POND ISLAND--People’s Progressive Alliance (PPA) was the only party of four not to garner the 142 signatures from registered voters required to make it onto the ballot for the February 26 snap parliamentary election. However, the orange party will get another try on next Monday.
PPA received 86 endorsement signatures, 56 short of number representing one per cent of the valid ballots cast in the 2016 snap election.
Party leader former Member of Parliament (MP) Gracita Arrindell said many of the party’s supporters could not get time off to head over to the old Civil Registry Building on Pond Island to sign the endorsement list. “It is not like election day when you get time off to vote,” she said.
However, not getting all the signatures in one go “doesn’t say anything” about the voters’ interest in the party, she said.
“You don’t waste time to assume,” she told the press after the final tally was announced by the Civil Registry Department. “When you think you are the underdog, you just continue to fight for what is right. ... I am confident we will get on the ballot.”
Fellow PPA candidate Susanna “Suzy” Velasquez told The Daily Herald the set time of 9:00am to 4:00pm is “not good for the working class. ... The process should be made easier, because not everyone works for Government.”
Her recommendation was for the endorsement time to be broken down into different shifts to allow shift workers the opportunity to be part of the process.
Assured a place on the ballot following the endorsement are St. Maarten Development Movement (SDM) with 194 signatures, St. Maarten Christian Party (SMCP) with 189 and United Democrats (268).
Parties’ representatives and supporters gathered outside the building throughout the day. They chatted with each other, traded a few verbal jabs and were in general good spirits, as is the trademark of St. Maarten elections and politics.
People who came to sign gathered outside and were let into the building in small batches to limit congestion and to keep the steady flow to the four windows available for signatures.
All four lists were available at each window, giving the voters some anonymity in their choice of party. A voter had to produce an identification card or passport at the window to a Civil Registry staff member to verify he or she was duly inscribed in the voters registry before the voter’s preferred list was given to him/her.
The parties were given periodic updates on the endorsement count by the Civil Registry or Central Voting Bureau representatives throughout the day. This gave the parties lagging behind the opportunity to rally supporters to boost their count.
The endorsement process started 10 minutes late due to flooding in the hurricane-damaged building. Those minutes were given back to parties by the extension of the endorsement time to 4:10pm, instead of the 4:00pm close-off. At closing time only representatives of SDM, SMCP and PPA were still present outside the building. The United Democrats representatives had already moved on to campaigning, having surpassed the 142 quota at 1:00pm.
