Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Evening.

I would like to thank the previous speakers, Angele Matijn and Ron Serrant for having so well framed the theme of our study and reflection this evening.

On behalf of the Aruban community I express thanks for the privilege and the honor of being the host to two scholars; Professor Etzioni who is considered one of the great thinkers of the modern world and Professor Ruiz San Roman for considering our small society by accepting our invitation and forming part of this symposium.

I was introduced to what we feel as communitarianism by my late mother.

Grateful to all who helped her at the most trying of times; families who helped her carry the burden of loss, friends who extended a helping hand. People she did not even know but who comforted her in her sorrow; school teachers, police men, neighbors who helped carry the burden of a widow, left behind with so many small children to care for.

Grateful for the Aruban soil, for its people, wherever they may have come from, its natural beauty and its history, and the great challenges it has endured.

Gratefulness is a virtue as it compels humility to admit that we owe our very being, our education, our security and our health, our inspiration, our achievements and our successes to our Maker, to our parents, families and to our friends and neighbors, to our community and to our country; to humanity and to the entire world for that matter.

And from all this, a covenant is born, a responsibility towards your country and people. We have learned this since small: attention towards a loyal friend, help for a neighbor in difficulty, for a youngster in trouble, and for an elderly in solitude; tender comfort for a grieving family.

In this way gratitude forms miles of invisible lines of shared happiness, love and respect, forming the fibers that bind a community together, expressed in words as family, society, bario, neighbor, community pride and friendship.

Today, however, we live in a society with enormous erosion within these fibers and hence profound fractures in the pillars that need to carry our country.

The family as an entity is being broken with double working hours and is weighed down by the unbearable and high cost of living.

The Community’s vigor and spirit are fractured by feelings of neglect and injustice.

Our districts, known as our ‘barios’ are fracturing and some are even falling into decay.

The formal authority granted to our government and parliament by virtue of our constitution, loses its moral authority at the moment the people are not represented at the level of the trust they have put in their representatives.

We are witnessing the erosion of the sense, and often the fact, of community, of human dialogue, the thousand invisible strands of common experience and purpose, affection and respect, which tie men to their fellows.

Our hope for the future is clouded by lack of clarity as to the direction and a large void of a common goal and national guidance. It is increasingly clear that we are missing something. Man as an observer is becoming alienated from himself as a being. As Prof. Etzioni presents it in the terms of the philosopher Martin Buber, I-it relations have takenover from I Thou relations.

We need to bring back trust in our nation’s course and in so doing, implement a renovation of thought and direction. Once more, Government should become an honorable and responsible administrator of our resources, a committed accomplisher, an inspiration and catalyst for new ideas, a trustworthy guardian of our future and of our image abroad.

Our free market should be stimulated and space should be created to offer the best of service and product in order to grow and prosper, to share the resources fairly between workers and investors.

The State and the market play an important part in all this. But together with the radical changes in the administration of the State and the constructive stimulation toward the free market, the pillars of our community will have to be allocated a central role.

The pillars of our society: the family, the bario, the church, the school, the Parents-Teachers Associations as well as the social and sports volunteer groups will have to get –along with State and Market- a central role. They will need to get their own space, incentive and support…so that they will help carry the responsibility towards our country and guarantee a balanced, healthy and happy development.

We will have to return the opportunity to a family to be a family. To find a fair sense of balance in working hours, time for education, time to do volunteer work and leisure time; time to be happy and time for togetherness.

We will have to return the opportunity to a community to be a community, with the sense of shared friendship, pride and responsibility that emits the required strength of human affection which sustains life, guarantees mutual security and gives meaning to our existence in relationship and alliance with one another.

During 2006 leaders of our organization have been part of international deliberations with political, academic and professional leaders on the very role of these pillars in a community that carry a country. We have continued this endeavor and today we share this symposium on communitarianism.

Family and community matters are not merely individual or private; they have major social consequences. With a lack of vision from within, the community might end up paying the consequences. A community needs leaders who reflect a sense of guidance and purpose, focusing on one common vision.

Besides reinforcing our democratic institutions, political parties are the ones intertwined with elements of our civil society. The civil society is a good-society in being. Based on voluntary commitment, individuals gather themselves in organizations to shape a vision through arguments and discussions and inspire a community to share hope, faith and work for a better community.

Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic once said: “It is a very clear understanding that the only kind of politics that truly makes sense is one that is guided by conscience. " I believe that a political vision inspired by community values is a politics guided by conscience.

Large countries have modernized and renovated their governmental systems based upon the communitarian philosophy to reinforce their development into a stronger foundation of norms and values when it comes to solidarity, brotherhood, love of fellow men and communitarian spirit.

A communitarian spirit that should surpass our borders as well. One that also needs to be our guidance in defining a more constructive relationship within the Dutch Kingdom; based upon common goals. One that also needs to be our guidance in defining our relationship with the European Union which is offering new opportunities for development and reference framework and as such, enabling us to raise the quality of life of our people.

Aruba needs this new vision. A vision based upon the trust we have in the optimism stored in the hearts of all our people who are awaiting the light of a new direction; a new direction towards a good society, one that will appeal upon an organized state, a vibrant market and a community that is participant and fundamental to carry this country into a new era of progress.

Gratitude towards those with whom we share this soil, for human life and human dignity gets its significance in relation to others.

The light of gratitude that consists of the thousands of invisible lines of shared faith, happiness, love and respect shall be the hope of that new tomorrow of that good society that we aspire to, for Aruba.