Dear Editor,
Please allow me a section in your paper to stand up for progress, equality and prosperity!
The entrance of the PEP (Party for Progress, Equality and Prosperity) into the Island Council of Saba certainly is a sign of change with Mr. Hemmie Van Xanten.
The addition of change within the WIPM established party embodied by Ms. Elsa Peterson who ran a very professional and outstanding campaign is also a great and dynamic change for Saba, jewel most precious in the Caribbean Sea! She studied international law and human rights, a great asset and enrichment to the Saba Island Council! I admired the way in which Ms. Elsa Peterson gave a speech during her campaign of the historical facts of the pof the Netherlands in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the role that the Netherlands needs to play to redeem itself from this great evil and injustice towards people of African descent in the Dutch Kingdom!
The Dutch Government and Prime Minister Mark Rutte need to also pass laws to protect cultural diversity in the Netherlands and in the Dutch Kingdom. Respect towards race and culture, rich or poor, Black or White, Indian or Asian, Latino or Filipino, immigrant or not, foreign or native, we all are one people and we all deserve equal treatment!
Saba also needs to grow, tourism needs to be expanded! Enough of keeping Saba small and stagnant!
Island Council Member Ms. Elsa Peterson also was dynamic in stressing on the importance of leadership! “The leader is not only the one who manages a human group, but the one who knows how to lead it and straighten its crooked cells” (Dr. Jose Francisco Peña Gomez).
I encourage all the five Island Council Members of Saba and the two commissioners, Eviton Heyliger and Bruce Zagers, to please stand up for progress, equality and prosperity on small Saba like the PEP Party! I, on the other hand, will always be a commissioner of truth, justice, peace and righteousness!
I close in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that!”
Cristian Hassell Feliciano
