Theo: Dutch shouldn’t impose
conditions on St. Maarten
ST. PETERS--The Dutch Government has no right to impose harsh measures on St. Maarten because it provides development aid for social and other projects, Commissioner Theo Heyliger said Thursday.
“It is not for others to come and say everything is wrong in our country, because the last time I looked the military was not running the country and the kind of nonsense that goes on in other countries that get huge amounts of development aid,” Heyliger stated.
Reacting to statements by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Pieter Balkenende and other Dutch politicians that St. Maarten needs more supervision, Heyliger said that if the island could acquire funding for its multi-million-dollar airport upgrading and expansion of its harbour facilities, it was perfectly capable of dealing with its own debt.
“What is it for the country St. Maarten to be able to go out and get instead of 400 million [guilders in development aid], let us go for 800 million to fix roads, building houses for population and improving our education system,” Heyliger said, referring to the various multi-million-dollar ventures that have taken place locally without Dutch help.
The island is capable of obtaining funding itself and can tell the Dutch government, “Listen, we can do it ourselves. Thank you very much and you can keep all these regulations you never impose on other countries when you give them development aid,” he said.
“We need to become more of a patriotic people to be able to stand up and say that we believe in St. Maarten and we believe that we should be able to take care of our own debts and we should be able to take the consequences,” Heyliger said.
He pointed out that the Dutch Government did not impose conditions on other countries to which it gave larger sums of development aid annually. Therefore, why should this be an approach with St. Maarten, he asked.
Heyliger said the development aid money given to other countries was far more than the amount the Dutch gave to St. Maarten, but without the conditions. “When you look at the debt relief being offered to Curaçao and you look at infrastructure there, St. Maarten is nowhere close to what Curaçao has. That is why they are willing to accept the kind of measures [from the Dutch].”
The Dutch are behaving like St. Maarten is being run like a multi-million-dollar company, which is definitely not so, he stated. The main concerns for the Netherlands are criminality, good governance and justice. As a politician, Heyliger said he had nothing to hide, because he filed tax returns every year like everyone else and his finances were a matter of public record.
He added that the Dutch could not use justice issues to put the island more under their control, because there was nothing St. Maarten could do to improve matters, as this was in the hands of the Central Government.
