New Government or no new Government
No Country status without guarantees for St. Martiners & Antilleans on the island.
With a very cautious sense of relief, we have taken notice of the fact that the Island-territory of St. Maarten finally has a new Executive-council.
Nonetheless, we remain very skeptical, to say the least, that the preconditions we deem critically necessary to justify the island achieving its so-called 'Country St. Maarten' status, will be respected.
One of the main conditions for us to support this news Government in achieving any new 'status', is the official acknowledgment of the native-indigenous St. Martiners in their own country, as well as the defining and protection of their, if not legally, then morally deserving ancestral civil-rights as part of the constitution.
For us this is an absolute conditio sinequa non.
And while we have already congratulated the new government on its installation, we have also made it very clear, that if the critical conditions are not met, their time in office should consider a failure, even before it has really started.
Any Government, that ignores, and betrays its own people, is not worth being in office, regardless the political make-up of that Government.
It is fact that every country in the region, from which we have thousands of people living on this island, protects its own and guarantees its own priority over all others, so obviously some is extremely amiss with the political leaders of our island.
Let it be recorded that we will be very vigilant in this regards and await to see if this Government, will attempt to push through its coveted new status at the expense of guaranteeing the existence and rights of its own native-indigenous St. Martin People, who in return for their hospitality are now being threatened in their very existence as a people.
drs. Leopold JAMES
Proud native -indigenous St. Martiner, without apologies
Copy New Leader of Government etc.
Leopold James
President SNBF & L'Esprit de Concordia