A Letter To Our Dead Leaders

​Hello. I’m writing this letter from my humble home on our beautiful island of Saint Martin in the year 2018. Today I want to talk to you about how the news have an effect on my thought process. The news always send my brain into a slight overdrive, but certain topics tend to plague my mind for days, even weeks.
 
On Monday 9th July 2018, reports regarding the insurance company in the Dutch Caribbean, Ennia and how the handle their pension finances shed a new light on the business is truly operated. You can read the article from stmaartennews.com here.
Now I’m not an expert on insurance or how insurance companies and this letter has nothing to do with the high level of corruption within the company. This letter has to do with a specific fact that was highlighted in the aforementioned article. 

​“A salient point in this whole affair is the fact that several of the other properties owned by Sun Resorts Ltd. NV is apparently government-owned land given out years ago on long lease for 1 Antillean Guilder cent per square meter. These lands then subsequently traded hands for thousands of US Dollars per a 1,800,000% return on their investment. Hence, the claims that the properties owned by Sun Resorts Ltd NV and used as collateral for Ennia pension fund loans are virtually worthless land.” 

-“Mullet Bay land worth 460 million guilders at the heart of Ennia’s pension problems”.StMaartenNews.Com. Monday 9th July 2018.stmaartennews.com/insurance/mullet-bay-land-worth-460-million-guilders-center-ennia-pension-problems/. Wednesday 11th July 2018. 

​After reading that final paragraph of the article, I got more annoyed and upset at the entire situation. I quickly sent the article to Tori and we had various exchanges of capitalized “BREHS” and “BRUHS” because of how ridiculous that one specific fact is; THE GOVERNMENT OF SINT MAARTEN HAS GIVEN AWAY SO MUCH LAND.
 
How, you may ask. Well there is this thing I like to call a blessing and a curse and it’s simply called long-leased land. Long-leased land was basically an initiative that would allow locals to be able to afford to purchase land and pay for it for a long extended period of time.
 
Dear past and (long term) present leaders,
I know that prior to the 1960’s our island didn’t’ have a set industry that provided a sustainable income to our economy after the closure of the salt factory. The revolutionary idea of going into the tourism industry has given us a steady stream of economic growth that has helped us to be some-what sustainable and has attracted many migrants from across the region and the world. 
This beautiful land that we call home,  has also attracted a lot of foreign investors who would help develop many of the major hotels on the island. This was the beginning of a new era. However, my great leaders, there were too many flaws in this great tourism start up that has put the people of the nation in great distress.
 
Public Enemy Number 1: Land.
 
How can you sell cooperate investors land on the same long-leased rates that were in place to help the people of Sint Maarten? Were you not aware of how much money we lost out by selling millionaires who know how to invest and sell, watch the price increase and sell again or did you not care about the money that the society would lose out on and was just worried about the initial money that would grace your pockets?

Selling land to these investors at such a cheap rate has allowed for an environment for serious corruption to thrive. This has helped major companies such as Ennia to practice their unmoral activities in the dark for years and other sketchy business practices such as importing cheaper labour and working around many tax holidays. These major businesses that swore they help our economy, are masters in finding the many loopholes that were never patched to make their pockets bigger and hardly contributing to the society that they function in.

Among that, you never put emphasis on the importance of keeping our culture alive, proper environmental planning and preserving our national monuments. The lack of foresight on these subject matters has put us behind many years are we are trying to rush to create a concrete cultural identity and suffering with the environmental harms of our dump and loss of eco systems around our ponds and bays.
 
It was evident that the dollar sign had more importance that the proper development of this nation. Thanks to the lack of people over self within your various governments over the decades, we are now in a position where we are constantly screaming “WE NEED TO FIX THIS.”
 
Going back to the capitalized fueled conversation between Tori and I, we realized once more that we really need to do something to change our society. The question is, what can we do to fix this issue?
The answer is not a straight forward one. Unfortunately we don’t know. The issues that we are dealing with traces back to policies and decisions that were created 40+ years ago and the lack of files and data doesn’t make the process any easier. 
 
I conclude with this. Thank you for initiating the tourism era and all the good it has done for this nation, however thanks to you, we have more work to complete and more things to regulate.
 
Sincerely,
Annoyed Youth, Kamilah S.N. Gumbs