Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
PHILIPSBURG--"I had nothing to do with the actual screening of the Gumbs Cabinet ministers, and the Prime Minister knows this full well," stated Democratic Party ((DP)) Member of Parliament Sarah Wescot-Williams in a statement Tuesday.
"After all, he was not only informateur, he himself was candidate minister. Did he report to me? No. Did I have anything to do with his screening or that of his colleagues? No. Did the local services report to me on the screening? No," she said.
The former prime minister hopes that Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs will confirm what she has pointed out. "I HOPE he does, because he implied otherwise in his letter.
"I have no desire for polemics (too early in the year for that), but neither will I allow the truth to be twisted. Sad to conclude this is exactly what happened in the first official answers to a Member of Parliament (me) by the Prime Minister."
Her statement comes on the heels of Gumbs' response to her inquiries about the Dutch Secret Services involvement with screening for minister candidates for the now sitting Gumbs Cabinet.
The minister candidates were screened under the tenure of now former Prime Minister/General Affairs Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams; Gumbs said his letter to Wescot-Williams that he shared with the press on Sunday.
The screening of minister candidates started on November 12, 2014, and concluded on December 16, 2014. "Therefore [it was completed] during the tenure of the [now] former Prime Minister Mrs. S. Wescot-Williams," Gumbs wrote in his letter. "Since taking office on December 19, 2014, I have not made any statements regarding a role for the Dutch Secret Service in the screening."
Wescot-Williams raised her queries about the Dutch Secret Service's involvement in the screening process after a report in another daily newspaper credited Dutch Minister for Interior Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk as saying there was involvement of the service.
"As a matter of principle, I was vehemently opposed to the interference by outsiders in the screening process on St. Maarten, and I am on record as stating publicly that I rejected even the suggestion of such ...The Wescot cabinet III is on record for standing up for the country on this matter. That too is public knowledge. We could have played politics, but we did not," Wescot-Williams said.
While Gumbs was not fully truthful in answering her questions, Wescot-Williams said she received answers about the possible involvement of the Dutch Secret Service in the screening "from another source."
"Suffice it to say, it appears not to have been the case. Look what it took to get to this point," she said.
