St. Maarten Private Eye

Roy Marlin was apparently on Lloyd's show but I missed it, I did catch a little of Henri Brookson and his chum Toby the 'butler' who were on right after though.

From what I understand, Roy was talking about how maybe the island should consider staggering development, much in the same way Anguilla is doing, even going so far as putting a moratorium on development last year. Problem is, his talk doesn't reflect in his actions.

Henri actually mentioned SXM PE and Emilio's video, he was casting doubt on Emilio's intentions towards his property and that this letter that Brookson has a copy of changes the context of what Emilio says.

What he neglected to mention is that KABNA was a federal government department and that all this was taking place around the time of higher supervision.

The simple letter itself is hardly a sales agreement, it looks like the opening of negotiations and I think it can be assumed that at the possibility of sale became more likely then Emilio would have thought more about it, with more conditions.

What would be very interesting would be to find out what the reply from Mr van Deiman was.

As for the mineral rights condition, Emilio might have thought one day gold, diamonds or oil might be found there, who knows. The point is that Emilio say's he would sell it to the Federal Govt or the Queen, because they would 'take good care of it', make it into an 'historical park'.

Henri can spin and puff out smoke as much as he wants to try to confuse the situation, bringing along his buddy Toby to newspapers and radio shows, it changes nothing.

The IC passed a motion to protect and preserve the estate, the govt promised a 3 man committee and a report, that it would be happy to work with the EWE Foundation to achieve this end. What did we get?

Despite several attempts by the EWE to initiate contacts with govt, nothing has been recieved back. There was no 3 man committee and no report, there is however an archaeological report that Roy has been keeping from the public and interested parties for over 6 months now. Douments are held back and probably even hidden from the public, it's disgusting and disgraceful.

What we have now is court cases because govt was insincere in it's vote for preservation and did absolutely nothing to avoid this situation. Maybe they like it this way, maybe they want to lose so they can get the development that they were originally so enthusiastic about, the Link 7 road, the new governors house, a triffle here and there.

It's a heartbreaking shame we have such a timid media on the island, and they want to put a moratorium on journalists?? You have to laugh or you cry.

LH