St. Maarten Private Eye

Great tirade! Laude!
Oh, and by-the-bye Sarah just announced that her party will get a more suitable name: Pecunia non olet.

'O sweet Saint-Martin's Land
Where corruption is at hand
With dealers on the sea and where illegals flee
O I love thy Paradise
Sarah's toes are oversize (twice)'

or Sarah's ears are oversize :)

Whether you dislike or like Sarah or any other politician for that matter, the fact is Holland is not correct or fair either. I agree with sarah, we have bent over back wards and to date, Holland has not made true on its promises.

And worse, under the watch of Curacao and Holland, SXM so called developed into a crime ridden society, now sxm wants to take the reigns to clean itself up, the same mess created by Holland is being thrown in our face, I mean get real. Remember how we solved the VKS, the Police Cars, the Soualiga patrol etc etc. Where was Holland and Curacao then?

Where do we go from here, I honestly think we have to go back to the people and take stock of where we are, now eight years after the vote for status change and ask ourselves, what we, the people really want.

- dutch passport?
- no taxes?
- status quo? bla bla bla

My hunch tells me that most people just want to keep their dutch passport and for the rest dont want to rock the boat. Sadly most of those same people jump ship when they think the same boat is going to sink.

In my opinion St. Maarten has to rally anyone here who loves this place and want to make it better and get cracking. And about the National debt, I believe we can pay it off ourselves, we dont need Holland for that!. Remember we owe ourselves, not Holland!

The Patriot

The more educated people on the island cannot understand where Sarah is coming from.
She has not bent over backwards as you state, there is no code of conduct, there is no transparancy, there is corruption rooted in her EXCO with obtaining govt. land for themselves (see Roy Marlin building near Tropicana Casino) the EXCO uses their contacts who are awaiting permits for bartering gifts such as new roofs for their homes, renovation of their homes. pools build at their homes, new homes for Commissioner (see Louis Laveist living in Pelican Key) basically it would appear to anyone with a sound mind that politicians on SXM go into government to first fix up themselves and only around election time pay attention to the voters needs.
Now we have Commissioner Heyliger repeating his grandfather old yoke of wanting independance. Now what I would want to hear from Heyliger is how he intends to solve the youth violence problem under independance? what if we start to see the same problems like in Guyana and Trinidad with violent youth and ex-police officers kidnapping people for ransom? the youth and others start to rule the neigborhoods and communities? where they establish law and order in their gangster style?
Who will come to help us then? where will the money come from to tackle crime and violence?
The most recent case involving Holiday and Loor and I am sure more to come, is a clear and present danger in our police department, what you say??? this is not for the Island Government to tackle??? so the Feds are doing fixing it and Minister Dick becomes the sacrificial lamb? the fact is that Holiday is local, and he will go down as the worst police department manager in recent history.
He was supposed to be paying attention to his force, not his cricket team. His police officers are demorilised, need training and need tools to work with.
SXM cannot handle it's justice system, cannot handle it's police force and cannot handle crime and violence issues with anything.
Sarah wants to sell to her people that she does not need the Minister to put conditions in place? is she really serious?
Who in their right mind thinks that SXM will obtain any type of country status with a very visible corrupt police department and corrupt government officials who have made a bussiness, make that a huge corporation out of selling entry permits, work permits. Permits to reside and work and be able to re-enter the island have become a huge bussiness for lots of folks in certain departments.
And some of these same persons who are involved with the selling of permits at the right price are heading political campaigns of certain politicians.
So yeah, ofcourse Sarah and her team don't enjoy hearing the Dutch Prime Minister words, it would stop their Carnival.
And by the way, The Netherlands will not grant any type of independance to little SXM run by crooks as the United States will not want a little island in the Caribbean that will be unstable and open to crooks from China, Arab terrorists, Taiwan and money and drug laundering lords.

Theo ballin' about "we" (with we, Theo means he and his family) don't need debt relief and should seek Independance because Holland wants to put annoying rules & regulations in place that in 10 years, "we" don't come knockin' down their doors again.

