Dear Editor,
The Dutch Parliament supported the establishment of new “Caribbean Reform” entity including the conditions set by PM Mr. Mark Rutte Cabinet III for short-term and temporary liquidity support for the governments of Aruba, Curaçao, St. Maarten.
This “one shoe-size fits all” proposal from Holland was countered by arguments and counterproposals by the respective governments in the Caribbean. The result is a stalemate.
In the interim, the impasse is an opportunity for government to take a hard look inwards for alternative means of income where there is already an infrastructure in place. Such a source of income can be the offshore market, the yachting industry and private aircraft registry.
The offshore business was once a lucrative income source for islands, especially Curaçao. It subsequently relocated to other countries including Holland, Switzerland and some (British) islands in the Caribbean. While there are new and more stringent regulations that govern the offshore sector, it remains a good way of generating income for governments. Holland continues to attract new offshore companies. This is especially true after “Brexit”.
The governments of St. Maarten, Aruba and Curaçao can benefit from considering a joint approach and taking a closer look at re-establishing a beachhead in this industry, in spite of the fact that some investors are moving out their shares. Case in point: According to a recent “Bloomberg” article written early September by Mr. Benjamin Stupples, Curaçao suffered a financial blow in the offshore sector, after multi-billionaire Mr. Anthony Bamford, chairman of excavator machine giant JCB, took all his shares in the company from a Curaçao holding company to Switzerland.
How do we move forward? Answer: Holland has one Representation with offices in St. Maarten, Aruba and Curaçao. All three islands have their own Minister Plenipotentiary in The Hague. These offices must be more than just the link between the European and Caribbean-based countries. The representatives must continuously “walk the corridors of power” with a plan that includes the revival of the offshore industry.
“Lobbying for investments” through trade missions is well-known foreign and economic relations policy practiced in The Hague for centuries. St. Maarten, Curaçao, Aruba can revive the offshore sector within a short time. The offshore infrastructure “footprints” are still present on the above-mentioned islands and all three islands have previous experience and a deep well of expertise operating in this sector.
Since funds are scarce for everyone it is critically important that the islands pool their resources and jointly make a case to their Dutch counterparts at the Ministries of Economic Affairs for their support and expertise in re-establishing the offshore industry in St. Maarten, Aruba, Curaçao. The Caribbean governments must get together to attract the best tax lawyers in or outside of the Kingdom with one mission only: re-establishing the lucrative offshore business on all three islands.
There’s enough “clean” money in the world to support a healthy industry and attract capital back to our islands.
What is possible for Switzerland and the Netherlands should be possible here as well under the new international tax rules and other regulations that govern this business. The Central Banks of Curaçao and St. Maarten and of Aruba can offer a guiding hand and play a transparent role in this process.
Additionally, St. Maarten must set out a regulation to attract the yachting and private jet sector back to our shores. We are geographically well located and have a beautiful island to market. Other islands are rolling out the “red carpet” to attract quality tourism instead of blindly promoting mass tourism with all the negative consequences we have had the chance to experience over the past three decades.
This will not happen overnight and will require expert advice. The kind of tourist we seek to bring in will not tolerate dirty streets and scattered litter. Nor will they be attracted to cheap store-fronts hawking cheap trinkets. We must face our crime problems head-on and deliver a trouble- and worry-free vacation for our visitors.
Our population can only benefit from a safer island where families can stop worrying about their children and criminals can take their nefarious business elsewhere. This new attitude can only improve our quality of life and bring back prosperity. It will not happen by itself, it will only happen if we all pitch in and do our part.
There are no more high or low seasons to count on thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and its related effects on our economies. Experts are predicting this will last at least for another three years. We are in dire need of decisive and inclusive leadership to get our island moving in the right direction.
In conclusion, with the right frame of mind and desire to work together to achieve a common goal, we can flourish once again. However, achieving this goal requires the input of elected and appointed officials who have the background, integrity, determination and skills to get the job done.
The old way of doing business no longer works and will not work ever again. It’s equally important that citizens no longer accept the “laissez-faire” way of doing business of past that has left our country’s coffers empty today.
Our city center is a “ghost town” at night and many of our citizens including our pensioners are left poor and destitute. They are also prisoners in their homes, afraid or unable to venture out. We can do better.
Gracita Arrindell
President – People’s Progressive Alliance
Dear Editor,
It is often said that love conquers all. But the question is what is love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-5. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
“The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34:6)
God, who is love (1 John 4:8), suffers long with sinners. And that’s why those who are born of God and know God also lovingly suffer long with sinners. Love is not permissive; it doesn’t tolerate sin, abuse, or injustice in the sense of enabling those things. We are to confront them. But we do so in the spirit of Exodus 34:6 and in the power of the Spirit of 1 Corinthians 13, remembering that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” and that “love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). A love that never ends is a love that suffers long.
