Dutch politicians have expressed concern over elections in the Caribbean Netherlands (see Friday paper). A specific reference was made to the relatively large number of proxy votes and
rumours concerning irregularities at the polls in St. Eustatius.
However, as Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Minister Ronald Plasterk pointed out, no formal complaints in that regard had been filed. He does plan to discuss investigating the proxy votes issue with the Electoral Council.
What nobody in The Hague seems to be talking about is that the entire proxy voting option was abandoned long ago in the former Netherlands Antilles, precisely because it proved too fraud-sensitive. When Statia, Bonaire and Saba became overseas special public bodies in 2010 it was the Dutch Government that decided to reopen this possibility, apparently at the islands’ peril.
But that’s not the only drawback. No longer requiring parties to earn the first seat outright to qualify for residual seats contributed to political disintegration, which did not make governing the territories any easier either.
Add to that the dualistic system of government whereby one cannot be both Commissioner and Island Council member as used to be the case. This means elected party leaders take a risk by actually going into the Executive Council and working for the people, because in the event of a coalition shift they could be left “on the outside looking in” without a legislative seat.
The idea here is not to point a blaming finger at anybody, but rather to recognise that certain aspects of the constitutional changes themselves contributed to the perceived problems. No doubt it all was done in the interest of democracy, but that doesn’t mean the approach automatically works for this region and particularly in such small-scale communities.
Maybe they should also evaluate that!
