Kòrsou Felis and the Nanny State

Kòrsou Felis and the Nanny State

1 December 2025

It is Monday, 1 December 2025. The last month of the year has begun. The hurricane season is officially behind us. Once again, we came through unharmed. The same cannot be said for islands like Jamaica.

On Sunday I found myself thinking about the concept of the Nanny State: a government that directly imposes rules on its citizens — commanding, prohibiting, regulating. Think of smoking bans, vape bans, or compulsory education. The opposite is a state that avoids direct intervention and instead relies on education to help its people make informed decisions on their own. I recalled Lee Kuan Yew’s 1983 speech in which he intervened even in how people chose their marriage partners. He argued that men should marry intelligent women rather than traditionally obedient ones. More and more, I find myself concluding that we need to be a Nanny State, because our population does not have the educational level required to make responsible decisions independently. Take the obesity problem: to solve it, certain things will simply have to be banned.

That same Sunday, I also thought of Doble R’s composition, SSS – KòrsouFelis. The chorus — felis, felis — captures our way of life here. I estimate it dates from the late 1970s. It truly captured the vibe, as people would say today, of Curaçao at that time. People were content and happy. Friendly, carefree, and socially cohesive. You could see it best in our sense of togetherness, especially in how we celebrated. The island literally danced; there were parties every day. Until someone decided that all this dancing was a problem and restricted it to weekends. Expressions like “dancing into our downfall” or “partying our way to the end” probably originate from that period.

But the storms are not yet behind us. Perhaps this is the calm before the storm. I am referring to the tensions between Trump and Maduro. The sky above us is almost empty; hardly any planes are flying. Trump has declared the airspace closed. In the Netherlands, this is on the news every day and a topic in all the talk shows. Here, we treat it the same way we treat an approaching hurricane: the population is not informed. There appears to be nothing to worry about. The party continues. One government event was cancelled under pressure from the opposition and pensioners demanding indexation, but that is about it. And yet today’s parties are nothing like those of the 1970s. Back then, we celebrated the good life. Today, parties are primarily a form of escapism — an attempt to forget the hardship, because the poverty and social problems are severe.

The problem with establishing a Nanny State here is: who will be the nanny? In countries like Singapore and El Salvador, you have strongmen who are enlightened. We do not. Too many ministers are under investigation or do not lead exemplary lives. They need a nanny themselves.

Miguel Goede