St. Maarten goes to the polls one week from today to elect another Parliament that will in turn nominate a Council of Ministers to govern for – in principle – the next four years. Since country status was obtained per October 10, 2010, no single party has achieved a legislative majority with eight of the 15 seats, requiring coalitions.
The latter translates to compromise, because political manifestos will likely be combined for a governing programme. This also means the individual parties involved cannot reasonably be held accountable 100% for realising all plans announced during the campaign, which is certainly no excuse to make unrealistic and even false promises or shy away from expressed commitments.
People say a multi-party government will by definition be less effective. That is probably true up to a degree, but some think it helps prevent too much concentration of power by having them keep an eye on each other.
As clarified by Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs during Wednesday’s press briefing (see related story), the much-commented process of deregistering residents not living in St. Maarten at least eight months per year had nothing to do with the current elections and started a long time ago. Any adult Dutch passport-holders who mistakenly lost their voting right during this exercise can still appeal to the Civil Registry and Court of Justice.
Students abroad were not targetted, but a few may have been erroneously included as they are not separately listed. Those in the Netherlands must already deregister here to register at a Dutch municipality, but that is not the case for going to college in the US or elsewhere, so those students could conceivably travel to the island and vote even though they spend most of the year off-island.
It would nevertheless be good if every St. Maarten student abroad could participate physically there, online or by proxy moving forward. After all, the intention remains for them to one day return home and this therefore concerns their future too.
