Governor Eugene Holiday has spoken and confirmed ratifying the Romeo-Marlin Cabinet’s national decree dissolving Parliament and calling early elections on November 25 “in keeping with the Constitution.” At the same time, he acknowledged the “new majority” of nine seats in Parliament presented to him earlier by the National Alliance (NA), United St. Maarten Party (US Party) and – now independent parliamentarians – former United Democrats (UD) faction members Luc Mercelina and Chanel Brownbill.
In view of the latter, the governor has started exploratory consultations on forming a new government. Such a cabinet would have an interim status due to its very short of term of less than three months, ending when the next Parliament is to take office on December 23.
If this sounds familiar that’s because it’s happened before. An interim cabinet was installed after the NA-led government headed by Prime Minister William Marlin lost its majority support following Hurricane Irma.
That cabinet was led by the same Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin and one of the first things it did was to prolong its existence for several months by postponing the snap elections that the outgoing preceding coalition had set. However, the first to do so was the interim cabinet headed by then-NA-leader William Marlin that succeeded the Marcel Gumbs government.
So, since “both sides of the aisle” have already pushed back a scheduled early return to the polls, what are the odds it will happen again? Probably better than even.
