It is Inside Out
September 21, 2024
As I sat down to read in peace on Saturday, September 21, 2024, I came across the news that the 12th Curaçao Clean Up had kicked off the day before. A few days earlier, the Minister of GMN—who let us be honest, is really the Minister of Finance and recently took on a third ministry—had already launched a cleanup campaign across Curaçao. In this initiative, everyone can dump their trash for free at the landfill for two months. Collection points across the island have also been set up where citizens can drop off their waste.
This action is essential, as the island has become increasingly pol-luted in recent years, all while we have become more reliant on tour-ism. I have previously expressed my full support for cleanup efforts. I wrote a plan inspired by Singapore, a country that began its journey from third world to first-world status in the 1960s by cleaning up its dirty fishing village and transforming it into one of the cleanest places on earth.
Yet, despite my support, I fear this will not succeed. Why not?
Just yesterday, we celebrated one of Curaçao’s finest, who will represent us in a beauty pageant. We have long learned that beauty is not just an external display but inner beauty that shines outward. The same applies to cleanliness. Someone clean on the inside will also keep their body, home, garden, neighborhood, and country clean.
From what I see now, no one is addressing internal cleanliness, which includes leading up to corruption. I am willing to admit that you can start with external cleaning and then work inward, but I do not see anyone preparing for that process. As it stands, everything happening now feels like throwing water into the sea. The skeptics, who claim this is all just an election stunt, might be right.
Miguel Goede
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