Federal employees and their families, but also Americans in general and people around the world were no doubt relieved to learn on Friday afternoon of a tentative deal to end the partial US government shutdown. The latter had lasted an unprecedented 35 days when President Donald Trump announced it probably will soon be over for at least three weeks.
The agreement would only provide stop-gap funding and thus be of a temporary nature, but once completed should mean thousands finally getting paid and many who apparently reacted by calling in sick returning to work. The impasse had increasingly been hampering essential services to the public and daily activities such as trade and travel.
Clearly, it was good neither for the economy nor the already not-so-great image of politicians in Washington in general, because both sides got blamed. What happened also illustrates the risk of having two different parties in power at the legislative and executive levels, especially after mid-term elections.
That is relevant for St. Maarten too, because the complaint is often heard locally that the current parliamentary representation system promotes coalition forming and thus leads to political instability. What’s more, the majority appoints the Council of Ministers, including the prime minister, who consequently have no direct voter backing of their own.
As elected representatives may not be part of both bodies at the same time for long, due to the separation of powers, this can lead to distance between the public administrators and citizens. That the seats in Parliament don’t “belong” to the political parties but rather individual candidates – even though they did not earn such outright with personal votes – only adds to the problem.
However, in reality no system is perfect. US Presidents have veto power, but an opposing majority in Congress can make effectively governing the country difficult at best.
There are always shortcomings. Winston Churchill was quoted as stating: “It’s been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried.”
