A certain newspaper whose name I shall not mention has been insisting every morning that a well-known radio personality is corrupt and that motivated by political power and real estate, she has amassed 90.000m2 in properties all over the island collecting valuable lots, like you would collect stamps. All that for endorsing and promoting the government on her radio station.
The newspaper prints the same ugly message every day, publishing identical full page adz with the exact text, and if this didn’t upset you the first time, because you have a high threshold of tolerance, after the fifteenth printing you get annoyed and by the end of the month you’re ready to spray graffiti on the freshly painted white wall of the recently renovated lighthouse, because you feel left out, you want to own 90.000m2 of terrain as well, and you share it with the public.
In other words because we were tolerant to the former case of graffiti protest, a copy-cat decided to pursue the same tactics on another issue, and now we’re stuck with dirty walls.
As for the scandal discussed in the newspaper every morning I realize that what Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in Nazi Germany said was true: When you repeat a lie a thousand times it becomes the truth.
By now because the allegations haven’t been contested or refuted by the radio personality I am starting to believe that where there is smoke there is fire, and it doesn’t sit well with me because, I have known Leoncita Arends for many years, and I have been trying to call her and check if indeed all the ugly stuff reported in the newspaper, and backed up by copies of government e-mails, is factual.
I can never find her. I found her brother who ridiculed the stories. He said the character assassination campaign is politically motivated, which sounds plausible because I remember previous character assassinations, for example, that of the MinInfra, by another newspaper, during previous governments.
Anyway, according to me, and I might be wrong, Leoncita still wears the same shoes she wore in 1987 when I hosted “Rapping With Rona,” on Canal 90, every Wednesday night from 11 to 1pm. She’s just doesn’t seem like the oligarch type to me.
But what about the copies of government e-mail, granting the dama 43.000m2 at Seroe Colorado and 24.000m2 in Barcadra, among other places. The man she is talking to in those e-mails, Freddy Every, writes to her it appears, regularly. I have been trying to get his attention for years, so he could finally pay an invoice still outstanding from 2012. He never answers.
And now the frustration about of allegation of corruption in the land department drove a Dutch speaking citizen of this island into a protest mode, and he picked graffiti, expressing himself on a national monument.
As I said before, the graffiti vandalism impacts the feelings of safety, law and order and property values, on our island and it influences our sense of well-being, NEGATIVELY.
This is what I wrote in early June when another group picked graffiti as their weapon of choice: All graffiti must be removed from public view immediately after they appear, otherwise the trend may become an invitation for more vandalism. If we don’t remove the text, it means we don’t care, and it becomes an invitation for more, and worst, like broken windows. We should all be asking Public Works to commit to freeing us from the offensive lettering, because graffiti vandalism in unacceptable. Remember that the vandals have repeated their message many time, so that we “recognize” the message instantly. By removing the text as soon as possible we deny them the “glory” and “satisfaction.” TOTAL CLEANING: Please visit the rotonda at De La Sallestraat with a bucket of paint, and many other places meanwhile.