So If I understand correct: Theo wants to BORROW $ 800 million on the international capital market to SERVICE a DEBT instead of having Holland cancel the dept in its entirety. So let's then put all SXM's depts into perspective:

- Airport: $ 120 million (at least)
- New G'ment Building: $ 100 million
- New Harbour expansion: $ 50 million
- Pay of SXM's share of the Antillean dept: $ 800 million

This means that the moment "we" go Independant, "we" already have an accumulated dept of almost $ 1.1 BILLION which is US$ 22.000,- for each legal resident on the Dutch side!

Yes, I agree that SXM should not allow Holland to meddle too much in its internal affairs and we should have as much atonomy as possible. On the other hand, people on SXM would like their leaders to be accountable and be responsible with their tax money. To have an independant Budget Control Organ in place to check how our tax money is being spent, is MOST WELCOME in the eyes of many residents on SXM!

Um ... what tax money? No offence, but I can tell you that there's not much coming in. Balkenende knows that too :)
I believe it was a mere 1 million, so ...
Let's pray for money, while kneeling in front of the Ara Theodoris.
Or make him sell that Range Rover!

Anyway, he did some good things too. I totally love the new airport and boardwalk.
L'addition, s'il vous plaît!

True, he did do some good things. He only waited the year before elections to execute most of the projects but that's how them policticians like to operate.

I love the Boardwalk & Airport too. Hell, I love Ferrari's too but that doesn't mean I can afford them. O no wait: lemme go to the bank and borrow some money like uncle Theo proposes.

SXM likes to live beyond her means. Look at most people: bent over backwards servicing big loans to drive that flashy car. Politicians just the same: the only difference is that they like to spend your money for their benefit.

Please charge my credit card.

Yeah, let's just have you pay for everything!

How incredible noblissimo of you to make us an offer like that!

Oh wait, I didn't quite catch your name...

This one was written a few weeks ago about the Dutch guy who proposed selling the NA on Ebay and the faux indignation and exagerated offense from NA politicians. Hady has posted a new one about Sarah and in order to maintain some kind of order to blog threads I'm going to close this one to comments for a while.

Please use the new blog post to comment on the story or to reply to previous comments here. Cheers. - Flipper

SXM PE Blog Post - Not if but what. - SXM New Status - 15th February 2008

a little island in the Caribbean that will be unstable and open to crooks from China, Arab terrorists, Taiwan and money and drug laundering lords.

Can we switch Theo and Sarah, anyone?
He gets the job done even though Gerard Bijnsdorp is having a field day on traffic and Theo's potholes. He seems to get the job done. Check out the Mega Festival venue we're getting.
Women, 40 toilets.. you can't ask for more with all the beers, chicken legs and johnny cakes we crave so much. even during election time.

God help us all!

I feel Dr. Voodoo is being a bit harsh with Sarah, I should hope she wants to be our first Prime Minister! After all , she is a politician and thats what politicians do,
further she has put a great deal of work in to secure our new status.
My worry is that I am convinced we will throw out the baby with the bath water.
Where are we going to get the officals to support the politicians in governing the
country?: i.e. I heard Kenneth Lopes of the Labour department on the radio this
morning going on about mediation. The kindest thing I can say is that it was painful
to listen, this man is barely articulate, he droned on and on never really saying
anything. If this is the type of people who will be in charge of the island affairs
we are in deep do-doo.

You seem to be missing the big picture here.Look around this island and look at the damages on our environment and incurred the last six years. It is the politicians that need to apologize to the people of Sint Maarten, they have let them down in every way. They have granted permits without doing any studies on the impact these new developments would have on the environment. On top of that, these casino's and new developments are given huge tax breaks for periods of 5 to 10 years! The beaches are all foreign owned. The roads, transportation, garbage, electricity bills, are all in dire need of restructuring or supervision.Corruption exists in all Governments, what's different is, in civilized countries it is talked about, printed and challenged. The people of Sint Maarten need to realize that the corruption in their Government is not a reflection or the fault of the many hard working,honest people of this island. The Government of Sint Maarten is corrupt, sorry but let the truth be spoken.

