Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
PHILIPSBURG:--- "We respectfully disagree with the verdict by the Court and appealed. The 68 pages of the verdict barely give any material consideration to the vast core arguments presented. Instead, matters are brushed off with the Court using the well-known language of not sufficiently stated, not sufficiently explained, not argued, and so forth. One had to be there to know different.
These type of generic statements does not suffice and the Court simply neglected to respond to arguments presented, thereby implicitly ignoring these same arguments. In its verdict the Court also remarkably endeavors to, sometimes in a not entirely business-like manner, justify its own actions.
As we have stated repeatedly, it's very difficult, if not outright impossible, to expect justice in a system whereby a select group of people forms an organization with (I) their own investigative TBO officers, (II) their own translators, (III) their own Court clerks, (iv) their own secretaries, (v) their own public prosecutors and last but not least (vi) their own justices.
For example, even after the co-suspects and their attorney told the Court in detail that the Court made crucial mistakes in the written up statements of these co-suspects, the court comes back and doubles down in its verdict on its actions, stating: "I did it right", once again without any material consideration about the mistakes, other than indicating that possible mistakes would not be relevant for the case. Meanwhile, the Court uses the same mistaken statements for its decision-making.
One cannot seriously HOPE to find balanced and impartial justice this way. Lack of impartiality was very clear during the hearing, which is the reason why the impartiality and lack of unbiased sense of the presiding Justice were challenged with the Court of Appeals. This appeal was, regretfully, unsuccessful.
We knew that just like the BUMO case and now with a 5000 pages file and years of extremely intensive and costly investigation, the chance was big that we would have to seek justice in appeal, cessation, or even with the European Court of Human rights. Whilst we will always accept responsibility for possible wrongdoings, and actually also did so in this case, we remain undeterred in seeing justice served."
Press Release MP Claudius Buncamper.
