Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
Dear Editor,
It seems as if everyone tends to agree or raise their hands above their heads when it comes down to "what about when so and so did this or did that?" And then there was this in the editorial "the disturbing trend unfortunately can be seen throughout all sectors." The behaviour in traffic was mentioned as an example and I could not agree more, but permit me to remind your readers how too many of those who were vying for office expressed themselves during the recent held political campaign. Instead of choosing the high road too often the low road was chosen in reacting to each other's allegations. To add to all this Minister Lake in preparing for his legal defence in the notorious land deal sums up a series of projects executed by government before or during his tenure which if I understand correctly, were not addressed in the same way his land deal blunder was addressed. (Being right is not always good).
Just as we would HOPE for the grown-ups in the community to be an example to the youth, more so we expect our leaders in government to be role models. Minister Lake was being hypocritical, because instead of saying I will not follow that wrong trend of government, he went back to basics, using those mentioned projects as armour to justify his eventual future wrong. Permit me to remind not alone Minister Lake but whoever, no matter what. If you dig two holes, one of those holes will remain yours. By now one should know that this is not against the person of Maurice Lake, because I like the good gentleman, but being a Minister of government he is in debt to the people and I am part of the people so I react to things that I believe government is not doing right.
Sitting in one's living room and making observations is different than openly voicing ones opinion. Does Minister Lake then want to imply that focus should be on the armed robbers alone and that government officials should be permitted to wheel and deal at random with the people's patrimony. Terms like white colour and blue colour come to mind. Robbers rob. Government Ministers take an oath to serve and are being well paid to do so. I do not understand the comparison. What I know is that one should be careful in thinking that "I did not physically commit the act," because there are terms like "knowingly" and "by association" etc., which could still change the procedure. By the way if there was no reaction to that strange land deal, would Mr. Lake have kept his silence concerning those "dubious" projects of the past? Not good.
The lack of integrity by leaders in government again comes into play here. Again not helping to encourage peace among the youth. Nobody has to pick on us, we are constantly supplying ammunition for them to use against us. It is easy to do the right thing. The same effort you make to get up every day to go to work is the same type of effort you can use to refuse to do negative things and after a while it becomes natural and you even get in the habit of apologizing when you think you said or did the wrong thing. It is still so that two wrongs do not make a right. The letters of the word PEACE could stand for several things I would simply like for them to stand for Positive Encouragement And Comprehensive Education.
Russell A. Simmons
