My people,
The script was very familiar on Wednesday evening when I was the only Member of Parliament who voted against cutting your benefits and in some cases salaries.
I have asked over 100 questions about these cuts to civil servant benefits and in some cases salaries. I have gotten carefully worded non-answers which clearly show that these decisions were not based on any tangible studies, reports, union involvement, nothing. While other MPs were satisfied to vote for cuts based on very little and with no information about when your rights will be restored to you, I simply could not. We have seen too many “temporary” measures on St. Maarten become permanent.
Even with that truth in mind, the Prime Minister stood up in Parliament and questioned on which side of history we will stand.
History will show that I am not afraid to stand alone while fighting for my people. I could never in good conscience support making people’s lives more difficult by passing laws that do exactly that. Political opponents can call me what they want, but the people of St. Maarten know where I stand. I cannot in good conscience vote to infringe on people’s rights, salaries and benefits knowing that there is no substantiation for these cuts, financial or otherwise, other than the Dutch say so. No matter how you fluff it up, no matter what amendments you add, it all boils down to cutting what people have worked hard for and infringing on their basic human rights.
Some have been quick to publicly dismiss my warnings and concerns. Every single thing that I have raised a red flag about since November 2020 is now coming to pass. And no-one can say or point out otherwise.
This notion that they keep pushing that “base salaries will not be touched” is what you call a shallow lie. Shallow because they refuse to delve deeper.
Dr. Martin Luther King said there is nothing more dangerous than willful ignorance and conscientious stupidity. People planned around their increments, bonuses and other benefits. When you do not have these things, you have to turn to that same base salary that they keep boasting will not be touched, to now choose which obligation you will pay. So, the NAf. 300 you planned for now has to come out of a base salary that is already committed to other obligation. So, the base salary is being touched, not by their hand directly, but by their actions nonetheless.
And it will not end with these three laws. These laws are just the beginning of much bigger issues for this country and its people, neatly wrapped up in the COHO [Caribbean Reform – Ed.] entity and the country packages. Here too I have been asking questions and raising the alarm for months. And here too you should not expect to hear the truth from this government. What you will probably hear is a concerted effort to manipulate the world to make it give them what they want, not tell you what really is. This government has proven that they are incapable of pursuing what is meaningful and right for its people. They rather choose what is expedient and flawed, and never speak the truth.
They will make it sound like the choice before them was not a simple one among many, that it was the only one. They will try and make you believe that they could not find the same equivalent of government waste to cut. Ask the government what operational costs they cut and they will tell you gasoline and telephones. Then turn and boast that they were creative.
In the meantime, they have made cutting benefits sound like no big thing. As if single mothers weren’t depending on a bonus, or families don’t depend on vacation pay not to go on vacation, but to pay house insurance. As if all the years you have worked to secure a little extra to try and live a decent quality of life can be just tossed out and tossed up as a win. But they live more comfortably than most of you.
The other dimension to this argument should be looked at through the prism of fairness. The government will impose upon its people measures that their counterparts in the Netherlands will not be subjected to. It goes against the very spirit of UN conventions and is not equal or fair.
They will never tell you that to date they do not have an economic recovery plan. To date! A full year into the pandemic and this government does not have a plan. They have failed in their responsibility to provide a level of stability and creativity that can form the bedrock of an economic recovery. In fact, key to that is maintaining demand in the economy, especially as the recovery of key sectors such as hospitality and tourism will be driven by consumer spending in 2021. That is why the decision to freeze or cut salaries and benefits is just a poor decision for our economy.
We need our people participating in the economy and they simply won’t if they are worrying about their income falling behind or if they just don’t have that income at all.
The same goes for the proposed additional taxes that the CFT want to see levied on St. Maarten. I can’t wait to get to that discussion to see the so-called conscience of some be put to the test after cutting people, then looking to impose more taxes on them. It is an economically illiterate step that will harm the private sector as well as the public sector.
