Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
The names mentioned in today's paper as the reported candidates for the various positions of the incoming NA/DP/US-party coalition inspire confidence. The screening process will have to determine whether they all qualify in the end, but for now the apparent nominees certainly sound adequate.
It was already clear that NA leader William Marlin would be the next Prime Minister in charge of General Affairs, while the party's number three candidate and top vote-getter Silveria Jacobs had been a "shoo-in" to again become Minister of Education, Culture and Sports.
Whom NA would make its Minister of Public Housing, Spatial Development and the Environment VROMI was not known, but Rodolphe Samuel with his experience as President of Parliament certainly had been among the frontrunners for the job on the party's election list. Henrietta Doran-York taking over as Plenipotentiary Minister in the Netherlands makes sense, as she was deputy minister in The Hague during the former NA/DP/I-3 government.
DP leader Sarah Wescot-Williams not remaining Prime Minister had been pretty obvious, while Cornelius de Weever was widely expected to return as Minister of Public Health, Labour and Social Affairs. If they both had joined the cabinet the party would have been represented in Parliament by Emil Lee and Shidart "Cookie" Bijlani.
However, neither of the latter seemed favoured to chair the legislature due to their lack of parliamentary experience and limited mastery of the Dutch language, while DP had received that post in the political negotiations. Wescot-Williams therefore will take up the Presidency of Parliament, which automatically would mean that only Lee and not Bijlani becomes an elected representative.
The DP also has the Minister of Justice and the decision apparently was taken to propose a "professional" in attorney Jeroen Veen. Considering that the current minister Dennis Richardson also wasn't an active politician, one can assume a similar approach regarding law enforcement policies.
That US Party leader Frans Richardson chose to be the next Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication (TEATT) should surprise nobody, while top civil servant Leona Marlin-Romeo going into Parliament as its vice-president is a logical move. Environmentalist Rueben Thompson thus may become the second member of the new party's legislative fraction.
The US Party had to deliver a Finance Minister too and reportedly opted to keep the current minister Martin Hassink as a "non-political" cabinet member. Many will applaud that, no doubt, considering his work on the budget and the country's public finances in the past year.
All in all, in any case at first glance the various choices supposedly made seem solid enough.
