St. Maarten Private Eye

I do believe some words have been read or misinterpreted wrongly on this thread. While Patriot is correct to state that everyone and Holland is responsible, he states not to blame the few that take up public office. I totally disagree with that statement. Our elected officials are there to serve the people to the best of the peoples interest. If one goes back to the first post to the top of this page, the writer was trying to argue that the color of the peoples skin is not the issue rather their competence is. Indonesia and Suriname were in a better position to assume independance than St.maarten and a mess was made of both countries.
While Suriname is a stable country at the moment, it was not so in the late 70's and early 80's. Many Surinamers left the country to Holland by the thousands back then.
Infact, many were using the Netherlands Antilles as a stepping stone to the Netherlands up untill recently (maybe this is still going on) the people that had a Suriname passport would come to SXM, work for 5 years and get a Dutch passport and immeditaly leave to the Netherlands.
Indonesia is in turmoil. So the arguments were more about how prepared we are for independance, are we prepared to take care of our pension for the elderly? or medical insurance? free education for all children? are we prepared to run this island efficiantly? can our boys and girls in blue guarantee our safety for us and our visitors? Do we have educated and competent people leading us into the big world?
I do believe that Holland will never grant independance based on the United States will put pressure on them to make sure that these islands will not become a threat to their national security, and than means influence from China, from Taiwan, from Venezuela, even from Cuba. Our island would be open to more corruption with independance, for sure in the beginning. The islands people and leaders have to mature a whole lot before any type of independance is granted.
Listen to Duncan, he knows what he is saying, I doubt if the islands politicians are listening to him though.