Anyone watching the debate on Tuesday would have seen quite a show on the floor of Parliament. You would think that we were achieving something great with all the sarcastic tones, campaign speeches, gleefully making statements as if we just struck gold. Giggling and laughing and being sarcastic while putting more financial strain on their people. They seemed so proud of themselves that they were making political headway among themselves, totally oblivious to the people of St. Maarten who do not live as comfortably as they do.
And then the Prime Minister pontificated about the careful use of words. That’s funny. You see, I love words and how they are applied. But all my life I have sought to use words to tell the truth. Even more so as I sought public office. Words do indeed have power, words are power, words could be your power.
Words can be a destructive tool for anyone who wants to add an emotional twist to a blatant lie. Words can be a weapon used by someone who without reservation can tell their people to eat crumbs while they eat caviar. Yes, words. You can compile a lot of words in your attempt to answer questions hoping that these words would hide your negligence. But you are effectively saying nothing while exposing your truths to be lies.
With words, truthful, honest words, you can change a life and you can inspire your nation. Unfortunately the words we have heard from this government and its support in Parliament have changed lives for the worse and have depressed a nation, not inspired it. I will continue to fight for you and the people of St. Maarten as long as God gives me the strength to do so. God bless you and your families.
MP Christophe Emmanuel
Dear Editor,
When the Netherlands joined the United Nations in 1945, it committed itself to two fundamental obligations as far as St. Maarten is concerned. The first was to fulfill in “good faith” its obligations under the United Nations (“present”) Charter and the second was to ensure a “full measure of self-government” for St. Maarten.
The idea behind the “full measure of self-government” was to ensure that European colonial powers no longer exercised control over colonized peoples. The United States and Russia had just defeated Nazism in Europe. Just as the United States and Russia had helped to free Europe from Nazi domination, both nations were demanding that European colonial states free their colonial peoples from foreign domination. That was the basis behind the concept of a “full measure of self-government” or decolonization if you will. The Netherlands signed onto the UN Charter and ratified it. Therefore, it is bound to comply with its obligations under the “present charter”.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the “putative” (that which appears lawful, but in fact is not) Kingdom Charter was met with much skepticism by the UN General Assembly in 1955. The members pointed out that a governor, as well as Articles 44, 50, and 51 of the Kingdom Charter were incompatible with a “full measure of self-government”. The members consequently refused to acknowledge the “Kingdom of the Netherlands” and instead addressed Resolution 945X of December 1955 to the “Government of the Netherlands”. They furthermore rejected the Kingdom Charter, and for the first time included two amendments in Resolution 945X stating that it did not grant the peoples of the Netherlands Antilles a full measure of self-government.
The Kingdom Charter, COHO [Caribbean Reform Body – Ed.], and the CFT [Committee for Financial Supervision] agreements are of the same legal character as an employment contract in which the employee “out of free will” agrees to work for less than minimum wage. We know those types of contracts well on St. Maarten. What the Netherlands is attempting with the Kingdom Charter, COHO and the CFT was, and is, to cheat St. Maarten out of its full measure of self-government. (The UN wisely saw through that move with the Kingdom Charter in 1955.)
The fundamental problem with the Kingdom Charter is that it stands in direct contradiction to the UN Charter. Once the full measure of self-government has been achieved, there is simply no role for the Netherlands, which includes the CFT and COHO, to play in these parts any longer. In 1945, the Netherlands signed onto the UN Charter and ratified it. Therefore, it is bound to comply with its obligations under the “present charter”. Simply put, there is no lawful role for neither the Kingdom government nor the CFT on St. Maarten.
Pro Soualiga Foundation
Dear Editor,
This topic deals with the real-life situation especially in this age of pandemic.
We all are affected in one way or the other by this pandemic. This situation is what we call adversity.
Adversity a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune. Adversity is a test of your character.
When adversity strikes we should get spiritually stronger (trusting in Jesus) to overcome the situation.