Man’s love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend, sexual passion or desire. But that love of man seldom lasts. The reason: it is not long-suffering. Most human love depends on the situation, not on commitment.
Man’s love depends on financial status, health or feeling. God’s love has nothing to do with financial status, health or feelings. God’s perfect plan of salvation: “He or she who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he or she who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him or her.” (John 3:36).
People reject Christ because they love their sin and they hate having it exposed by God’s light.
The 10 commandments are God’s everlasting laws that we should obey, but that is the obstruction to the masses’ lifestyle. Conclusion, God’s love is everlasting and God’s judgment is everlasting.
The first thing to understand about the final judgment is that it cannot be avoided. Regardless of how we may choose to interpret prophecy on the end times, we are told that “it is appointed to men once to die but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We all have a divine appointment with our Creator. The offensive truth is a hard pill to swallow but it is still the truth.
Choices have consequences. Choose wisely.
The patriot Miguel Arrindell
Dear Editor,
The long-anticipated CARICOM Travel Bubble is now in operation! It went into effect on Friday, September
18, in keeping with a decision made at a Special Emergency CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting one week previously.
The defining feature of a COVID-19 Travel Bubble is that persons, entitled to participate in the Travel Bubble, are not required to take a COVID-19 test nor undergo a period of quarantine in order to travel to countries that are within the Bubble.
Our CARICOM Heads of Government took a major step towards resuscitating the COVID-19 challenged travel and tourism sectors, with their agreement to institute a Travel Bubble among CARICOM Member States and Associate Members, which meet the agreed criteria from Friday, September 18.
The Heads took the decision at a Special Emergency Session on Friday, September 11, at which they acknowledged that the past six months have been a very challenging period globally and regionally, as countries have struggled to cope with the effects of the novel coronavirus. They noted that for CARICOM, it has been particularly difficult, given the high dependence in most of the economies on the travel and tourism sectors.
In agreeing to establish the Bubble, the Heads were guided by a comprehensive report from the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) which provided recommendations on how the Bubble would operate, and laid out the eligibility criteria for countries to participate.
The recommendations included that countries would be categorised ranging from those with no cases to those which had low, medium, high and very high risk with respect to the rate of positive cases over a 14-day period; the level of risk would be determined by the number of positive cases per 100,000 of the population within a
14-day period; only those countries with no cases and those in the low-risk category would be allowed to participate in the Bubble. CARPHA will assess relevant data to advise on participation in the Bubble.
Heads of government agreed that travellers from countries within the Bubble would be allowed entry without being subjected to PCR testing prior to arrival and would also not have to undergo quarantine restrictions. Travellers may have to be subjected to screening on arrival. Such travellers should, however, have been resident in a Bubble country (or should not have travelled to a country outside of the Bubble) at least 14 days prior to the date of travel!
It is agreed that initially, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines will be in the Bubble as they presently meet the criteria. Other Member States and Associate Members will be allowed to participate when they meet the criteria.
It has been definitively confirmed that as of Tuesday, September 22, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Barbados have all put their arrangements in place and have commenced operating the Travel Bubble.
David Comissiong
Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM
By Alex Rosaria
Recently I participated in the JCI Willemstad panel discussion Peace is Possible. My intervention was based on power shifts in the world that make peace difficult to attain.
Undeniably power is shifting from the US and Europe to Asia. Horizontal power shifts like these are not new, however. We’ve seen power shift from Persia to Alexander the Great, from Greece to Rome and Europe to the US. What’s different this time is that power isn’t moving from one center to another center (or a bipolar US-USSR system). Rather, power is being redistributed among many players. Gone are the days of one superpower, as we see alternative power centers building up in China, India and Brazil, among others.
Totally new is that as the above-mentioned horizontal shifts are taking place, power that traditionally belonged to nation states is moving to a virtual global space. Think of this space as a digital environment in which individuals, groups and organizations interact, shop, create, innovate and design virtually instead of doing this in a physical environment. Internet, satellite communication, data, private information, shoppers, traders, financiers, speculators and designers all now live in a virtual space.
Before this shift it went without saying that these activities were subjected to local regulations, rules of law, public prosecutors and courts. Yet, in this virtual space this is not the case. People here can act almost without constraint. The problem arises when justice and courts realize that enforcing claims against those committing infractions come from places where laws differ widely from one to another. Suddenly we realize that activities worth USD trillions are beyond the reach of Central Banks and Financial Intelligence Units. Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), consumer rights, privacy laws, tax laws, among others, becomes a major cause of concern for citizens, IPR owners and local governments as they realize that a great deal of power that used be encased by nation-states is now gone.
