Dear Editor,
Following weeks of media spectacle regarding his improperly issued developmental permits, MP Egbert J. Doran broke his silence during Wednesday's VROMI Parliament session in a desperate attempt to regain control over a public narrative quickly spiraling out of his favor.
While facing public scrutiny for multiple high-profile projects he controversially approved during his tenure as Minister of VROMI, Doran aggressively questioned current Minister Patrice T. Gumbs on his handling of Doran’s messy leftovers, conveniently skipping over inconvenient truths, and shifting the blame back onto his unlucky successor. The result was a session that portrayed a world where it was solely newcomer Gumbs’ fault that St. Maarten still finds itself with strained infrastructure, environmental devastation, and community frustration in 2025.
So far, Doran’s attempt appears to be a gross failure, with many residents rejecting what they view as obvious public manipulation by a politician who has been widely criticized as one of the least transparent and most damaging leaders of the long-mismanaged Ministry.
Many observers were shocked to see Doran in a session about “permit transparency,” especially given that his party faction called it into session. The MP’s actions as VROMI Minister before he left office in mid-2024 have been the focus of investigations by the Ombudsman, reports by the General Audit Chamber, and dozens of newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and social media spectacle.
At the moment, Doran is under fire for issuing building permits to pending developments West Vue in Cupecoy (18-story hotel in an area zoned for 3-story high residences), Vie L’Ven in Cay Bay (destruction of coastline, marine infrastructure along a coral reef), and Villa Sasha and the Phoenician in Beacon Hill (both multi-story buildings in an area designated for single-family homes), not to mention Babacool in Simpson Bay (a pool and beach bar built on the shoreline without community consultation), Tepui 104 in Pelican Key (constructed atop an ecologically unique hill plateau), and The Hills in Simpson Bay (another ecologically valuable area).
Countless other developments that have not yet broken ground were also approved during the Doran administration, including Lagune Bay in Little Bay (destruction of wetland Little Bay Pond).
Several of these were absent from the National Gazette or published under misclassifications or incorrect pretenses, depriving residents of their rights to object. The advisory organization Nature Foundation has publicly stated they were not consulted on the environmentally sensitive sites. And almost every single one is a self-described luxury development, catering to wealthy expats and vacationers, while St. Maarten’s infrastructure and affordability continue to crumble under the burden and inaccessibility of these developments.
These decisions were not made for “the local man or woman” in any sense, contrary to Doran’s claims.
Though newcomer Minister Gumbs appears to have made some mistakes of his own and some learning to do, Doran seems to clearly forget the butter smeared on his own head. No one likes a hypocrite. So who would have expected Doran to show up and lecture Gumbs on his lack of transparency when it comes to developmental permits? How could anyone have thought Doran would have the audacity to imply Gumbs was corrupt, and impressionable for providing the public with apologies, clarifications, and solutions while he attempts to transparently clean up the disaster that everyone knows is the Ministry of VROMI? The opportunity for Gumbs and the coalition government to humiliate and dissect Doran seemed too risky.
But Doran took the gamble and seized the chance to scrutinize Gumbs for mistakes and irregularities that he himself created or carried responsibility for during his years as Minister. Perhaps predicting Gumbs’ tendency to list (unfortunately dull) facts and figures in response, Doran armed himself with the only thing he could against the harsh reality: false rhetoric, finger-pointing, theatrical acting, and fact-skipping. He skirted around his culpability in gutting VROMI, dismissing insufficient government capacity as a reason for Gumbs’ permitting oversights despite the fact that Doran had not replaced the technical administration responsible for publishing permits during his tenure, and former deputy Minister Veronica Jansen-Webster observed a “lack of a secretary general and multiple department heads, a virtually empty staff bureau with employee satisfaction being at an all-time low” after Doran’s four years (The Daily Herald, 23 May 2024).
The most laughable moment may have been when Doran proudly asserted that he had never overturned any advice of his policy team to issue a building permit, while in the same few minutes holding a copy of the Herald from that very morning, which asserted he had ignored negative advice against issuing a residential permit for West Vue. Doran confidently revealed he functions on legal technicalities, not any sort of ethics or guidelines.
In yet another moment he outed himself as embarrassingly unaware of public accountability tools when he essentially accused Gumbs of feeding the Herald details about the West Vue, when in reality they were accessed through a court case and could have been achieved through filing a “LOB verzoek,” a transparency tool for residents to access government documents about developments … something Doran appears to know nothing about.
In many ways, Doran’s remarkable performance at Parliament was not surprising, considering his use of it in the past. “Ignore, deny, blame” was a tactic he utilized when it came to publicity surrounding Villa Sasha, first ignoring the claims, then denying his wrongdoing, and finally blaming the involved parties of making up problems (The Daily Herald, 22 January 2025). This contrasted starkly with Gumbs’ approach, which, while painfully dry and hapless, is at least consistently honest and open.
To be sure, mistakes have been made under Gumb’s tenure, and he will likely disappoint again in the future. If St. Maarten politics has promised us anything, it is that. But for now, he has something that Doran proved he lacks during this Parliament meeting: integrity and accountability. Gumbs apologized and took responsibility for the mistakes he has made, while respectfully contextualizing the difficult circumstances his predecessors have put him in. While the opposition clearly saw this as weak, it was honest. Meanwhile, all Doran could do was attack Gumbs with the very same questions the public had for him during his years as minister, which he never bothered to answer.
Based on the overwhelming rejection of his political play on social media, it is clear St. Maarteners were not fooled by MP Doran’s obvious “politricks” any longer. As the Bob Marley quote goes, “You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” St. Maarteners are seeing through these childish theatrics, and we will not allow them to stand in the way of our rights any longer.
Another resident paying attention
Name withheld at author’s request.
