Dear Editor,
There has been much talk of colonialism and colonialists in St. Maarten in recent years. The ending of the colonial relationship is presented as a key to social advancement.
Colonies were created to create wealth for the metropolitan countries and it is argued that this is the real colonialism. Other aspects of colonialism followed, like cultural colonialism, but the original was the creation of wealth for the colonizing countries. The history of sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean certainly supports this.
It seems that it would be productive for the conversation on the subject in St. Maarten if we were to establish the real value or burden of the “colonial relationship” in the case of St. Maarten and the Kingdom of the Netherlands so that measurable wealth-moving relationship can be known with some degree of accuracy. If we knew that, the conversation would be a great deal clearer.
The creation of this relationships “profit and loss” could easily be created by consultants who would measure flows of value of every sort between the Netherlands and St. Maarten with a view to establishing which party benefits or suffers from the relationship. The tools, the analytical systems and the data should all be available.
The study and reporting would need to be done by an entity that could not be accused by any group of being partial; indeed it should be an entity that enjoys wide social trust.
We have reports on pretty much everything. Why not also on this fundamental question which is argued by some as being the case for major social change?
Robbie Ferron
