Saba News News and Information from Saba Island, Dutch Caribbean
The usually bustling plenary hall of the House of Representatives fell completely silent this afternoon as Heera Dijk (D66) delivered an impressive maiden speech during the debate on Kingdom Relations—one that moved several MPs to tears.
Bon tardi, good afternoon, good afternoon for the people of Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba, and Statia. And good evening to the people here. I want to start with a poem:
Everything is different now
Nothing is like that anymore
No more sweet texts
No, no more, no
That’s not the only thing I miss
No, I’m missing even more
I hope you hear that I love you
Because I say it over and over again
My twelve-year-old daughter Enora wrote this poem for her grandmother, my mother. My dear mother died suddenly during the election campaign. She just experienced that I was in 18th place for the D66 list. The pain and loss are enormous.
However, I have discovered that joy and sorrow can coexist closely. Because despite the fact that time still stands still for me, I am now standing here and I can give my maiden speech on behalf of the largest D66 party ever, and I am very grateful for that. Mr Chairman, I would like to take you into the role that my mother had and still has in my life. And what lessons I have learned from her, and how I take these lessons with me for the people of the islands.
My mother is my role model: Her parents emigrated from Suriname to Curaçao, where my grandfather Frans worked at the Isla refinery. They had a large family, and in that large family, my grandmother gave her daughters a message: “Your diploma is your husband.” By that, she meant: stand on your own two feet. And that was also the first lesson my mother gave me: make sure you are independent.
My mother has done two college degrees. At the age of nineteen, she came to the Netherlands for her studies. But to be fair, she also followed Love. That Love was my father. My father was born in Aruba, from Surinamese parents, and although he grew up in Suriname, he still proudly calls himself “the Aruban”. Later, my father came to the Netherlands to study in Delft, where he eventually obtained his PhD. The story of my parents brings me to my second lesson: dare to follow your heart.
But there is more to tell about my history than the travels of my parents and grandparents. I tribe or enslaved people, and what slavery perhaps took away the most was identity: you can see that in the name, the language, and in your own story. And that is precisely why, Mr Chairman, visibility is so important today. Because no matter how hard some try to forget that history or make it smaller, you can’t erase us. We are just there.
The other side of that history is also in my family: people who owned plantations, the plantation owners. That’s a complicated truth to bear. But it has taught me one thing: you can only move forward if you dare to face the whole truth. And there, Mr Chairman, comes the third lesson from home. My mother could listen without judgment. I also called her the Buddha. She took her time, stayed calm, and really heard you. And then she took you further with so much love and wisdom, always with the confidence that you can do it.
Mr Chairman, those three lessons, be independent, follow your heart and listen without judgment, have shaped me as a woman, mother, teacher and politician. They determine how I look at the world, and why I am here now. Four years ago, that became concrete. I participated in a modeling competition about diversity in the media. You had to get votes. So I started sharing my story on social media. That brought me back to my own history: what it was like to always be one of the three ‘others’ in class as a girl of colour. How people automatically thought we were ‘sisters’, just because of our skin color.
My posts touched people. An old school friend said one day, “Lord, with what you say, you have to go into politics. Change starts there!” That was the final push. First, the city council in Delft, and now I am here on the biggest political stage.
“Listening without judgment,” that’s where it starts for me. Whether I am at the congress 15 years after 10/10/10, at the Antillean Christmas market, or in conversations on the street and on the islands: one feeling keeps coming back: Amazement. Amazement at how long some problems have existed. Take the Selibon landfill. Every day, people on Bonaire and the environment are damaged. Nothing has changed since last year, says the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate. That is why I have the following questions about this budget:
It is good that the State Secretary wants to speed up the process of closing Salibon, but why only in 2028? We are told that an alternative waste processing location can be set up within 1.5 years. Please reflect. What concrete steps will people and the environment take to protect themselves until 2028? Can residents have a medical examination? And will the mountain of waste in the new plans actually be cleaned up in 2028?
Mr Chairman, in addition to these physical problems, I hear something else: financial worries. Worries about rent and worries about groceries. The social minimum is a first step, but it does not solve this yet. It is up to us to work towards a real, liveable social minimum. Therefore, the following questions: The new poverty figures will be published in January. Can the State Secretary promise that there will be a government response immediately afterwards, with the next steps for the social minimum?
And will that response also include the possible extension of the subsidies for electricity, drinking water, telecom, and the energy allowance, which expires at the end of 2026? A large part of their income is spent on high, often private rents. On Bonaire, there is a pilot with a rental contribution; Statia and Saba do not have them. And tenants on Bonaire also do not know whether this contribution will be structural. Why is there a difference between Statia and Saba, and when does a pilot become structural? Last year, more than 1,300 reports were received. Is the State Secretary willing to also set up a rental committee on Statia and Saba so that tenants there are also better protected?
Mr Chairman, it strikes me that the budget of Kingdom Relations depends on temporary resources, pilots and funds. Problems are structural, but the solutions we offer are far too often temporary and incidental. How can the people on Statia, Saba and Bonaire trust the government if they don’t know whether the government will still support them next year in paying rent, groceries or energy bills? How is the State Secretary going to turn this tide and build structural plans instead of tinkering with temporary pots and pilots?
Mr Chairman, structural problems also require structural investments. And one of the most important of them is good education. Until recently, I was a teacher myself, so I know how decisive education is for a child’s chances. And children on the islands deserve the same: the very best education. That is why I am surprised that school meals in the Caribbean Netherlands have only been financed until mid-2026.” How does the State Secretary explain that schools in the European Netherlands can continue to offer these meals, and schools on the islands cannot?
Mr Chairman, all this touches on a larger word that we often hear when it comes to the Kingdom: equality. That does not mean that we are exactly equal, but that we are worth the same. But in practice, I see something else. The Netherlands and the Caribbean islands are not of the same scale; you cannot expect from an island what you expect from a country. And yet in the debate, there is often an “us-here” and a “them-there”, when it should be an us-here and us-there. The tensions around Venezuela make the islands vulnerable.
That is why strong, equal cooperation within the Kingdom is so important. And that cooperation can yield so much. Look at the Blue Wave, the national team of Curaçao, which has qualified for the World Cup. That is not a coincidence, but the result of cooperation: of years of investment, and where players with family ties on the island, but born in the Netherlands, can simply play for Curaçao. Even Dick Advocaat noticed that success does not come from following his own way. Only when he went along with the energy, the music, the fun, the power of Curaçao, then the big success came.
And maybe that’s why the story about the football players of The Blue Wave touches me so deeply, because those players gave me something back that I didn’t always dare to feel as a young girl: you don’t have to choose between here and there. you are both. That even though I was born and raised here, I am a yu di Korsou. And that, Mr Chairman, is exactly how the Kingdom could also work and how I want to work in the House: with respect for everyone’s strength, with an eye for history, and with the firm conviction that the Kingdom becomes stronger if you make choices with people and not about people. We are a Kingdom!
Finally, my dear mother is no longer here, but I am sure that she would now say to me with all her wisdom: “Don’t let yourself go crazy in The Hague. Do what you do best: ‘connect people’. Stay close to yourself. I know you can do it, go for it girl!”
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