The following is the speech presented by the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Ms. Rhoda Arrindell during the St.Maarten/St.Martin’s day Celebration on the French Side of St.Maarten.
St. Martin Day Speech
By the Hon. Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports,
Ms. Rhoda Arrindell.
St. Martin, November 11, 2010.
His Excellency, Governor of St. Martin,
drs. Eugene Holiday and Mrs. Holiday;
Sous Prefet of St. Martin,
President of the Collectivite of St. Martin,
Hon. Frantz Gumbs;
Prime Minister of St. Martin, Hon. Mrs. Sarah Wescot-Williams,
Members of the Council of Ministers,
Members of the Collectivite,
Distinguished Guests,
Beloved People of St. Martin,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are who we are: a proud, hardworking, fun-loving, family-centered, caring, and friendly St. Martin people. We are all of that and more. We are bigger than our geographic size may suggest, and greater than the sum total of our individual dreams. We are St. Martin, one island, one people, with one destiny as Lino Hughes sings. We are one family, with a centuries’ old history, that no divisions can ever permanently separate.
Family is what St. Martin Day is all about. Family is what we are gathered here to celebrate because family is what remains when everybody else has gone his or her separate way. We have nowhere to go and we ain’ going nowhere; St. Martin is our home! And home, they say, is where the heart is.
When a member of our family celebrates an event, the others rally around him or her. They do not go organizing another celebration at the same time that would take away from the family event. They come together as one, and celebrate together as we are doing here today. Since it is the turn of our brothers and sisters in this half of the island to organize this celebration, it is just fitting and proper for us on the other side to put everything else aside that would compete with or undermine this celebration and join you wholeheartedly in marking this day. Unity is not unity when one of us decides to do anything that would jeopardize the efforts of the other.
My beloved people of St. Martin,
Unity was what brought Dr. Claude Wathey and Dr. Hubert Petit together more than 40 years ago to establish this day as St. Martin Day—a day in which we all come together as family to celebrate what binds us together. Those two illustrious sons of the soil were perhaps unaware of the revolutionary nature of the idea they had planted, and which crystallized into this celebration.
Of course, those were days of more or less benign neglect when both The Netherlands and France largely ignored the island and were only concerned about making sure there was no public disorder. Wathey and Petit had tapped into the deep wells of a dream of the reunification of the island in a very Caribbean way—a la calypsonian. They chose a day which was already a holiday in both The Netherlands and France—Armistice Day—so they didn’t have to create a new holiday, which they had no power to do anyway. It also coincided with the day Columbus had allegedly sighted St. Martin. Thus was St. Martin Day—November 11—born. It was superimposed over the cloak of Armistice Day (which is still observed on both halves of the island by the laying of wreaths), and wrapped under the shroud of history of some Admiral sailing very close to these shores and naming it St. Martin.
It is that spirit of inventiveness, of not allowing our present condition to become an insurmountable obstacle to our coming together as family; it is that spirit of overcoming adversity through our creativity that we are really celebrating today. That spirit gave birth to calypso in the canefields; that spirit gave rise to the age-old practice of "jollification." For that spirit to be renewed, we need to take stock of where we are today as a family. The picture that emerges from a quick look at the state of our relationship is not very pretty at all.
Saturday in Marigot is no longer what it used to be; our people from the South do not come to the market in droves and spend the whole day on the waterfront as they used to. They have begun to stay away from Lago Heights also for reasons you all know better than I. Quite often, we in the South do not even know when it is a public holiday in the North, and vice-versa. In short, we don’t live like family anymore as we used to. In fact, let me ring the alarm bells loud and clear: our family looks like it is falling apart.
What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Let me give you a hint of what I intend to do about it in my capacity as Minister of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs.
I will seek to set up bilateral commissions in the areas that fall under my portfolio, which will meet regularly and in a structured manner to harmonize policies and synchronize strategies wherever possible. The duality of our political reality should not become an impediment to collaboration and cooperation in various areas. The problems that our youth face are similar if not identical, whether they come from French Quarter or Dutch Quarter. The same goes for our cultural workers, and we face very similar challenges in education.
I look forward to a day soon when we can establish truly national teams in sports, with the best players drawn from both sides of the island, whether it is in football, cycling, basketball, volleyball, table-tennis, or swimming. What can be better for the development of sports on St. Martin than for our talented youth to be able to share facilities as we all share the Princess Juliana International Airport?
My beloved people of St. Martin,
We have lived together as family for centuries. As is the case with every family, we have had good times, and we have had not so good times, but we’re still standing, by the grace of the Supreme Being. On this St. Martin Day, we must resolve to work together to improve our family relations, based on our shared values and our common destiny. When we meet again this time next year in Great Bay, we should be able to measure the progress we have made in working together, conscious of the fact that, as the saying goes, "the gale does not stop at the frontier." We are a borderless nation, a people without frontiers. I love St. Martin, my island, and I’m sure you do, too. Let’s demonstrate this love in tangible ways, every day and not only on St. Martin Day.
I thank you.