It demands a change in lifestyle, is it financially or physically. Your survival depends on how you see the world and your faith in God.
No matter what, be honest still, help people still, in any form you can. Strengthen yourself by doing things to overcome the challenge.
Remain humble still. Be loving still. Pray more often than ever before. Stay faithful still. Trust in God still.
Love your family still. Seek advice and counseling if you need help from people who have the capability to assist.
No matter what, do not expect anything for free, let the helper grant you grace and show appreciation.
Your character in adversity shows people the real man or woman who you really are.
Do not steal, ask and be grateful for what is given. Appreciate and be thankful for whatever is given to you.
Smile and continue to laugh, it takes away stress. A rainy day today does not mean a sunny day will not come tomorrow.
Nothing lasts forever. Even the bad things will pass.
Adversity can be a change to make you a better more honest person, more humble than you were ever before.
As strange as it is, it can be the path for you to depend on Christ more than ever before.
Remember the story of Samson, in his blindness he was able to see God like never before.
Conclusion: please make the best out of every challenging situation and never give up.
Choices have consequences, choose wisely.
The Patriot Miguel Arrindell
Dear Editor,
An inventory of the eclectic tastes of the lives of those whose minds were cultivated to delight in the pleasures of higher mental operations such as the sciences, art and ideological activities will certainly reveal a stark contrast when compared with the tastes of a life and mind left largely undeveloped, unschooled and suited for mere manual labour. The cultured class with their refined sensibilities and air of urbaneness derives pleasures from their mode of being that are qualitatively superior and healthier to those of a lower class, whose agreeable pursuits, it seems, revolve around a perpetual state of instinctual satisfaction.
The sublime or the elevated human, a polished end product of culture and breeding, acquires his nourishment for body and mind from sources far removed from the reaches of man the animal. Give man the animal or the organism his daily recommended dosages of calories or more, strenuous physical work, and an abundance of opportunities for disposing of libido concentrated in his genitals and he would be forever grateful to you for prolonging his much loved mechanical state of existence. In biblical parlance man the animal wants bread alone.
But his counterpart, the exalted superorganic creature whose needs and recurring discontents sustains his quest for higher and nobler things, wants culture; his renunciation of a life governed purely by the instincts now puts at his disposal reserves of instinctual energies dedicated and in service for creating new worlds and elaborate modes of gratification. The high-brow man has resolved to labour mentally to discover his nature and the life proper to his kind. Man the human doesn’t want to go back to the woods once he has tasted culture, he resents that primal appeal we all share and which threatens to relegate him back to the animal kingdom just as an indifferent member.
Sublimated man needs to derive pleasures not just from the erogenous zones of his body filled with erotic potentialities, he also requires constant cognitive stimulation. He wants to excite his imagination and rarefied senses, he desires a life of the mind, to apprehend its role in existence and longs for the pleasures of cognized events, he wants to discover truths that once resided in the hearts and minds of poets, philosophers, musicians and painters. And for this he must engage the likes of Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and their peers, and whenever so desirous of reaching even higher emotional states he must inevitably reach for the champion Wagner.
Discovering the subliminal messages and truths embedded in the androgynous nature of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa riddled with symbols of the sexual completeness and nature of man as both masculine and feminine must tickle his fancy. Urbane man must be so constituted that he finds sensual the cubist form of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques, with its characteristic multi-perspectival style. Piet Mondrian stand-alone forms and the artistic goals of the other abstract expressionist painters he ought to find interesting too.
The poets who are the heirs to the mystical tradition must rile and soothe his emotions, the poets who anticipated Freud in discovering the unconscious were revealing truths and ideas to man long before Freud discovered a scientific method (psychoanalysis) for making our unconscious purposes and ideas conscious. Debonair man should be equipped to savour the poetic sweetness of a Rilke's, “unlived lines of the body”. Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum) must salivate his existential angst. And whenever Karl Marx’s Marxism is unceremoniously introduced as a potential conversational piece, the cultured man by now intoxicated from his repository of luxurious pleasures would have been impatient to explain why Marx said philosophers up until Hegel have merely interpreted the world, what is needed now is action. The preceding an obvious precursor to Marx’s revolutionary fervour.
