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Published On: Mon, Jan 31st, 2022

Making St. Maarten a better place

By Hilbert Haar

We have lost out trust in our politicians. We have lost our moral compass. Our integrity compass. Actually, we don’t have a compass at all anymore. Court rulings are wrong.

I am not making this up. These opinions come from former Lt. Governor Franklyn Richards and former Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs. They are both hitting the proverbial nail on the head.

Our politicians – not all of them, but too many of them – are foolhardishly setting the wrong example while they ought to be role models for the current and the next generation. But they are not.

The latest example is the corrupt (now former) parliamentarian Claudius Buncamper who, together with his equally corrupt spouse Maria Buncamper-Molanus, put the health of the whole population at risk by manipulating the tender for the maintenance of the dump with only one thing in mind: personal enrichment.

Buncamper is now suspended as a member of parliament, but his possible replacement, Chanel Brownbill, also has a criminal conviction to his name. In this case: tax fraud.

Looking at the party that helped these people in becoming representatives of the people, you’ll find more dirt. Party-founder Frans Richardson has been sentenced twice for bribery. In the past, Maria Buncamper-Molanus (sentenced for tax fraud) has been a candidate for the USp, as has Louella Rog who served in 2004 a 2-year prison sentence for her role in the kidnapping of millionaires-daughter Claudia Melchers in the Netherlands. Silvio Matser, sentenced for tax fraud and a former MP for the UP, also was a candidate for the USp in 2016.

All this inspired me back in the day to create a cartoon for the now defunct daily newspaper Today that suggested a name-change for the party from USp to PCCI – Party of Crooks and Criminals International.

Unfortunately, the USp is not the only party whose members at one time or another got on the wrong side of the law. The United People’s party (UP) lost its founder and former minister Theo Heyliger after he was convicted for bribery.

This list of politicians with limited respect for the law is not even complete, but it is easy to see how others are easily tempted to think that it is okay to steal, to accept bribes or to undertake other nefarious activities that cannot stand the light of day. We all know the example of Maritsa James-Christina, the former registrar of the courthouse and the Constitutional Court who stole large amounts of money from her employer.

The question is: what do we learn from all this as a community? A book by author Malcom Gladwell comes to mind. It is called The Tipping Point.

Gladwell argues that the behavior of people is to a certain extent determined by what others around them do. If you live in a neighborhood where everybody throws his garbage on the streets, you will think nothing of doing the same. If you live in a neighborhood where everybody is keeping the front garden in top shape, you’ll feel silly if you fall behind.

Gladwell says that there is a tipping point – a moment where the scales tip in one direction or the other. It is a delicate balance and there is no magic formula. Still, it makes a lot of sense.

How does this apply to St. Maarten? Right now, it seems to me that too many people are accepting that defrauding the tax inspectorate, or taking bribes, or embezzling money from one’s employer are okay.

That is of course the wrong mindset if you want to progress as a community, because tax fraud, bribery and embezzlement are definitely not okay. While anybody with half a brain will acknowledge that this is so, it does nothing to improve the situation.

As the saying goes: bad things happen when good people do nothing. So it is, unfortunately, up to all the good people who live in St. Maarten to take action. To talk to their children about right and wrong. To discuss the topic with friends and family. To stand up for what they believe in and to lead by example. To say firmly no to all these wrongdoings and making St. Maarten a better place in the process.

I am a realist, so all I can say is this: good luck with that.