Why would any St.Maarten young person want to leave their home, family and friends, travel to a foreign country, spend years of their lives and thousands of dollars in order to get a degree? So that they can return to Country St.Maarten where a quality education is seemingly meaningless?
So why is this dangerous? Would anyone want to have surgery performed by a Doctor with a mail order degree? Would you like to drive over a high level bridge designed by an engineer with a mail order degree? Of course you wouldn't. While both of these examples could be life threatening, in some ways the current Prime Minister has proven to be just as dangerous.
Due to professional oversight, in the example of the Doctor or engineer, their inadequacies would likely be discovered fairly quickly. Not so in the case of the Prime Minister, she formerly was responsible for the entire department of education , even while the degree she claims to have would not sufficiently qualify her to teach. Does anyone wonder why the St.Maarten school system is in the shape it is? How many people have been negatively affected by this? Hard to say for sure.
Currently due in part to the Prime Minister's poor decision in choosing a Minister of Labor, the WIFOL members who worked at Pelican are being affected. While we know this number is 182 it remains to be seen how many other persons on the island will find their incomes at risk.
Who's next? Again hard to say for sure but if I worked for Winair I'd certainly be nervous. While the Prime Minister is the Shareholder Representative for the airline nothing in either her education or experience would lead me to have any confidence in her ability to solve the problems being faced by Winair.
While with a little soap and water, I can wash away the green stain left on my wrist by my Back Street Rolex. I'm afraid for the people of Country St.Maarten it will not be so easy.
Andy Croxall