “God’s severity is as great as his love.”

Jesus spoke more often about Hell than he did about Heaven. Why would God create Hell if he didn’t have a purpose for doing so? And doesn’t the Old Testament say that Hell had to enlarge herself in order to accommodate the number of people that are heading there?

Fortunately, God, who commanded us to seek Him, will not judge us by our ignorance of His word (though ignorance of His word is not a good thing), but by our deeds and how we treat or mistreat our fellow human beings.

I wish all my readers a merry CHRISTmas and a blessed, safe and productive New Year. I encourage all of you to let your primary New Year’s resolution be: Getting to know your Maker! Nothing else in life really matters!

Clive Hodge

Dear Editor,

Please allow me this opportunity to comment on an article I read on page 3 of The Daily Herald of Thursday, December15.

It mentions that the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports Silveria Jacobs would like to see what she calls “S’ maatin” English recognized as the local language of Sint Maarten.

This is a dialect, please Madam Minister, leave it as it is. There is only one English, that is proper English, yes, call it the language of the British colonials, call it whatever you want to call it, but it is recognized the world over. Please do not give our young children, now starting out in life, the wrong impression. Do not tell them that it’s okay to speak badly, and hide it behind “our English”. That will not work, it will only cause them disappointment and embarrassment down the road.

You may recall that in the 1960’s there were people in the USA who wanted the street language spoken among a certain class of American Blacks, to be recognized as the language of all the black people; they called it “Ebonics”. It did not survive as a language as some wanted.

With many Black Americans struggling to get out of poverty, out of the ghettos of the various cities, young black families striving to achieve an upper-middle-class life style, they needed to make sure that their children got into colleges and universities and were able to move up the ladder to a better life. They recognized that they could not accomplish this if those children could not write a letter to a college, nor sit through an interview. They would never get a job speaking so-called “Black English”.

We Caribbean people have always had our own dialects. Every island has its own, some have more than one and there are certain words and phrases within some dialects, which are distinctive to locations within the islands.   Our dialects are a source of inspiration and education and our notable authors and performers have written poems, short stories, songs and novels, making ample use of our various dialects, but when it comes down to it, we, they, all of us, in order to properly communicate and make ourselves understood outside the borders of our various islands, we all speak proper English.

Over the years, I’ve seen and heard Dutch Antilleans try, many of them with much difficulty, to speak and write proper English, and I can now appreciate how difficult it is for people, whose mother tongue is not English, to be able to learn to speak and write the language well.

Minister Jacobs points out that every business person on Curaçao speaks Papiamentu, this may be true, but it is a recognized language, not a dialect. Many of Curaçao’s citizens do not bother with speaking Dutch, they have been taught in school in their own language.

Our children on Sint Marten and the other Dutch islands as well, start life already on the deficit side as far as language is concerned, they are born under the Dutch flag, but do not speak nor write that language well enough to compete with Dutch children born in the European part of the kingdom. Some can speak Papiamentu, but not write it; some speak Spanish, but cannot write it nor even recognize the words when it’s given to them to read; some can understand French, but can neither write nor speak it well enough, and many can speak English, but do not write nor read it well enough.

Sint Maarten, like Statia and Saba, although they fly the Dutch Flag, they live and breathe in English; to put it more succinctly, American English, not even the Queen’s English. I find it hard to believe that our “operating language” is still an issue in this day, age and socio/economic circumstances. I’m concerned about our children and their ability to live today and survive in the world of tomorrow.

They should not be led down a blind alley, thinking that the creation or promotion of a fractured dialect will pass for some new form of English. In my opinion, bad English is just that, bad English.

We live under the Dutch flag, but our people, in their daily lives, operate in English. We live with neighbours from virtually every corner of the world; on any given day you will walk the streets of Philipsburg and encounter people who are from China, Pakistan, India, Croatia, France, Italy, Greece, Algeria, Nigeria and other countries of Africa and Russia. We will meet our Caribbean cousins from every island in the region, also people from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and other South Americans along with our Spanish- speaking friends from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the other Spanish-speaking countries around us.

My friends on Sint Maarten, who are native Sint Maarteners, have no interest in having their children taught “S” maatin” English; those from the various Caribbean countries were equally dismayed when they heard about the Minister’s idea.

So please, let us focus on one singular language by which we can all communicate and thus, be understood; let us teach our children to speak English properly. It is the language of Tourism, the language of International Trade, the language of Finance, the internationally-recognized language with which we can all identify. It is the first language which our children will hear when they pop out of the womb. Let us teach it to our children, the correct way.

However, in so doing, let us not lose sight of our individual identities, our own traditions, our very colourful and wonderful ethnic and cultural diversity, and yes, our native dialects. We will continue to think, write and perform, using our dialects and this is right; we should never lose sight of this, because it is our cultural identity, but let us not cause our children to lose whatever opportunities may be available to them, internally or externally, now or in the future, because they cannot speak nor be understood when they speak.

One Woman’s opinion

Ebbie Schmidt