Dear Editor,
In last week’s Letter to the Editor, I wrote concerning the importance of evaluating our representatives in Parliament on a yearly basis and not waiting until election time. I also mentioned that SMCP is busy developing a Parliamentarian report card that will indicate how well or how poorly our MPs are doing in the following six areas: attendance, participation, representation, supervision, legislation and interaction.
Furthermore, I explained the reason for and nature of the report card and presented an extensive description of the first benchmark, namely attendance. Here, I will expound on the following benchmarks: participation, representation and supervision.
Participation is one of the benchmarks that is very obvious. We can see and hear when an MP is taking part in meetings in the standing committees as well as in the central committee and the plenary sessions of Parliament. An MP is expected to participate by questioning, commenting, offering suggestions and proposals, voicing his/her opinion, presenting and defending motions, critiquing presentations of colleague MPs and by voting and motivating his/her vote.
The public expects an MP to make valuable and meaningful contributions in all of these meetings. Yet we all know MPs who speak but say nothing, who do not address the topic at hand but beat around the bush. We also know MPs who do not read or study the documentation, which becomes obvious in their superficial and unsubstantiated contributions.
Representation: our constitution in article 44 states that Members of Parliament are elected to represent the entire population of St. Maarten. In other words, an MP does not only represent his/her voters, a particular social or economic group or even his/her party. For this reason, the constitution stipulates in article 61 that Members of Parliament are “not bound by a mandate or instructions” but are free to vote according to their conscience.
A good example of this is, when Dr. Lloyd Richardson, a member of the UPP fraction, remained in Parliament and voted in favour of the NA/DP/USP 2016 budget. Sadly, just before the voting the rest of the UPP fraction walked out of the meeting but Dr. Richardson had placed the people’s interest above party politics!
Representing the people also means defending the people’s cause and bringing their concerns to the floor of Parliament and presenting these to Government while demanding answers and solutions. For example, the people had and still have great concerns regarding the Pearl of China Project, the dump, the prison, GEBE, the new hospital, etc., yet Parliamentarians have not seen the need to bring these issues to the floor of Parliament.
Another area related to representation is attending meetings abroad and not reporting back to the people. When it comes to representing the people, MPs, if they are not sick, should attend all meetings of Parliament. Sadly, in the past, numerous meetings have had to be cancelled due to a lack of quorum. Parliamentarians who decide to stay away from meetings for political or unsubstantiated reasons are actually not doing the job that they are being paid to do.
In addition, it should never be that a Parliamentarian or a Parliamentary fraction blatantly refuses to represent the people, as the UPP fraction did when it refused to represent the people at the IPKO meetings in the Netherlands last June. If something like this happened in the private sector that representative would be fired on the spot but in Parliament and St. Maarten this type of behaviour is accepted and rewarded with yet another four years in Parliament.
To supervise means to control, oversee, monitor, inspect, be responsible for, and to have the oversight and direction of. Supervision is one of the key functions of Parliament and of each Parliamentarian, yet it is the one function that Parliament pays the least attention to. How much oversight of Government is being carried out by our Parliamentarians? One of the reasons the oversight function is compromised is because Parliamentarians who belong to the coalition, consider the Government “their Government” and often a Parliamentarian refers to a Minister as “my Minister.”
Unfortunately, this mind-set is a direct result of Parliamentary democracy where our Ministers are appointed by Parliament. The best way to guarantee a true separation of powers is to have the people elect the Ministers or at least the Prime Minister and then let him/her select the members of the cabinet. In this way, a Parliamentarian would be more objective in the execution of his/her supervisory function.
The constitution gives Parliament many instruments by which it can carry out its oversight functions. A Parliamentarian can question a Minister verbally as well as in written form. Parliament also has the right to give Ministers instructions via motions. Furthermore, the right of interpellation and inquiry or the right to approve or amend the budget are very serious instruments at Parliament’s disposal.
Besides, through the annual reports of the High Councils of State, Parliament obtains insight as to how Government is functioning as well as advice about how to mitigate and correct situations in Government. But what does Parliament do with these reports? Absolutely nothing! Our Parliamentarians need to take the supervisory aspect of their function much more seriously!
