With six new parties having registered (see Tuesday paper), St. Maarten’s political landscape going into the February 9 elections is looking quite interesting. In addition to HOPE, SMCP, MAP, SDM, Beyond SXM and PPA,
there was also the re-registering of CPA, which did not take part in the August 29, 2014, vote.
That makes seven, plus the current four in Parliament UP, NA, DP and USP. The OSPP of Lenny Priest did participate in last year’s poll, but failed to earn a seat, and the same goes for the SRP of Jacinto Mock. The former is expected to make another run, while there is no indication the latter will.
Both anyhow would again have to go through the process of securing enough support for their candidate lists, as is the case with the six “newcomers” and CPA. Talk of a dozen or more parties vying for 15 seats therefore is not very realistic.
After all, other than the four already represented in the legislature, each of these parties will have to come up with backing from one per cent of the most recent valid vote, which translates to about 145. That may not seem like a whole lot of eligible voters to gather, but several who tried nevertheless found it difficult in the past.
Some might argue that the persons behind the various new parties might be better off joining forces to have a greater chance together, but they each no doubt have their own ideas and reasons to participate. Still, even if they achieve the necessary support, actually being elected is another story.
As explained before, there are always so-called residual parliamentary seats left, apart from the ones won outright. These are then divided between the candidate lists according to a certain formula, but only among those that already have earned the first seat on their own.
This “seat threshold” was 963 votes in 2014, which means one has to aim for at least 1,000 votes to get in. That is where the real test will lie.
