Dear Editor,
The announcement in your newspaper of a new coalition came as a great disappointment, but not as a complete surprise.
As much as the Dutch deny trying to influence our local politics, it is apparent that their colonial ways of the past are being forced upon us once again by using the VDSM and Public Prosecutors Office to dictate who will be running the country by using subjective screening policies to deny our elected officials from serving in the Council of Ministers.
One of my biggest fears was that MP Theo Heyliger, the only politician to legitimately earn a seat outright in Parliament out of over 120 postulated candidates, would be denied the possibility to serve the people of St. Maarten in the Council of Ministers due to this subjective and biased screening. All other MPs fell several hundred votes short of earning their seats. This is truly a travesty of our democracy.
Under the Kingdom Charter, “Each of the autonomous countries has the obligation to promote the realisation of fundamental human rights and freedoms, legal certainty and good governance; this is primarily their own, autonomous responsibility.”
Yet the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom unilaterally decided that the “autonomous” Island of St. Maarten did not have the ability to properly vet its own politicians and instituted new screening rules they don't even apply to their own Ministerial candidates.
Just six short years ago the NA and DP celebrated the achievement of 10-10-10, but who could have foreseen that instead of becoming more autonomous within the Kingdom we were in fact relinquishing our political freedoms once again to the colonial masters in The Hague.
Such is the hypocrisy of the Dutch Empire and our local electorate who were the champions of our current constitutional status. The oppression of our democracy by our Dutch masters and their local puppets is utterly repulsive.
I would sincerely hope that the ministers appointed by this “new” coalition will be vetted with the same fervour and comprehensiveness as the UP candidates were.
As the United States presidential election unfolded to a victory for Donald Trump, many people on St. Maarten criticized the outcome, yet when it comes to accepting the total lack of principles, ethics and morals of our own electorate these same critics are silent.
Will these same people be critical of coalition partners who on the National Alliance advocate the collection of taxes from casinos while the US Party had their campaign(s) financed by the same casino owners? Will they be critical of a new hospital that will be unaffordable with interest rates of over 6.5 per cent while still lacking the basic services we need to eliminate treatment in South American countries?
Will they be critical of the blatant nepotism that has characterized this coalition government for the past 12 months with appointments of functionally illiterate persons to key positions in our government and government-owned companies? Will they be critical of the wasteful spending and financial recklessness of government-owned companies for political and personal self-enrichment?
We should all be reminded that we have already experienced the dismal aptitude of governing of this coalition for the past 12 months. It has been a disaster with declining tourism numbers, declining revenues, increased dump fires, poor waste and sanitation service, an increase in armed robberies, a crumbling infrastructure, power blackouts, etc.
If we continue to get more of the same Red, White and Blue “governing coalition”, it is going to be a long and painful four years.
Name withheld at author’s request.