This virtual space is also populated by the things national governments have spent a great amount of time to regulate or eliminate like hate speech, intolerance, fake news, hacking, stalking, international criminality, terrorism and interference in elections, just to name a few. This trend is being accelerated by the social media platform. It has proven difficult to ensure accountability since users of social media usually consent to terms and conditions of the social media companies which give them a legitimate right to collect, share and use such data.
The migration of power will have consequences for everyone, also Curaçao. We must realize that peace and security is not about having the strongest army, the best police force or finest court system. We’ve seen that even if you are the most powerful nation on earth, nevertheless, those bad people who inhabit that global space can attack your city on a sunny September day.
One of the challenges of our time is to bring rule of law to the virtual global space. In my master’s thesis I argued for a United Nations code of conduct for multinational corporations (see the Swiss journal World Competition June 1991) because unregulated international trade gave multinationals – many with budgets larger than medium-size countries – a free pass to commit many abuses in Third World Countries of which the Nestlé’s Baby Killer Case, was perhaps the most abhorrent. Today the risks associated with globalization go beyond mere codes of conduct.
As a small island we are particularly vulnerable. Our actions are neither confined to itself, nor is it sufficient for us to control our own territory. We may already have or plan to legislate local laws against hate speech, fake news or election meddling, but we’re without defense if those perpetrating these actions operate beyond our shores, in global spaces.
In spite of obvious limited financial and administrative resources we need to actively participate in and pursue treaty-based organizations to ensure that the rule of law governs the relations between States of all sizes. We must realize that we can’t continue to not comply with the World Trade Organization and not assenting to Kyoto Protocol (both are examples of treaty-based platforms).
The most important thing we can do is to find out what we can do with others. Our capacity to network with others will determine how successful we are. We’ll have to deal with people with whom we do not always share their values, but with whom we share common interests. We are now interlocked in a way which has never been the case before. In the past we’d call the Minister of Justice about security issues. Now we’d want to talk to the Minister of Health because of pandemic disease, the Minister of Telecommunication because of a threat of cyber warfare, and the Minister of Governance because of election meddling.
This brings me to the last point. Our government is constructed based on vertical hierarchy and specialization of tasks. This is the wrong type of structure to have. We need to network externally with others, but perhaps more importantly we need to network horizontally within our own government.
~ Alex David Rosaria (53) is a freelance consultant active in Asia and the Pacific. He is a former Member of Parliament, Minister of Economic Affairs, State Secretary of Finance and UN Implementation Officer in Africa and Central America. He is from Curaçao and has an MBA from University of Iowa (USA) ~.
Dear Editor,
I understand now why St.Maarten, Aruba, Curaçao keep failing in negotiating with Holland. The approach is wrong from the beginning.
A wise negotiator establishes the relationship before proceeding further. You are best positioned to negotiate when the other party respects you, not only as a businessperson but as a human being.
Trust, which is gained through that respect, is the key to successful negotiation. We of the Dutch Caribbean approach negotiating with Holland telling ourselves, “Don’t trust the Dutch.”
In every negotiating act, there must be some trust. If there is no trust then do not start. But in St.Maarten and Aruba and Curaçao’s manner, I believe they are afraid to fail or they have an inferiority complex. Enter a negotiation without proper preparation and you’ve already lost. Pay attention to timing. Leave behind your ego. Listen well. Ask what is possible, and expect to compromise. You must offer and expect commitment.
Don’t absorb their problems. Both parties in a negotiation must trust that the other side will keep up with promises and agreements. A negotiator must have the skills to implement his promises after bargaining ends. The conclusion is to make sure from both sides that the objective and the time of fulfillment are set and will not change.
Emotion, luck, and magic have no place in a successful negotiation. I quote now from a professional negotiator: “It takes an iron gut, homework, street smarts, and unblinking discipline. These keys will unlock your ability to get the best deal possible under any circumstances. Preparation is key.
“Know about the party you’re negotiating with so you can capitalize on your strengths and the party’s weaknesses. If the other party is very experienced, that means he or she also has a history that could contain useful information. If possible, talk to business associates who have dealt with this person before. Many negotiators develop patterns and certain styles that you may be able to use to your advantage.”
St. Maarten, when negotiating you must know your strengths and what you can offer or not, and be honest with it. Never lie in negotiating. People can forgive, but trust is always difficult to regain.
Stop believing every Dutch person is bad and has no good intentions, that is your emotions acting without the benefit of your intellect. If the major superpowers like the USA, China, Europe can negotiate weapons of mass destruction deals, why can we not negotiate financial deals?
If you cannot or are not willing to deal with Holland why do you want to be in government? This present situation of major challenges is the best opportunity to show St. Maarten people you are the people or person best to lead St.Maarten. If you are afraid, you are not ready for prime time. The people in St. Maarten want to see leaders who are not afraid of a challenge and are willing to instill hope through positive action. If you want to be independent you must learn to negotiate.
Choices have consequences, choose wisely.
The Patriot Miguel Arrindell