Another tempest in a pee pot, Brinkman makes a statement casting too wide a net,here are plenty of Antillians who are neither corrupt or thieves just like there are plenty who are! This man should know better then to say the whole of the Antilles is corrupt.
Of course some of us started huffing and puffing claiming they have to respect us,refusing to meet with the entire delegation until this guy ate some humble pie. The question is, who will suffer because the Dutch delegation was sent packing. Does anyone think Brinkman cares in the least? I read in the paper today that about 50%of the Dutch people think their Government should pull the plug on the Antilles, if that should happen who will we expect to pay our bills?
Just as a aside, it is a fact that on this little island in the sun there is a abundance of thieves, scam artists, embezzlers, gangsters in suits and so on so I see no point in throwing a hissey fit every time some Dutch politician makes a assine statement.

You are quite right, our politicos made a big stink and in essence giving more voice to Brinkman. Brinkman now commands all Dutch newspaper frontpage.
Hey if he calls them a thieves nest, thats his opinion. Our politicos should have debated him and ask him to prove it. Otherwise his statements seem to have cut through their thieving hearts. if the shoe fits let them wear it. We all know that our elected politicians are into corruption, so we say it, can't the dutch man say it? A much better judgment would have been to go into debate with this man.
Now he is the Hero that he is in Holland.

Be careful for what you wish, the truth may have come out. Can we handle that?

As a person living on the island, I must say that the real problem is that to many people trust the wrong people! I am from the Netherlands and left the Netherlands because it changed to much the last 10 years. the Netherlands have changed to a strange and anti-social country where a new generation arrived and this generation is a real problem, they don't respect older people and they won't respect any authority. I love st. Maarten since my first stay on the island, and came back time after time after time. But I also noticed a big change over here! Politicians here are just filling their own pockets and don't give a shit about the people of St. Maarten. All they care about is money, money, money and more money. They give the best jobs to their friends and family, and well it's because of these people that the island will get in to bog trouble one day. I would love to tell people across the island about the danger they are facing in the near future. Because if we people don't put a stop to this thing that is going on, than it will lead to a even worse period of time! I realized that some commissioners really do not like to spend time or money on the future of st. Maarten. One simple example, what happens with the money that the Dutch government provides for sport? Why can't kids of st. Maarten play soccer on a real big field? Why is the field in the stadium looking that bad? And why can't anybody that's responsible for it tell what happened with the money that was there once to fix the field in the stadium? I mean if they don't fix sport facilities, then they better spend the money on making a bigger prison to lock up the kids in a couple of years. I give soccer practice every week to a group of kids whenever I have some time left, and I love to see these kids having fun, but I also realize that the couple of players that are real talented won't make it to a soccer professional if they can not play on a decent big soccer field. There are so much things that really make me sad and unhappy, but when You tell people to step up for their rights they get scared because they could lose their job. it's a problem, I mean I see it also at my job, bad conditions to work in and my boss is one of these guys that doesn't give a sh*t about the people that work for him. These people live in their own fantasy world and they think they own the island. I mean my boss came from Israel and he thinks he is a local king or something, just like a lot of his friends, that all work for the government. He treads all his company workers as shit and the only thing he thinks and cares about is money money and more money. What's wrong with all these people? Why aren't these people being punished by the government? I mean we are living under dutch laws? In the Netherlands these kind of thing just can't happen because as a employee You jist go to a judge to tell the judge that your boss isn't applying the rules like they should be applied. The people of st. Maarten should vote for the right persons and should make sure all corrupt politicians and all other scumbags leave the island or make sure they get locked up. I mean last week somebody told me he saw Mr. M. Loor (who should be in prison) a couple of weeks ago in Chesterfields drinking coffee!! And I can confirm this because they drive him around from the prison (i saw this a couple of times and I live pretty pretty close to the prison...) to where he likes to go... When and where will this end? Let us together step up and do something about it. The only thing I can say is that I hope to bump in to one of these commissioners, so I can tell them what I think of them!!

I understand your frustration, many SXMners understand the same as you but the politicians seek out new Dutch Passport holders every 4 years who do not understand how to vote. Immigrants that become Dutch are not very often educated and are easily swayed for ply wood for their shacks, concrete blocks for their new home, $100.- the promise of a piece of government land enz, enz,
Loor was having coffee at Chesterfields because the Dutch detective offices are located nearby, maybe they interrogate him there. They must allow him to have his coffee in a closed room as too many people see him at Chesterfields and come to the wrong conclusion.
I wonder if the prison has an interrogation room, if they do, why don't they use that and if they don't maybe time to build one?