Wycliffe Smith
Leader of the St. Maarten Christian Party
Dear Editor,
Where do we go from here? This is the question I ask myself, when I pick up the phone and call the Ministry of Justice and they kindly tell me the person I asked for is not in office. “However, you can leave a name and number, and we’ll get back to you.” So I hand over the requested information (name and number) and two days, going on three have passed and still waiting for them to get back in contact with me.
Are these the kind of assistants we need sitting in office? Aren’t these people getting paid to work? We have no power to deal with certain matters, and that is why we turn to the relevant departments which supposedly hired professionals to help we the people, but if this is the way they are working, well this is not good. How far are we going to reach as a country, with these so called professionals at the helm?
M.D.S.
Initials used at author’s request.
Dear Editor,
Twice there has been a semblance of transparency of government within days. What is happening?
M.C.W. Haynes wrote to you concerning taking children into consideration when setting up immigration policies on both Dutch and French side of the island. I believe what Minister Lee confirmed concerning those 3,000 undocumented persons who are on the SZV list is part of the problem of Haynes’s concern. This is how I look at it.
Three thousand undocumented but on SZV list, there is a strong possibility of their children being born here (my average 1,500 children); and because of compulsory education 1,500 children with a problematic immigration status. Could this also contribute to the financial burden – CFT?
Next, GEBE has been paying NAf. 1,500,000 since 2012 to Seven Seas without getting anything in return for it. I grew up in Aruba seeing water tanks on the few hills that are there and at that time we were already told that those tanks were put there in case of emergency. Being on the hills gravity would help with the pressure to reach areas the furthest from the water plant.
Knowing the deceased Julius Lambert from school and remembering those water tanks, I brought up that point to him many years ago. The topographical layout of St. Maarten would be ideal for reserve water tanks or for the real reason for my suggestion, catch rainwater in those tanks, filter it and distribute it with the help of gravity. All this would reduce the price of water and that dreaded word “brandstof clausule” or “fuel clause.”
It never happened and even more bizarre some Minister did something unheard of…that Minister signed a contract which is “water tight.” That is like getting away with murder, because RST is going after persons who have defrauded government of far less than that. Now it seems like nothing can be done concerning the fact that government will still have to pay a million and a half guilders yearly for the next four years to Seven Seas and associates, for getting nothing in return.
If you are wondering why I insist on mentioning “for getting nothing in return” that is because that water cannot be expended. This reminded me of my suggestion of many years ago. Over the years new laws have been added to the law books because of criminal deeds that were not absorbed in the law. I believe what is being done here with the people’s money is some kind of criminal manipulation and government should not leave this go untouched.
There are many different, positive ways for which that money can be used. For the youth, after school programmes, sports etc. If not build a water park, but Seven Seas should not continue to get that kind of money just because of a strange contract. Could this be considered lack of integrity? Questions – what is the cost to build a water tank? What did CFT approve for 2018?
By the way, I was explained that sending our recruits to the Police Academy in Curaçao is not possible right now.
Russell A. Simmons
Dear Editor,
I expected that article from Minister Lee to bring reaction from you, so I refrained from writing all that I wanted to in my previous letter. How long has this practice been going on? Is it wrong? Who is being jeopardized by this practice? Between SZV and APS there are all kinds of manipulating with the monies. The only people who are not profiting from that money are those who deposited it there.
You ended your editorial with choosing the lesser of two evils. At the risk of being categorized, I have to ask why I should have to choose between two evils in order to accommodate non-documented people who live in the country. When I listen to US news, ninety per cent of the times there are statistics, as we would say here, to back up what is said. You print the paper every day, can you tell me the last time you had statistics to accompany the articles you put in your paper? That is why our politicians say a whole lot of things and get away with it.
