The informal survey on the political situation carried out by St. Maarten Hospitality and Tourism Association (SHTA) among its members (see Saturday paper) produced some interesting results. The majority of employers – 62.84 per cent – clearly prefer early elections, but that still leaves 37.16
per cent who chose to let the incoming NA-led coalition form a new Government.
What’s more telling is obviously that most in both camps – a combined 85.71 per cent – would like to see the Members of Parliament commit to anti-“ship jumping” legislation. In other words, in total only 14.9 per cent support either option without that commitment, indicating a deep desire to have something done about elected representatives “going independent” to switch allegiance and cause one Cabinet crisis after another.
The problem is that if a seat in Parliament must be given up in case of disagreement with the party or the rest of its legislative fraction, the person involved will not be able to act according to his or her own good conscience as the oath of office requires. In fact, nations where that is the case tend not to be very democratic in nature, because there is little individual freedom among lawmakers.
Besides, St. Maarten is not the only country in the Dutch Kingdom to face this issue. Even in the Netherlands with its much longer parliamentary tradition they debated measures to curb “seat theft” in the recent past, but then came to the conclusion that it was basically a constitutional dead-end street.
In the end it’s the political organisations that should be mature and structured enough to put people on their candidate lists who can be expected to do the right thing in the best general interest when given a choice. The latter may not be as easy as it sounds, but ultimately that is what it all boils down to.
As pointed out earlier, the so-called Lynch Law whereby candidates are elected according to their personal votes rather than position on the list has not proven very helpful in this regard, because it gives the party leadership less control. If something is to change in the way politics are practiced in St. Maarten, that’s probably a good place to start.
