Take charge

Elections or no elections, the campaign has started already in full swing and Emil Lee is once again the one everyone is taking potshots at. This time from the NA camp. Last year, we called this The Emil Lee Effect. It got him elected.

Will there be elections in January? It all depends if we have real leaders here in St. Maarten. Being a leader means that when everything goes wrong, you have to take all the responsibility. When everything goes right, you have to give away all the credit. Last week, we heard a lot of the blame being laid at the feet of Minister Emil Lee. Apparently, his ministry was in charge of distributing relief aid.

But being a leader is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of the people in your charge. Here in St. Maarten we have people in position of authority we consider leaders. But a true leader is one who leads. A true leader has a responsibility for the people in his charge.

The actions of our leaders the past weeks and the resulting shipjumping, motions of no-confidence, tit for tat reactions and the hastily call for elections, show that our leaders are not thinking about the people in their charge. The opinion piece we publish in the Opinion section of this website calls for a higher power to take charge of the care for the people of St. Maarten.

If that ultimate remedy is a just one, we do not know. What we do know is that our leaders still have time to re-think their leadership roles, to focus on the people of St. Maarten instead on themselves and ask the people what it is they want and what it is they can do for the people to help them better their situations.

A shortfall of millions of guilders cannot be easily recouped and therefore all focus should be on restoring our island quickly back to a position that we can consider better than it was prior to hurricane Irma. With bakeries on the French side knocked out of business by hurricane Irma, how long before the bread runs out on the whole island of St. Maarten?

Our leaders have until Friday to think about the people in their charge.