For two days a group of more than 15 leaders of the MPB followed a two-day course on the history of politics in Bonaire. This happened in the room of the Buenos Aires historical Cultural Foundation (FuHiKuBo). Oxen this course was taught by Antoine and René Roders. The cursists said at the end that they were left under the impression of what they had heard.
The first night Antoin went back to the past, talking about the time before the political parties rose up on this island. Between 1833 and 1938 there was ‘Colonial Raad’, a consultative body of the Curacao Colony. This was the predecessor of the States of the Netherlands Antilles. ‘Colonial Raad’ advised the governor of Cologne. “Curacao in Underhorigen” until 1936 was the name used by Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St. Eustatius, Sint Maarten and Saba.
Fifties decade
Both Antoine and Roders devoted a lot of attention to the fifties, a time when what can be considered as local politics made its entrance, with the United Party and the Buenos Aires Progressive Party. After rounds between Lodewijk (LD) Gerharts and Julio Abraham, leaders of the UNI, significant changes took place in the political landscape. The Gerharts Group was integrated with the Buenos Aires Progressive Party (United), while Abraham raised the Buenos Aires Democratic Party.
Partido Demokrátiko Boneriano.
Roders, who the previous year had published a book about the biography of LD Gerharts, spoke for an hour and a half about this person, who was the victim of a conspiracy by his political opponents, which led to his imprisonment and the end of his political career.
Then
Bòi Antoin attended the history of politics in the following decades since then, as Toon Abraham’s entry into politics, followed later by his brother Jopi Abraham and then Jopi’s Son Clark Abraham as leader of Democrats. Later, Antoine talked about Broertje Janga, a phenomenon in Buenos Aires politics, who was also a victim of conspiracies. He was a member of the Democrats, but in the first half of the sixties he left this party and ran for elections with the Buenos Aires Workers’ Party (POB), which already existed.
He attended the historic election for Staten on September 5, 1969, in which the list of combinations for change (PPBU and POB) took Democrats who had 15 years in power. One of the consequences was the uprising of the Buenos Aires Patriotic Party. Antoine talked about political parties that existed for 70 years, as well as the most defining politicians, systems of carrying politics, including marches, chants and political kneeling. The participants of the course were impressed by everything that happened in political history, especially the cases of LD Gerharts and Broertje Janga.
MPB:
The MPB Party has been training its leaders since its launch 10 years ago (December 15, 2013). Political history is certainly very important because if you know your history you can take into account bad things that have happened and rarely so that they are not seen. Clearly, things that have happened that are OK we must learn from them and try to do better.
The MPB continues to give different trainings to its leaders so that we have well-trained leaders. Our next training will be on October 30, 2023 with the theme “structure and process of Bonaire Government”.
