The Prefect, Serge Gouteyron held a press conference last Friday. He wished to make a statement first in English and then in French on the situation of the blockages in certain neighborhoods in the French part on Friday morning.
He described the instigators as "petty tyrants" having "the sole ambition of imposing their law, that of traffickers, of the street". He accuses them of "creating chaos", of "flouting the cause they say they defend". He considers “condemnable and inadmissible” the behavior of those who “use the situation to promote their little shenanigans, because that's what it is about”, “to undermine the territory”. "Where's Friendly Island?" He asked. “Everything is a pretext for a mess… They want to demonstrate that they would be the strongest,” he notes.
Serge Gouteyron says he is aware that “their only whim is to make [him] bend”. He denounces their "requests which are transformed into dictates". "We want that, we demand that ..." are not, for the prefect, methods of negotiations, of discussions.
He calls for reason, serenity, discipline. “Apart from these deleterious movements, all the conditions are present today to work in serenity” for the development of Saint-Martin. "Their objective is chaos, but we need to build", conceives the prefect, who recalls that the island has been losing inhabitants for several years, "Irma has only been an accelerator". "People are leaving the island because order does not reign there," he reports. “How do you want to attract investors if there is no order? What lies in wait for us are speculators, but we need investors, ”he insisted.
Finally, the Prefect confirmed that arrests had taken place on Friday morning. All the main roads were quickly released by the police. Only the Sandy-Ground bridge was still blocked on Friday morning.
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