Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs was the only minister present at Wednesday’s live Council of Ministers press briefing.
PHILIPSBURG--Prime Minister Silveira Jacobs believes that St. Maarten should attain a level of financial independence where it can take care of itself and its people before striving for actual independence.
She shared her personal view on the matter of independence during the live Council of Ministers’ press briefing on Wednesday when asked about it.
Parliament’s Committee for Constitutional Affairs and Decolonization (CCAD) on April 4, selected members for a petit committee to gather information related to the possible calling of a consultative referendum on independence. Jacobs was asked for government’s position on the subject of independence and subsequently for her personal position on it. She made clear that government did not have this as a topic of discussion and as such she could not speak for government on the matter.
“For me, being a mother, I wouldn’t want to take my children out of a situation if we are not able to financially take care of ourselves and that is where I stand,” Jacobs said.
“So, let’s attain financial independence, let’s get back to generating the type of funds that we can to take care of ourselves and gain, grow our people to take the responsibility in all areas because it will be great to go independent and we can say we want to go independent by 2035. We are now in 2023. We can give ourselves 10, 20, 15 years to say it’s a goal to work towards and that would be something because I am sure within short we will have the financial independence that we need to be able to take that decision, but we need to be more strategic in our thinking. We need to think long term,” she stressed.
Jacobs said there are certain perks to being in the Dutch Kingdom and indicated that it would behove those who believe in the continuity of the Kingdom to show these benefits.
Jacobs has had many heated discussions with “independistas,” and she can agree with a lot of what is being said in the independence movement because she personally feels “a lot of the pains” of being in the Kingdom in her function as Prime Minister.
Alluding to the National Development Vision, which she said is a build-up of the government programmes from 2010 until now, she stressed that there has been a red thread where everyone wants to see development. “In the past, we developed before we could take care of our social services. Our social services are lacking. Laws are way behind and people continue to say, ‘Oh we should be here or there,’ you fail to realise that in 2010 we had nothing,” she noted.
“We didn’t have a lot of our own institutions, and those were growing and they are still growing and a lot of the laws still remain to be updated and we can compare ourselves to 55-year-old Barbados and say, ‘Oh, look what Mia Motley is doing,’ but they’ve had 55 years of experience and they went through long decades of struggle. And in fact, you can meet people in Barbados today who still struggle. You can meet people in the developed United States and developed Europe and I just came from there and you’re seeing homeless people on the street living under bridges - this is everywhere.”
She believes that the most use should be made, while the country is still part of the Dutch Kingdom.
“While we are still in this Kingdom I think we need to make the best use of it. A lot of people will not want to give up that passport which gives them access to the world and so that’s the reality of what we have to face and I think where we are now, we can grow in our independence month by month, year by year, by our actions. And I think I then put out the call to the people of St. Maarten to stand in the gap.”
As it relates specifically to the petit committee formed by Parliament to gather information for the possible calling of a referendum on independence, she said government will await the official update from Parliament on this.
“I was off island during this time and unable to get the full gist of the meeting and exactly what it entailed. Parliament has their role to play and I am sure once they finalise their due diligence they will pass that information on to us. As government, we have not had this as a topic of discussion so I cannot speak for government. On the whole, a referendum is an opportunity for the public to be educated and make a choice. So, of course, if it is the will of Parliament for this to take place and that is decided upon, we do have a majority as a coalition government in Parliament and if that is what our majority deems necessary to do at this time, especially seeing that we were have an election in about nine months it’s a lot to prepare so we have to look at the feasibility if it, etc.,” she said.
