The Cabinet of the Governor of Sint Maarten

Governors Speech for Constitutionday 2024

Happy Constitution day to you St. Maarten. Congratulations to all with 14 years of being autonomous within the Kingdom.
As is customary on this second Monday in October, one reflects on where we have come from, the progress we have made and the future that lies ahead of us.

I would like to for a moment focus on that future that lies ahead and how you, me, all of us must play our part and contribute to that future.
The cultural definition of Jollification on St. Maarten is the process whereby food, drinks and music are offered as compensation for, from a communal standpoint, so family, neighbours, friends coming together to help another individual or family in the community in their process of building. And in so doing, supporting and promoting the well-being of not only that individual or family, but the entire community and improving the prosperity of the community and the quality of life of those in it.

With this year's theme in mind entitled: Jollification season, Building Home, Building Community, Building Nation, the questions I would like us to focus on are:
1. What is Government doing to build the home, build the community and build the nation?; and
2. What are we the people doing to build our homes, build our community and build our nation?

The building of our nation is not a task that lies solely on the shoulders of government. We as a people have to realise our role in this process as well. The sum of all of our homes and communities equals our entire nation. Our individual dreams, goals and

aspirations, morals and standards that we set for ourselves, our families and communities manifests in what this nation will become, in what future lies ahead of us.

Today, the tradition of Jollification is in such decline that it almost no longer exists. We have become disconnected in our homes and from our communities. We cannot be disconnected in our homes and communities with our partners, children, parents, other family members, friends, colleagues, each other and expect our nation to not be disconnected as well. We cannot have a prosperous nation if we have a disconnected nation. If we want our nation to prosper, the well-being of the individual communities, the individual homes that make up our nation needs to be improved. We have to instil and

embody in ourselves, our homes and our communities the traits, habits and customs that it takes to achieve that traditional connectedness, having a sense of interconnected and unified purpose. We need to be connected and headed in the same direction, even though that might be via different paths.

This starts with some realisations:
1.Us realising that we are disconnected and living individual lives in our communities. Some examples are, a disconnect between; employers and employees, government and the people, development and the environment, the economy and culture, the haves and the have nots.
We are consumed by our individual challenges that force us to keep our heads down not looking left nor right to see what is going on, or not going well around us unless we are forced to do so, but then only to point fingers and cast blame. For that disconnect to be less, everyone has to;

2. realise that we have to look up, look around and see each other.
This however is very challenging, because life has proven to be very challenging to if not all, most of us.
When travelling by airplane, one is instructed; in case of an emergency oxygen masks will fall from the overhead in front of you and are to be placed first on yourself and then on the child, or whomever may be seated next to you and unable to do so themselves.The burdens of life have become so great that we are unable to reach the oxygen masks, let alone put them on ourselves or someone else. This is where government comes in.

Government has a considerable role here because government is who the entire community has access to, or should have access to. Government has a huge platform. So government has to lead by example in this. By providing access to support and supplying stimuli and incentives - the oxygen - where needed within our community, making the safe spaces more visible and audible so they are easier to be found and accessed. And finally;

3. the realisation that we are all responsible for the well-being of our nation. Not only government, not only parliament, not only the police officers, not only teachers, not only parents, guardians, not only the nurses, not only the doctors, not only the convicted, not only the church members, not only the non church members, not only the mental health patients and providers, and not only in and of ourselves but it is a shared responsibility of everyone. We all have to be responsible in signalling, joining hands and coming together to contribute and actively participating in finding ways to operate as one community. Combining our different ethnicities, histories, heritage, backgrounds, talents, expertise and labour for the betterment of all. The one learning of and from the other, embracing differences and discovering similarities and best practices, helping each other grow and build, literally becoming one community.

This is what jollification and a community is all about. We all are responsible for each other, because we are all part of this community that makes up this nation. The jollification process of building our nation starts with instead of using our fingers to point and cast blame, us using those same fingers to join hands and hold each other up, lift our fellow community member up that has fallen, join hands to help and support in someone else's process of building whatever they may be aspiring to build and or achieve, and in so doing help build a prosperous community and by extension a prosperous nation and future.
This is how you, me, all of us will contribute to the future that lies ahead of us.

Happy Constitution day to you St. Maarten.
Congratulations with 14 years of being autonomous within the Kingdom. Just as autonomy within the Kingdom gives us the right, to go about things on our own but does not mean that we must, go about it on our own. So too, within our homes and our communities we can come together and lean on each other for support and lend each other support. So I challenge us all in the spirit of this year's theme of Jollification season, Building Home, Building Community, Building Nation, to come together as I have outlined above in our homes, and our communities to contribute to the future that lies ahead of this our great nation. 

Thank you, God bless you and your families and God bless our beloved nation St. Maarten.