Dear Editor,
The essence of many political positions on St. Maarten is the belief that when our inevitably vulnerable economy is under pressure, development and emergency support other than the Dutch support would be easier, more generous and with less restrictions than at present. There is also the assumption that there are currently substantial restrictions forced by the Netherlands and that these explain the increase in economic pressures that occurred since the boom years of the 1990s.
If you examine the restrictions imposed by the Dutch by far the majority are in the realm of limiting the costs of bad governance. There are very few that prevent entrepreneurial initiative and none that prevent effective public administration. The alternative to the Kingdom relationship would be a relationship with other independent islands and probably (if the likely scenarios of deficit spending occurs) with international banks who would give support only on the basis of compliance with certain financial and behavior standards.
They would do pretty much the same as what State Secretary Knops is doing now as he uses the opportunity of the pandemic-driven deficits. Except that they would do more in the form of loans and less in the form of grants. But they would certainly be forcing public sector expenditure to be kept below a certain percentage and demanding that public sector capital investment be planned and executed, and would put in place hard conditions but probably of a different sort and punitive interest rates higher than Knops. There is no evidence to believe that for a relatively high income country that we are, the “assistance” would be any more generous or forthcoming in times of disasters.
They would not provide human resource back-up in the manner that NL [the Netherlands – Ed.] would do with civil servants but if did and the assistance was from China (who have the most funds for development assistance and the most to gain) they would force conditions for access by Chinese labour.
Just a short dip into the recent history of development assistance in countries like Zambia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and some nearby Caribbean territories will show that development assistance is scarce, heavily conditioned and often not a net contributor to the development plan of the country.
Every election our political candidates claim to want to go to parliament to “fight for the people”. The idea that there is someone to fight against has prospered. Once it was Curaçao and currently it is the Netherlands. There is in fact no one to fight against! We need parliamentarians to fight for good governance and fiscal prudence so that we don’t need assistance from Curaçao, the Netherlands or a global institution like the IMF [International Monetary Fund] or development assistance from China. Then we will win the race to give our population the best quality of life.
Robbie Ferron
