It appears Michelangelo “Lo” Martines will still head the candidate list of “Korsou Esun Miho” (KEM) for Curaçao’s March election to be submitted on Nomination Day, Thursday. This, despite his ongoing detention as suspect in a drug-trafficking and money-laundering investigation.
A request for his pre-trial release was denied on Monday. He will thus get the party’s top spot on the ballot and possibly run for office from prison.
If that seems unprecedented, it’s actually not. Anthony Godett, who temporarily replaced Martines in Parliament when he voluntarily stepped down to ensure continued majority coalition support for the outgoing MFK-led government, did the same back in 2003. Jailed for corruption, the then FOL-leader campaigned from his cell and won.
Unlike those of St. Maarten, Curaçao parliamentarians are not suspended when in pre-trial detention or with a guilty criminal verdict. They only lose their seat in case of an irrevocable conviction, after all appeal options have been exhausted.
Credit the politicians, officials and experts in Philipsburg who prepared the country status per 10-10-10 for adding that safeguard. It has been applied several times since, allowing the party’s next candidate in line to become a substitute.
Even so, uncertainties remain. What happens when a suspended member while still in a court again earns a seat in a new election?
NOW number two candidate Claudius “Toontje” Buncamper was in that position earlier this year. Because he failed to receive enough votes, the public never found out.
No system of governance is perfect, mind you, which makes criticism from The Hague over the current situation in Willemstad a bit ironic. After all, it’s the “free mandate” principle for elected representatives in the kingdom’s democratic process that made some political instability on the islands possible in the first place.
