The right to self-determination

By Hilbert Haar

“We have remained for 300 years under the laws and control of the Netherlands despite our efforts to have autonomy.”

Please note that I did not write this sentence. It stems from a statement by United People’s party number 4 candidate, Grisha Heyliger. It was published on the web site of 721news under the same headline I am using for this column.

In that piece, Heyliger criticizes the role of the governor (“a colonial figure”), she bemoans the fact that St. Maarten does not have its own attorney-general and she labels the screening process for candidate ministers as having “no clearly defined rules.”

“We must make sure true representation of the people includes the fair execution of justice to the benefit of the people,” Heyliger writes. Given the legal troubles of her husband Theo, this statement needs no further elaboration.

The UP-candidate furthermore asserts that the Netherlands have imposed the Board financial supervision (Cft) upon St. Maarten; that’s one way of looking at this issue of course, but the reality is that St. Maarten negotiated autonomy with the kingdom and the political leadership accepted the Cft as one of the conditions to obtain that status. In a way, St. Maarten imposed financial supervision upon itself.

Heyliger’s opinion does not contain the term independence, even though the headline suggests that this is where she wants to go.

As the editor-in-chief of the now defunct Today newspaper I have written more than once that I strongly support the notion that a people – any people, also the people of St. Maarten –is entitled to decide about their own destiny.

Local politicians have been screaming about independence like forever, especially when they were displeased with the attitude of the kingdom.

So, if these politicians are so unhappy with the kingdom, independence is the way to go. Right?

Guess who holds the key towards the road to independence. It is not the Netherlands, for sure. In fact, that key is in the hands of the fifteen elected members of parliament. They have the option to call a referendum – to ask the people living on our beautiful island what they really want.

In the referendum held in 2000 about St. Maarten’s constitutional status, close to 70 percent voted in favor of becoming an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Only 14.4 percent favored independence.

We’re almost twenty years later now and it is very well possible (even though I personally think it is unlikely) that the mood has changed dramatically towards a completely independent status.

However, it does not matter what I think. What matters is what the people who call St. Maarten home think. There is only one way to figure that out: by hosting a new referendum.

And guess what? Heyliger writes about “our effort to have autonomy” but during the past decade politicians have shied away from that call for a referendum.

Why? For the correct answer you have to ask those politicians who have been sitting on their hands all those years. I think the explanation is simple: they fear that the referendum will not give them the answer they are looking for. When the population votes against independence, the topic can go back into the freezer for the next twenty years. Such an outcome would also rob politicians of a valid argument in favor of independence.

But at least, a referendum would provide clarity. And as long as our parliamentarians do not take the initiative to call that referendum, they should stop playing the victim of a non-existent colonial power.

The right to self-determination is a brilliant concept. St. Maarten does not need anybody if it wants to step out of the kingdom. But I figure it is a good thing that the real decision about such an important issue is not in the hands of politicians, but in the hands of the people they claim to represent.