Dear Editor,
I have called St. Martin home for 27 years and have grown to love this little island, its people and even its politics. It is cute politics. I often marvel at the simple approaches and arguments. Please don’t get me wrong I am not diminishing the island’s politics and issues. They are just so silly at times.
Very recently we saw the President of the Parliament in Dutch St. Maarten call one of his fellow MPs [Members of Parliament – Ed.] lazy. This was strange to me because the MP in question, Emmanuel, seems to be creating all of the news on the island this entire year. In many countries opposition MPs do exactly what Emmanuel does on a daily basis. They hold the government accountable. How else would any population anywhere in the world discover what their government is doing? You cannot depend on any government to volunteer information.
Let me remind you of some of the things Emmanuel, in my opinion, has brought to light for being “lazy”: The disclosure of the COHO stipulations, the cut to the income of public workers, the cabal at the airport and false claims of good corporate governance, the attempted hiring of an Australian to run your hospital, warning of impending property taxes, the garbage contracts controversy, the trust fund strange selection of projects instead of focusing on more schools, homes and the like, the rundown event village and its vanishing insurance money, the blatant lies of the island’s liquidity, the relocation of vendors in your capital, the joke that is the integrity chamber, the lack of a recovery plan post-COVID and now lately keeping your government on its toes with tax reforms.
Now your first question might be how do I recall all of this? Simple, GOOGLE! The good gentleman has trended the entire year. His activity has either completely changed the trajectory of whatever the government was attempting, stopped it cold or at the least gave the government pause and forced them to do the right thing or reconsider their course of action. His predictions have also borne fruit.
This, good sirs, is the definition of good and powerful and effective representation. It is also the kind of representation that governments all over the world can criticize using only one old line: “the MP is only complaining.” Well, hear, hear! for the complaints!
If the good MP is lazy, then I say we need more lazy MPs. If that is what laziness looks like, then I’ll take it! Finally, considering the above dubbed “laziness”, how exactly then, would one classify the complete inactivity of the same President of Parliament (save for the controversies he keeps creating)?
Name withheld at author’s request.
