Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
It appears the decision to appoint someone else than UP leader Theodore Heyliger as prime minister has been taken (see related article). The by-far-biggest vote-getter during the end of August elections apparently will remain in Parliament despite earlier intentions to lead his first cabinet.
This development obviously is related to Governor Eugene Holiday being ordered by the Kingdom Council of Ministers to hold off on installing any candidate-ministers until a more stringent screening process determined and executed by officials from the Netherlands is completed. Formally no individual was being targeted, but several parliamentarians in The Hague, including some of the VVD/PvdA coalition, clearly stated they didn't want to see Heyliger heading the next government.
The saying "it's easy to find a stick to beat a dog" was cited in this column less than week ago to indicate that under the circumstances chances of his passing the Dutch-supervised test were practically zero. To get on with the governing of the country, it was therefore advised to for now propose cabinet members who could be expected to meet the new requirements imposed on St. Maarten.
In the meantime, the instruction deemed unconstitutional in a motion unanimously adopted by the Parliament in Philipsburg can continue be contested at the national, kingdom and international levels. Aruba and Curaçao obviously also oppose the use of this measure based on the Governors' Regulation, because they too believe it violates their autonomy by in effect circumventing the Kingdom Charter in which such is guaranteed, and thus sets a dangerous precedent.
Sometimes it's better to take a step back that enables one to later move forward two, or to retreat for a better position as it's often called. By doing so the UP leader would not be accepting defeat, but rather showing political maturity and putting the general interest first.
