Dear Editor,
It took cybersecurity challenges to prove to the people of Sint Maarten that the Members of Parliament of any political party could get together to propose anything in the interest of the country and its people. So, I am wondering if there was no cybersecurity threat if those people in government would have continued with politics as usual...Which reminds me of what my father used to say to us. The bigger you are, the harder you fall, does not have anything to do with size. That is figuratively.
He would explain it this way. “If I have one hundred guilders and you have ten guilders, when both of us lose all our money, I will lose one hundred guilders while you would only lose ten guilders. I would have lost ten times more than you.” So, with that in mind my question is, who is really threatened with these cybersecurity challenges? Luke 12:2-3 comes to mind. Now this.
The question might rise, why is Russell reacting to what the Minister of Justice is doing? My answer is simple. She is working. In an environment where nothing or truly little is done, when someone finally does something, by doing something a mistake is made, that person becomes the target of negative criticism. It is no secret that since 10-10-’10, little was done in the Justice department, different from people in government being indicted. The latest Minister of Justice came in and because government continues, she had to deal with all that was pending. She handled the situation like a professional and stood above all the childish gossip that comes along with envy.
Nontax compliance is no secret on Sint Maarten, neither is illegal immigration. Holland who has decided to help a failing economy, added conditions in order for us to secure that help. One of those conditions is to sanitize our immigration of which the Minister of Justice is the head. The conscientious Minister of Justice decided to comply from her perspective and all of a sudden, she became a racist and the IBP is taken to court because undocumented immigrants were ordered to leave the country. There is no way anyone who has been living and working on Sint Maarten for thirty years can give me a valid reason they do not have any kind of permission to live on Sint Maarten.
What I know is that just like they have been toppling governments like pinballs, so have they been disregarding the law of Admittance and Expulsion, Their modus operandi was to ignore the illegals in order to get their legal relatives to vote for them. Which in this case were 75 per cent of the voters on the voting list of Sint Maarten. This is the modus operandi of all political parties. Those who could buy the most votes won. I cannot say thanks to the coalition system because again it was all done to get into government which lasted less than two years. Now that this Minister of Justice, who because government continues and is an extension of all the former Ministers, who is left with all that is pending, is doing what is necessary to help secure that financial help from Holland, she finds herself in a difficult situation. All because the people in government do not have the integrity to say no to that which is not right.
Now that members of Parliament have shown that they can come together (actually I cannot say in whose interest) I hope that they will continue to be also spontaneous in trying to get things done for the people who have voted them into government. If we all stand together, we should all fall together. So, it is possible. By the way, I stand to be corrected but the Ministry of Justice is an extension of all the other ministries.
Russell A. Simmons
