It’s probably beginning to sound like a broken record – or scratched CD – by now, but two meetings of Parliament on Tuesday couldn’t take place for lack of a quorum of eight in the 15-seat house. For the Central Committee meeting of 1:00pm no fewer than seven notices of absence had been received, four from the National Alliance (NA), two from the United Democrats (UD) and one of the St. Maarten Christian Party (SMPC), while only five members signed in.
The same number of legislators, all UD, registered for the plenary session at 2:00pm to handle laws related to unusual financial transactions. Notices of absence were received from their two faction colleagues and coalition partner SMPC’s lone legislator.
This meant the important draft legislation could not be approved, with possible repercussions in terms of blacklisting the country if relevant deadlines set by the international community for these matters are not met. The earlier postponement could put in jeopardy St. Maarten’s attendance at the 150th anniversary of the Joint Court of Justice for the Dutch Caribbean in Curaçao on May 3.
To be sure, April 22-26 is qualified as a “non-meeting week” when such gatherings normally aren’t held. But considering the many recent adjournments and cancellations, whatever space is available on the calendar should be used to eliminate the resulting backlog and it doesn’t help when people constantly don’t show.
Moreover, five parliamentarians spent the entire last week in the Netherlands for the debate on the proposed Kingdom Dispute Regulation, which left the other 10 with plenty of time on their hands. One would think they could have found room in their – apparently very busy – schedules to do their handsomely-rewarded full-time job by simply dealing with the people’s business.
It’s never too late though. Other meetings have been called for today, Thursday, and Friday. The latter includes an update on Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) that has been under so much discussion of late regarding the financing of its reconstruction, etc.
Surely for such a crucial issue to the local tourism economy and consequently just about the entire population’s livelihood, voters have every right to expect all their elected representatives to be fully engaged.
