The board of the United St. Maarten (US) party calls Minister of Finance Perry Geerlings a hypocrite with selective amnesia for his disingenuous performance during the Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday morning. We also advise the Minister to resign if he can’t do the job.
We are flabbergasted that Geerlings “of all people” would cry a river and state that opposition members of Parliament are only busy with “the negative” and are not being positive about the development and reconstruction of the country. Geerlings also stated that “we are our biggest enemy” and “we have to stop fighting each other and need to work together.”
This is very rich coming from a Minister who, during his time in Parliament, was the foremost attack dog of former Prime Minister William Marlin and the former government after the devastation of Hurricane Irma when he and his cohorts were busy scheming to tear government down. Who is this “we” the Minister is referring to? Because he made it clear in the Netherlands recently that he stood alone, not even with his own party leader.
The Minister has the gall to say that St. Maarten is in an emergency situation and the opposition need to get in line? Was St. Maarten not in an emergency situation in late 2017? Were there not calls to do it together? But this Minister in particular when he was an MP called the former Prime Minister all sorts of names and connived his way towards helping in the fall of government. If ever there was a time when we needed to stop and stand together, it was then.
The present government sold St. Maarten a 6 for a 9 and reality has since set it when it comes to governing. The opposition MPs are doing their job by asking questions and holding Ministers (the government) accountable. The Minister is acting as if the opposition is making stuff up. Pertinent questions are being asked in Parliament for once. It is the Minister and his colleague Minister who have to now provide the information to the people of St. Maarten.
The opposition MPs represent the people, they are elected, and as such their right and their job is to get answers about issues in the country. Whether it is 3 questions or 300 questions. Whether is once a week or every day of the week.
If Geerlings and the rest of the Council of Ministers cannot do the job and cannot keep the public adequately apprised instead of hiding and spinning, then he should resign.
The Minister said he doesn’t have the time to answer MPs because he is getting paid to do a job. Well, so are the MPs and part of your job description is to be accountable to Parliament who in turn is accountable to the people of St. Maarten.
Lamenting in a press briefing over MPs doing their jobs, when you did the same and worse as an MP yourself, when you didn’t care about the people of St. Maarten and their suffering after Irma, when you only cared about seizing power, is hypocritical to the highest order. Do your job.
US Party board
