Dear editor,
I am the managing editor of the Today Newspaper. On December 8 of last year, I published an article under the headline Minister Buncamper sold leased land on Pond Island for $3 million.
More than fifty articles about this self-enrichment scheme followed, including opinion pieces and editorials. As a result, Public Health Minister Maria Buncamper-Molanus was forced to resign on December 23.
On December 22, I wrote a piece for Today’s opinion page under the headline True confessions, as a pre-emptive strike against rumors that the minister and her husband were contemplating a campaign to discredit me.
In it, I confessed to wrecking a car at a very young age, smoking weed at an equally young age, living illegally in the United States, winning $10,000 in a poker game, and to my arrest in St. Maarten in May 2009 for hitting a former employee who refused to leave my office. There is not much more to discover about me: I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I don’t frequent brothels, and I don’t have a gambling addiction. I am not for sale either.
In January of this year, one Judith Roumou paid a surprise visit to my office. Afterwards, I often wondered whether the now former minister and her husband had sent her. As there was no proof about this, I decided to let it go. Roumou posted some crazy stuff about me on her blog including a ridiculous video on You Tube that says more about her state of mind than it does about me.
I can live with all that.
However, on Monday January 31 I received information from a highly reliable source that the Buncampers are out for revenge. That does not surprise me, given the fact that my articles put the minister out of a $132,500 job, and it would not have disturbed me that much either, had my source not added: “Well, you know how people on this island solve their problems.”
Stuff like that does not scare me, but my wife is getting concerned, and that pisses me off.
For the record, I want to clarify a couple of things:
- I am not accusing the Buncampers of anything; I am simply relating what I have been told.
- I will not flee the island, nor will I ask Justice Minister Duncan for a gun license.
- I will, I’ll admit that much, be careful when I cross the street, and I will be very aware of my environment. Other than that, I will do my job to the best of my abilities. Nevertheless, I have taken some preventive measures.
In case anything happens to me, my estate will publish information that documents who I consider responsible and why in painstaking details.
Hilbert Haar,
Managing Editor Today Newspaper.