Pondering the revolutionary ideas and scientific principles of Albert Einstein must continue to replenish his economy of joy. The residues of Victorian mannerisms, politeness, morals and sexual attitudes manifested in the ruling class of former colonies of the empire the enlightened man must hasten to adhere to and observe; knowing that it happily distinguishes him from the baser and coarser ways of his inferior. The gastronomical and culinary delights of civilized man must extend beyond the sole function of satisfying his pangs of hunger and intake of calories; the selection and consumption of food must be a qualitative experience rather than a laborious and unhealthy gut-stuffing exercise for him.
Seeking out avenues of pleasures that genuinely fulfil the higher needs of a high-minded man is in itself an enjoyable undertaking. Consistently submerging himself in the sea of the aesthetically pleasing enriches the life of exalted man, so much so, that he is forever the object of envy and ridicule from his beastly opposite. Unsuited and unable to exploit the superior tastes and subtleties of cultured man, the beast becomes enraged and angry, constantly repeating it must be the devil in him.
Orlando Patterson.
Dear Editor,
Permit me to start this article by first and foremost commending Sir Alex Rosaria for his article entitled: “The injustice of white and Christian privilege”. I stand in agreement with him and as a scientist in social studies, I shall carry the issue (topic) a bit further.
Indeed, on the 6th of January 2021, the attempted coup d’état on Capitol Hill, America’s greatest symbol of democracy, was not committed by Black Lives Matter, nor a foreign culture of people. Indeed, the images of this shameful day, I saw on television, was crowds storming the security barricades, people climbing up the Capitol Building like animals … the breaking of windows, the breaking of doors, the ransacking of offices, guns drawn, shots fired and seemingly, the placing of explosive devices. What evil!
Indeed, many of these Christian white supremacist groups and organisations in America and elsewhere stand on a foundation built of hate, anger, violence, and racism against other human beings. They pay respect and allegiance only to a “Son”, a “Christ”, a “Jesus”, a “prophet”… They speak only of a “Kingdom of Jesus”. Seemingly they never call God’s name. They never refer to the Creator: The Great Spirit of the Universe, nor to His creation, which begins by respecting another human being, not harming another human being.
These racist Christian organisations in the USA all carry guns, yet they call themselves Christians. We can ask ourselves the important question: Do they trust in the Great Spirit of the Universe, or do they trust in their guns?
As far as I am concerned, God is not a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), nor is He a terrorist and much less a racist. For the Great Spirit of the Universe created all men and women equal and the planet Earth, the lands and the oceans belong to you and to me.
As I wrote in my book, the fourth edition of Le Dictionnaire des Bons et Mauvais Amours (The Dictionary of Good and Bad Loves), today in our world and lifestyles, the concept of Christianity is tightly entwined with capitalism, populism, wealth, health… They preach that Christianity is the best religion and the only “faith” that can get a human being to heaven – when they themselves only refer and “dream” of the space shuttle of NASA that will get them to Mars and to Saturn and Neptune when they finish destroying planet Earth with all manner of “plagues”, pollution, viruses … and what else!
They export their “beliefs” to other countries and cultures and many of these same “Missionaries of Christ” end up in jail or killed by tribal groups, or are found guilty of sexual misconduct. They practise certain rituals, they pray only to a “Jesus”, yet their values are far from the “origins” and they have little or no morals.
Many of them only act under false pretences and in a manner, they fly the “Christian Flag”, they “advertise the Christian etiquette” as a means of safeguarding their “Caucasian identity”, while saying to the world that they are not, for example, a Muslim or Hindu or part of any foreign religion.
May the Great Spirit of the Universe help by bringing order, respect and healing to humanity.
Beverly Richardson