The people here hardly know the facts. It was just made known to the public how much of the people's money is literally been high jacked. I cannot use the phrase 'mash he corn', because MP Theo Heyliger is one of those politicians who every time GEBE is in the news, is ready to talk down whichever government is involved in GEBE, during the short period that he is not there. Because of his track record with GEBE though, he should be the last one to comment negative about the men and women at GEBE, because take it or leave it if anyone knows the ins and outs of GEBE it is MP Theo Heyliger.
If he is so concerned about the residents sitting in the dark and the stalling of the economy, he should stop being a politician and I would challenge him, being part of government, to put up or shut up for the sake of the thousands of people who have kept him in government year after year.
MP Heyliger could also know who the Minister was that signed that water-tight contract in 2012. If he was not the one, hopefully not, then just like he commented on and criticized the power outages, he should also have commented on that water-tight contract. And not MP Heyliger alone for that matter, everybody in government who had to deal with the budget during those years. MP. Heyliger should, as it were, stop lay-waiting power outages for political gain. I do not care which parties are in government, those are only twenty-two people, compared to the thousands.
Talking about statistics and power outages. To be fair, can GEBE go back in its archives and pull up the number of outages that there were during the years that Heyliger was involved, and compare that number to the number of outages we have had during the time that the others were involved in GEBE. And let the people know, in order to avoid petty observations.
Russell A. Simmons
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The Daily Herald stands by its editorial.
Dear Editor,
Plato and Socrates, ancient scholars of democracy and democratic systems, would be puzzled by the system of democracy employed in the Dutch Kingdom. More contemporary scholars like Montesquieu and Richelieu renowned for their Egalite, Liberte and Fraternite will be totally flabbergasted to learn that a European power whose elected officials do not campaign or seek a vote in the overseas territories, or allow citizens of these territories to vote in their elections, have so much input in what happens in the daily running of the overseas territories. Lest I forget the colonial master also does not contribute to the budgets of the territories.
Some friends and I were wondering aloud why nothing is being said on this side of the Atlantic about the amount of time it is taken to form a government since the March elections. In our case every time we are called upon to form a government, be it by election or so-called ship jumping, we get interference from across the pond. We are accused of everything shady and nefarious; if we are not buying out people, we are letting the underworld influence our government.
In the past we were also informed that certain locals (Theo Heyliger and Roland Duncan) could not be part of any cabinet. In other words, irrespective of what the people decided at the polls “we don’t care we are mighty and might is right.” These same people proclaim to the world that the overseas territories are autonomous and they only provide nationality, foreign affairs and defence on their behalf.
Truth be told, they are most prevalent in all parts of our daily lives. So we find it strange and even mind boggling that no one on this side finds anything strange with the length of time it is taking them to form a government in which we are interested for they also impact our lives.
We are also concerned when we hear that a discussion of changes to the euthanasia law caused another delay or that failure to raise the pay of school teachers might further frustrate things. We ask ourselves why should we not think or suggest that they too are in shady and nefarious deals that may not be in our favour. Strangely enough the outgoing Minister of Kingdom Affairs thought it important to visit the islands to bid his farewell, but according to the Antilleans Dagblad, also to feel the pulse of the local leaders on their feelings on a deferred motion by van Raak and Bosman to seek advice and guidance from the UN to have the UN escort us out of the kingdom.
From the press conference nothing was said about that part, what we heard was how good things go when we cooperate, or put differently, when we do as we are told. The good minister also did not give any information on a proposal from parliament to withdraw the military ships stationed in the Caribbean and post them in the Mediterranean for immigration control. This mind you is while we are ask to pay a huge sum for the services and in St. Maarten case unjustly so, for we have no maritime economic zone our maritime boundaries extend between three and four miles east because of St. Barths, and to the south and west the same because of Saba and French St. Martin.
The ugly dispute with the French republic reared its ugly head yet again so more proof that we need this government to be formed post haste to deal with the Oyster Pond boundary issue. Coalitions take time; every party has its pledges and promises to their constituents, there are varying priorities and pet projects and if it takes Holland six or more months doesn’t mean that for our size we should take less. Size does not and should not determine the importance of issues for a people, however, varying the demographics may be. So, may I suggest that we let our voices be heard without fear, for thus far the silence is deafening.
Elton Jones
