SXMElections.com

PHILIPSBURG--Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs made it clear on Wednesday that no member of the Council of Ministers had requested that Parliament have the urgent Central Committee meeting on crime on Monday convened behind closed doors.

Gumbs told reporters at the biweekly Council of Ministers press briefing which resumed yesterday that Parliament invited the council to a closed door session. “So when Members of Parliament go out after the meeting and question why the meeting was behind closed doors, I think all 15 MPs need to do soul searching on how the meeting came about,” Gumbs said. “No one here requested the meeting to be behind closed doors.”

The Prime Minister, who became emotional while delivering his statements, heavily condemned persons who continue to paint the island black with negative comments. He said if these persons “want to self-destruct then you have the freedom to do so. Tie a block around your neck and jump of the Pier, but don’t destroy this country. If you are suicidal, do that. Go get some help at a psychologist. Go jump out a plane or something, but we can’t continue to call instability,” an emotional Gumbs said.

The PM said while he does not want to restrict anyone, every time he opens the papers or goes on websites, there are comments about finger-pointing and persons being called corrupt etc. He said these negative comments are not just read locally, but also by persons abroad including the Dutch. “Every Tuesday night there is a discussion on a radio station about government falling and about this one corrupt and that one corrupt… Are we on a track on self-destruction?” he asked.

He said no one wants to invest in a country where the government is unstable. “Who wants to invest US $1,000 in a country where every minute the government is falling?” He alluded to engagements he had in Washington and Tortola and the main concern that other countries had about St. Maarten was how long the government would be kept intact. “That is because people are listening and reading,” he said.

He said whenever government falls everything is at a standstill. There is no trust and civil service is at a loss as to what to do because plans are made then a new minister comes in with different ideas and “nothing gets done.”

“Continuously in this society we have people who have nothing to do but to air their mouth instead of going somewhere and get a life and make a contribution… As long as we have an attitude, we are not going nowhere, and we have to get serious.”

The PM said persons should “look in the mirror” and ask themselves “what do you want to do for this country. Do you want to make a contribution or just be popular and do and say things to destroy the country? Why is the Dutch on our back? Why are they riding us for all that we do?”

A change is needed in the mind-set of people, he noted. “We have to continue showing that we have capable people to do things the correct way. And we must not be judged because we are doing things in the correct way by those who cannot drop the old fashioned way. We have qualified people who are willing to work hard and move forward, but the negativism that we see displayed – all of a sudden everyone has a solution, but everyone forgot who was there... they should just keep quiet and quietly make their contributions.”

He said since the Gumbs Cabinet took office in December 2014, the ministers have been kept busy “outing fires we didn’t start; cleaning up mess we didn’t put down” and “dealing with the Dutch that we met a problem with.”

At the end of his impromptu comments, the Prime Minister said while he may have gotten “carried away,” he “felt good about it.”